Celebrating DayZ’s official release on 16th December last year, Bohemia Interactive has released a special anniversary video on DayZ's official YouTube channel. The video provides a unique insight into the some of the challenges DayZ faced throughout its development, and what DayZ means to various members of the development team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyZV3F6Vkho
The standalone Alpha version of DayZ was officially released using Steam's Early Access program, on December 16th 2013 - very early on in its development cycle. Since then the DayZ development team has continued developing the game with a continuous flow of updates, including new weapons, new items, diseases, harvest-able resources, private shards, persistent objects, initial vehicle testing, and various platform improvements.
Over the next 12 months, the team will be looking to expand the options for basic ground transportation, aerial transport, expanding on basic survival features, such as animal predators and traps. On top of these the DayZ team is implementing an improved rendering engine, which will expand upon the graphical fidelity and depth in game.
Since the game was released into Early Access 12 months ago, the development team has grown significantly. David Durcak, the new Project Lead on DayZ, stated:
“Firstly, I'd like to thank Dean Hall for leading the team for the past two years, and I wish him the best with his new studio. The growth of the DayZ team over the past 12 months will be integral to the prolonged success of the game. With the additional team members, we hope that throughout the upcoming year we will be able to create more content and a deeper experience for the DayZ audience. Plus, it will also enable us to significantly improve the technology for the standalone, and polish the features that we have. All in all, it is our goal to create the best experience we can, in terms of frame rate, visual quality and the overall gameplay.”
In support of DayZ's first anniversary, the team has also released an updated development roadmap for 2015. The roadmap contains a list of the feature goals for 2015. Please note that the DayZ development roadmap is not a fixed document, and the schedule and content always remain subject to change:
First Quarter
- Basic vehicles
- Advanced loot distribution
- New renderer
- New Infected AI
- Basic stealth system (infected and animals)
- Diseases
- Improved cooking and horticulture
- Advanced anti-hack system (Dynamic BattlEye)
Second Quarter
- Advanced vehicles (repair and modifications)
- Advanced animals (life cycle, group behaviour)
- Player statistics
- New UI
- Player stamina
- Dynamic events
- World containers
- New physics system
Third Quarter
- Traps
- Barricading
- Character life span + soft skills
- Animal predators + birds
- Aerial transport
- Console prototype
- Advanced communication
Fourth Quarter
- Animal companions
- Steam community integration
- Construction (base building)
- Beta version
To join the survivors in Chernarus, people can purchase DayZ (Early Access) for 27.99 EUR/34,99 USD from Steam and Store.bistudio.com. The price of DayZ will increase as development progresses.
For more information, please visit http://www.dayz.com and/or follow DayZ on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.