DayZ Mod: In the beginning…

I remember watching my first DayZ Mod game play video and I was blown away.  That was exactly the kind of game I’ve been wanting to play.  I played Resident Evil, House of the Dead, Silent Hill, Black Ops: Nazi Zombies, and Plants Vs. Zombies, but I always wanted something different. Something on a much larger scale.  I was surprised it took as long as it did, but DayZ was exactly what I was waiting for.  However after playing this game for months, I realized that I never played right when it was released to the public.  I had no idea how this mod got started or what it was like in its infancy. I was going to research it on my own, and I figured someone out there might want to know as well, so this is sort of a rough history of the beginning of the DayZ Mod.

What inspired DayZ?

The inspiration for parts of DayZ came about when Dean “Rocket” Hall was a soldier in the New Zealand army.  The ideas for the maps and terrain came from his experiences in training.  He was also injured during a survival training exercise and he has stated that this was one of the main influences in the DayZ mechanics.  From these experiences, using the Real Virtuality 3 engine (ArmA 2 engine) and wanting to create a zombie horror survival game, the DayZ mod was born.

The earliest version that I can find is version #312.
(taken from dayzwiki.com)

• [NEW] New damage model causes blood damage, scaling based on type. Added for PvP Damage modelling
• [FIXED] Zombies only spawned to a building once, so long as the player causing the spawn remained connected.
• [FIXED] Scores for players screwed up and not displaying
• [FIXED] Flare sometimes not being able to be detected on load
• [FIXED] Checking pulse now working
• [NEW] Loot probabilities changed for military buildings, zombie quantities, and general chance of spawn of equipment (check outside toilets)
• [FIXED] Server doesn’t play score statistics
• [NEW] Death now updated much quicker to database
• [FIXED] Player able to exploit death by quickly exiting

This was very basic mostly fixes, no new features were added in the beginning.  Eventually new items were introduced into the game, new mechanics such as sickness, tumble, hiding bodies, etc.  Since Rocket has been concentrating on the new Standalone, the community has taken up the slack and has been giving suggestions and help improving the mod, which is still growing and being updated.

As the Standalone release date gets closer and closer, Rocket has been releasing teasers on their tumblr.  All we can do now is keep playing DayZ and waiting on the standalone to get released, or at the VERY least, get a release date.