http://metro.co.uk/2014/04/10/first-footage-of-h1z1-sonys-zombie-apocalypse-mmo-4694365/ SOE working with a modified engine of Planetside 2, throwing more zombies at you!
The planetside 2 engine is pretty amazing; not sure if Planetside is using it full abilities yet either (does it have water yet?). Never been a huge fan of zombie games but my interest in perked.
I'd question how amazing it is, since most of the game's problems could be blamed on the dev team failing at their work, but could also be thrown on Forgelight.
Looks a lot like Infestation. The death scene logo is near identical as are some of the cities. I had to double check to make sure it wasn't a April Fools joke.
Happy to hear about this. I really love DayZ but have never been happy with the engine choice. The forge light engine is a great choice. Dullard and I have spoke many times on this. I'm glad they are bringing their MMO experience to this style of game.
More like making an other try at an MMO experience. There were a few attempts that cropped up over the past several years, but all were either complete failures or unnoteworthy. Unlike you, I'm a bit more skeptical on the matter and would rather not get caught by hype. It's SoE we're dealing with after all.
I didn't played any of the "new" approachs on this genre (DayZ, Rust and on)... But i'm always curious on how they will try to shine among those titles that have been on development for much more time (??) and probably much more expertise than SOE on this genre. I'm afraid that this is another manager decision powered by Dilbert's principles of management in Smedley's mind! lol "Bla bla bla, everyone is making those, we MUST have one too, bla bla bla" =D
There are very few "new" approaches to zombie games. The few out are not really MMORPGs such as Contagion. DayZ, WarZ (Infestation), and now this game all will probably play very similar. Sandbox survival zombie apocalypse. What else did you guys want to see? To me the concept that DayZ and Infestation worked with was awesome but never had the funding or capability to make the games big. With SoE behind it and games like it already out they should be able to put out something very playable. At the very least I am interested. If you are not then perhaps zombie MMORPGs are not for you as TBH they all seem like they would play a lot alike to me.
Good point Kyoji. Certainly i'll keep an eye for it. Even more now that one of the best base designer from PS2 went to H1Z1 Team. https://twitter.com/Arclegger/status/455800836237430784 Great loss to PS2... Great add to H1Z1.
As far as I know, the creator of DayZ got hired by Bohemia Interactive (makers of ArmA) and the whole company is now working on DayZ.
I saw today's livestream live. Wasn't anything revolutionary or even extraordinary. All they showed were how shit their graphics are (at the moment at least), didn't show any real gameplay and primarily focused on 1337 dev h4x. They also showed that people working at SoE are very skilled in making questionable decisions, such as repeatedly running at a horde of zombies while trying to get away from them. Exactly what you'd expect from the company behind Planetside 2.
I watched the livestream as well. First impressions. Not bad for alpha state. It already has working vehicles, zombies and the beginning stages of a decent crafting system. Given it is using the forge light engine I have no doubt the graphics/animations will improve over time. Just for comparison. DayZ has been in development for 1-1.5 years (longer if you include the mod) and has a good inventory system. Zombies are still broken, vehicles are still not in game, animations are still brutal, melee weapons are still brutal. They blew it using the ARMA engine in my opinion. Also it'll never be an MMO. So you will always been joining servers that are run by groups that can use admin cheats to give away your position or give gear to their friends. Don't get me wrong I love DayZ... it's just Dean Hall blew his chance to make a great game partnering with Bohemia. Other important items from the live stream: It will be free 2 play. Monetization to be announced. However you won't be able to buy the best gear. Early access is 4 weeks away and will cost 19.99.
DayZ is using the Virtual Reality 3 engine, which was used to make ArmA 2. It's a bad choice for use in mass scale because of how it handles NPCs in multiplayer. DayZ was made, then the engine was modified, and the game was redone in order to fit it. That caused the development time to extend far beyond what was intended. While the engine choice wasn't the best, they're making the most of the situation and getting a different engine wasn't really an option. It's the only reason why Bohemia took Rocket in -- to promote themselves and their stuff, if they hadn't, the game would've likely been a complete failure, or delayed for a few more years due to a lack of resources and manpower. The Forgelight Engine was already done and configured from Planetside 2. It was a direct port, except the fact that the map had to be redone. The vehicles handle as horribly as they do in Planetside 2, the bullet drop mechanics are the same, nothing is really changed, except that they (so far) didn't bother to implement HD stuff, so the game looks like it's from 2005. You shouldn't treat it as it's own game, instead -- as just an other gamemode for Planetside 2. SOE are just capitalizing on the zombie hype wave caused by games like DayZ a few years back. As for H1Z1 being an MMO... what difference does it make? DayZ already has a ton of fully automated dedicated servers which limit admin abuse, and with 64 players in the DayZ mod the map's filled to it's capacity -- you run into other players way too often. I doubt H1Z1 will allow 2000 players on one instance. At most 100, assuming the map is of comparable size, which makes gameplay the exact same -- whenever you're hopping across servers or instances in a server there's no difference. If, by chance, they do have 2000 players in the same instance, then it will be a clusterfuck. Even more so then Planetside 2, since it would be a hatchet-centric Free For All with permadeath and zombies tagging along.
I guess being an MMO really doesn't make a difference. What I was getting at is I'd take a game with official hosted servers any day over the current DayZ system. It's just too tempting to have a admin mess with server shit. It's why everyone always ends up getting their own server. It was the main reason we got ours. But it didn't take long before our admins were doing the same things. It's just another level of bullshit that players don't need. Totally agree the vehicles physics look off though. I'm sure they can work on that now that there won't be a couple 100 tanks driving around like PS2. I honestly don't care who develops the game as long as it has permadeath, zombies, vehicles, crafting, end game and looks great. So far SOE seems to have given us more than what DayZ could do in years.
Ty Guys! I hope that the new Sony all access shit give access to this from alpha... I'll be looking forward to it!