There are plenty of ways for project lead Dean Hall and his small team at Bohemia Interactive to expand DayZ into a standalone experience. Everything from complex weapon crafting to instanced, customizable underground spaces could be included, and there will definitely be a fully overhauled interface. But first, Hall wants to plug all the leaks of his increasingly popular mod about survival in a bleak, zombie-infested world.

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“The most important thing,” said Hall, “and it’s the most boring thing, is to fix the bugs and fix the troubles we’re having with hacking. This initial alpha is going to be not very ambitious. The initial release we’re going to do is going to be about stabilizing the mod, which is falling to pieces. Nearly two-hundred thousand people are playing it every day. It can’t survive.”When the standalone alpha version of DayZ launches potentially some time later this year, the plan is to focus on making the experience really polished. DayZ will use a Minecraft-like distribution model, so you’ll pay less and be given immediate access to the game if you commit early.But if you’ve already gone out and purchased Arma II: Combined Operations specifically to play DayZ, do you get some kind of discount with the standalone alpha? “We talked about it. But DayZ, if it wants to be successful, has to stand on its own two feet. The challenge there is for the development team to put enough in the standalone that people feel ok paying 15 Euro or whatever to buy into it. This isn’t even going to be a full-priced retail title. It doesn’t need to be. We want a bunch of people to play it, so why price it high. So we’re going to have to say, ‘you want into this? You’re going to have to buy it, otherwise you can keep playing the mod.’ Arma II is a perfectly fine title.”In case you don’t want to pay for the standalone version, the mod won’t suddenly disappear once the alpha is available. “We’re going to open [the mod] up so people can run their own private communities, open up the development a little bit more, much more experimental.”Depending on how the alpha sells after it launches, there are plenty of possibilities as to where DayZ might wind up next. “If we can get to two million players with DayZ standalone, that’s pretty good revenue. That allows us to be really creative. At that point we can start saying, ok, what do we want to port to?”So a console version of DayZ could be a possibility? “Yeah, why not? You’d be mad not to.”Hall went on to explain what he feels is important when dealing with multiplatform development. “I don’t think cross-platform development is a good answer for PC innovation because I think it really restricts it. You have to make a lot of design and interface decisions early on. So DayZ is going to drive on as a bit of an experiment, and once it reaches a point when you say ‘ok, does this work on Mac, does this work on 360?’ From a business standpoint you’re cashing in, really, and from a consumer standpoint it’s good, because some people who might not like the super duper hardcore complex nature of the PC one, maybe they want a casual, and I’m using a word that’s probably going to make people cringe, version on 360. There’s a lot of people in the world and people want slightly different things, so why not cater to that?”Whatever winds up happening, Hall was adamant that the PC version will not lose its complexity and focus on grueling survival in a merciless virtual space. That starts with adding layers of complexity after the alpha’s initial launch.For instance, Hall is thinking very seriously about how to implement a crafting system that fits with the tone the game world. “You shouldn’t be able to craft a high-powered sniper rifle out of tin cans. In terms of crafting, things that would make sense. Making a makeshift tourniquet or a splint. Maybe have it so you could make your own recipes. I think if blood bags have told us anything, it’s that it’s kind of cool to have these items that do require some element of trust [between players] to use and operate. Doing that with crafting is definitely a cool option. We don’t want to force players into a specific play style, so we want to probably have some that can be used as an individual and maybe some that require more social interaction.”The underground building system sounds like it could be more of a game changer. These underground spaces would be instanced, cut off from the main game world. “The existing map will be more like a battleground where you go in to explore and find resources, and then you’ll retreat back to areas that you dig out. You know Red Faction’s destruction? Wouldn’t it be great to be clearing out an underground cavern on that basis. Obviously this is super ambitious. Small steps, big dreams.”Working together, players could hollow out these underground spaces and set up shop. “Maybe they’ve got a hydroponics lab, built some generators, they’re starting to concrete the base of the cavern and they actually build their own subterranean city. Then another faction comes in and tries to take that over. No safe spaces.”So, because this is DayZ and most every action carries some kind of risk, whether it’s creating noise or taking up time and leaving you vulnerable, what’s the drawback of spending time carving out a new underground room? “I think, definitely time investment. I see these becoming to DayZ what capital ships are to EVE. They’ll require a significant amount of people to do it. We’d like to keep it relatively authentic. Not taking as much time as it does in real life necessarily. Obviously digging out dirt would be relatively easy, but then you come across some stone and it’s going to take some