The launch and unprecedented popularity of genre similar Playerunknown's Battlegrounds has somewhat overshadowed DayZ in recent weeks. It's been quite some time since we last reported on the zombie survival MMO, however its latest update—0.62, which has now entered its Experimental branch—is the most promising for a while.
As relayed by the game's community manager Baty Alquawen, here's a rundown of what 0.62 delivers on:
- New tree models
- Denser forests
- New clutter (grass, small plants)
- New surface textures - plains and such Improved wind behavior
- New shader for the wind, affecting trees and grass
- Tweaked and changed lighting for the world
- Small improvements to satellite textures
- Rain affected by wind and refinement of its behavior in general
- Many reworked locations on Chernarus
- Reworked ghillie (to be consistent with new tech)
- Small bugfixes to some issues from 0.61
- New ambient sounds
Alquawen notes that this interpretation of 0.62 is the first public version on unstable servers, and therefore may contain as yet unreported and undiscovered bugs and crashes. Feedback is encouraged—which players have been sharing over on the game's corner of Reddit, most notably frame rate issues and the fact that tree camping is no longer possible in pine trees.
Of the positive side, some of the new tree models look pretty nice and wind is now dynamic, which can be seen when using smoke bombs or when watching falling trees in the wind.
Admittedly, that last part sounded more poetic than intended and I imagine players will have more fun exploring some of the update's reworked areas. DayZ YouTube person JAKON72 spots a massive new castle towards the end of the following playthrough, for example:
At the foot of the update post, Alquawen links to a handy developer Q&A with senior map designer Adam Franců. Check that out here:
Ta, Eurogamer.
