Speaking to PCGamesN , Bohemia Interactive's Matt Lightfoot teased the kinds of horrible life-threatening diseases we can expect to catch in DayZ. Diseases such as cholera, dysentery and hepatitis are being promised for the standalone, along with (probably) motion-capture animations expressing your state of ill-health - that's going to be particularly fun when it comes to dysentery.
"If you drink polluted water, you could get something as mild as a cold," Lightfoot explains, "or something as serious as cholera or dysentery, and you'll have a bad day. Because dysentery will kill you very quickly unless you either have medicine or lots of access to clean water. If you don't, or if you drink even more dirty water, you'll make it worse."
He goes on to reveal that "What we want to have is animations. We motion-captured that animation [for dysentery] already. That was a fairly fun day."
I can imagine. Interestingly there will be a "latency period" between the contraction of the disease and the moment when symptoms start to appear, giving the infection plenty of time to spread to other players - you know, like a real illness.
The team are additionally working on making more advanced in-game radios - encrypted two-way ones that will enable private-chatting. Lightfoot also suggests there will be a Fallout-style radio station, run by members of the community. Exciting stuff - head here to read the full interview.