time. If we can pull that off, it would be really awesome. “Hall explained that he wasn’t yet sure how this would work in terms of saved progress across servers, but liked instanced base building because in some ways it was simpler than other aspects of the game. “It has less problems than vehicle development. At the moment, vehicle is something you generally have to do with a group, and that’s really problematic for us. If we can just instance it off, you could almost run a peer-to-peer really and just have one client take over the management and maybe it draws down the data from a central server. It solve a lot of problem for us. It’s still only in the pure design analysis phase, I’ve probably still got a lot of convincing to do with our lead programmer. Construction is definitely one of the highest design priorities we have. As to what that’s going to look like, our strongest contender is that underground construction, but there may be other options.”The other options could include more significant changes to the overworld, but Hall is hesitant to mess with the surface too much, fearing he might break the flow of gameplay that’s naturally developed there. “It’s important not to disrupt it. I think what we need to do is give players more tools. At the moment there’s not a ton do once you master DayZ. All you can really do is kill other players. People are being creative enough with the limited stuff we’re giving them now, imagine what they could do if we give them more tools.”If that sounds way more complicated, that’s because it is. Hall isn’t interested, as DayZ’s popularity grows, in turning the PC version into an easier game in order to appeal to even more people. He is interested, though, in cleaning up the mod’s cluttered, endlessly finicky interface for the standalone release. “We’ll be completely replacing inventory management. We want to cut down the information that’s available on the HUD and provide other cues, visual, audio cues.”Does that mean Hall would get rid of every icon onscreen? “We’re going to need to have something, but for starters, I don’t think we should be telling people how many rounds they’ve got. I know, as a soldier, you don’t know unless you count. And I think that’s an interesting tension that you have. You come across another player and it’s like ‘holy ****, how many rounds do I have?’” The way Hall describes it, he would like this information to be permanently hidden, so there isn’t even an option to toggle it on.“It’s going to require a lot of experimentation. For the initial alpha release, we’re probably going to still have stuff on the HUD. And then we’ll work with players on how to replace those with visual and audio indicators.”Those audio and visual cues will gain a heightened importance because Hall and the team are improving zombie AI for the standalone release. “Arma is designed for running in an open environment, so it doesn’t have a lot of good thought around dealing with buildings and stuff like that. Because zombies are only AI and because they’re brain dead, they’re only required to do two things: loiter and chase after players. We can completely from scratch re-look at that. So that’s one of our big design and programming priorities. I’m confident we’re going to be able to come up with a much better solution for pathing.”With more dangerous enemies, working with others to survive could prove even more crucial, and Hall is coming up with ways to facilitate organization. “Maybe we can get a little bit more ambitious and have some kind of buddy system where you can find another player and say ‘join my group.’ Maybe we have some requirements around grouping, radios, stuff like that. There’s a lot of experimentation that needs to be done there, but it’s one of the key design pillars, is supporting that style of play.” Regardless of what system winds up making it in, you’ll never be entirely safe. “I am a firm believer in friendly fire.”You can also expect more story elements to be present, which will be subtly integrated into the game world. “My brother is a virologist for the New Zealand equivalent of the CDC and he’s got approval to work on the project with me. He’s going to help me develop the virus as a believable virus. There’s going to be a whole narrative behind that. The players can actually explore and interact and find out about the virus. It’s own virus name, treatment protocols and how it develops, and the zombie life cycle out of that. People who have initially been infected by the virus, they’ll run like a normal human, run really fast, very aggressive. But as they get progressively more starved, they’ll be much slower. The idea is that the zombie life cycle will be very authentic. It won’t have fantastical elements to it. We’re really going to go for that hard, gritty – I’m not going to say realistic, because it’s definitely not realistic – but authentic elements.”Hall envisions pieces of story being told through in-game mechanics, potentially extremely time-intensive, complicated mechanics. “I liked in I am Legend how he was experimenting and developing stuff. I think it would be a cool option for a player to say, ‘ok I want to set up my underground structure and I want to learn about the virus.’ It’s something we could toy with as the game develops. If someone manages to develop the gene for the virus or something, maybe we could adjust the game and have a reaction, or the virus mutating. We could get this interesting dynamic going with the player with the story.”Clearly a lot is still up in the air for this next step for DayZ, but there is no shortage of great ideas for where to take it next. For now, if you want to check out the DayZ mod, you still need to do it the old fashioned way