It’s no secret that the creator of the DayZ mod, Dean “Rocket” Hall, has been working to transform the mod into a standalone, zombie survival extravaganza. DayZ first generated hype as an ambitious mod for ArmA II, and quickly became a staple on Twitch and other streaming sites. Gamers praised the mod for its various features, the most acclaimed of which was the ability to play with, and kill, other players.
Hall and his development team have been working on transitioning DayZ into a standalone MMO and have made a pretty big announcement over the weekend. It has been revealed that DayZ will have a structure very common amongst modern MMOs. The game will have a traditional client-server relationship, which means everything in the game will be controlled by the server itself.
This is meant to make the game more streamlined. Because the current iteration of DayZ runs on the ArmA structure, the game’s zombies are capable of doing complex actions (like walk through walls). Though the zombies don’t actually team up and discuss strategy in the mod, they have the potential to. That potential eats up a great deal of resources. By adopting a client-server architecture, Hall believes that the game can be optimized, noting:
“Our zombies don’t need to conduct flanking maneuvers, they don’t need to reload their magazines. They are simple, and our architecture reflects that. Achieving this will be tough, as we are already crunching very hard. If this heavy optimization is as successful as it would rationally seem to be on paper, then we will be limited on player numbers not by performance, but map design.”
The DayZ team is currently pushing for an early December release of the Alpha, with plans to adopt the same development/monetization plan that Minecraft had when its Alpha became available.
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