DayZ - New Map project.

I am not playing DayZ as much as I decided to make a HTML based aid called "Where the F*%# am I?"

It will in short ask you a series of questions until it will give you a 80% accurate location, depending if the user did it correctly.

So i have been spending most my day looking for key points.

White Barns.
Gray Barns.
Big gray barns
Big white Barns (AKA cattle sheds)
Statues
Cranes
Gas Stations
White Churches
Yellow Churches

Your guide will be Victor, A drunken cilivian who seems to be drunk and well forgetful. He will ask you questions for him to remember where you might be, comrade.

Most the questions be visual pictures, like looking outside buildings or buildings next door.

Once the mapping portion is completed. victor will give town stats, What it contains, how many buildings are accessible and  

DayZ - Kind of Failed Ideas (part 1)

In DayZ, Every one wants to improve the Mod or add something that they think is a cool idea. A few threads have appeared about the concept of tagging or leaving Graffiti like in  the Left 4 Dead series (L4d 3 is coming). Some have suggested on using spray paint or a magic marker where you draw on objects like paint shop pro







Fictional: So let say that the developers were able to script in the ability (with no server memory drain) to use magic markers to write in the game.

What the mods would expect is advice giving to players or even comments or a way to track if you been here. Which is a commendable but as most players know this is DayZ, where a player would kill a new player just for their bandage, not because they need it, just because they can take it.

What would end up is a bunch of smucks insulting players or drawing body organs on dead corpses or (I cringe at this thought) draw every inch of the town black.

Reality: Of course this is in pure theory and most likely if this was possible to add this feature, it would have huge restrictions, Like a player has a very limited amount of tagging or drawing before the old tags/spray would cause it despawn just to not slow down the server memory.

If they do implement it, it would most likely it be similar to Left 4 dead but again comes down the memory of the server and things like, Will tags spawn when players about to enter towns? Will they vanish when server resets? Will there be script issues? What if some one drawn something offensive on the wall? etc etc

Maybe if they made their stand alone game they can script it but for Arma 2 it is just not possible.

DayZ - Understanding the Red Broken Chain Link

As I excited the forest after an hour of  running through the wilderness, only having grass, trees and sky as company. “Behold, A town!” I cheered to no one in particular. I then jived as I then had spotted a grocery store near by. I mildly noticed a red icon broken chain link and also Zombie population is 6/6 but I didn't really think much about it.

As I crouch-ran to the grocery store, A zed spotted me. It then charged, so in response I fired my rifle, Another came around the corner and I noticed the zombie count had raised from 6 to 310 in my debug menu. As I downed the second zed, Zombies came poured from the grocery store, Behind buildings, from the fields all at me.

As I flee back into the mountains, I had realized that my red broken chain icon was gone.
What had happened was that my latency with the server was severed for a certain amount of time. Since I had ran into the town while I had the wonderful Red Chain of Death, the server didn't know my location, so it didn't populate the area with Zeds and loot but when the latency was re-established (or was strong enough connection) the server instantly spawned zeds and items around me.

My advice is to watch for yellow or red broken chain, So be careful when in probable zombie infested towns.

On public servers you will see this more than private servers. Although I have had where I went through 5 towns and was zed free.

DayZ - Maps = Free Loot and transport

Having a Map in DayZ is like eating a blue berry pie fresh from the oven with home made ice cream dobbed on the side.

"What am I rambling about? It's just a map for [Insert Figure head of religion that was murdered] sake?" You may ask. Yes it's a map but it has another purpose.

A lot of players in DayZ are well, to be honest, are more stupid than the zeds hocked up on bath salts. When you get map, you can leave notes you want (On the picture on the right side i wrote "Homeless Joe" on one server). There is a small problem when you do this, Every one who owns the in-game map can read all notes on that server. So many times I had found that people had left notes that said "Camp" or "ATV" or my favorite one "My back up gear".

When I had found these treasures on the map, I mosey on over to the locations and help myself or just go for a joy ride. Tonight, I had found a hacker's ATV that had 3 golden guns, 5 gillies, tons of other crap that was unattainable in DayZ. I decided to help ease the hacker's guilty conscious by taking that evil ATV for a ride and so I had rode off with it into the sunset, a few minutes later, I had found the ATV's new home, A pond. And so I parked the ATV at the bottom of the lake. Most likely the hacker will just make another ATV but hopefully battleye might catch them.

My advice for you DayZ'ers is only use the in-game map's notes if you want to share information to other people like, Broken Truck. So when people who looking for vehicles can find it easier to repair it they can read it on the ingame map. If you want hide your stash or vehicles from the world, then use coordinates and write them down on a piece of paper.

DayZ- Finally my account is reinstated

Finally My blog is live once again,

Long story short, since it's not DayZ relevant, there seems to be this traffic program and increases bloggers counts (not sure why but it has to do with money). Well google blocked my account but finally they said "Yes, You are human" and gave it back.

So coming up, Explanation of the chains and how to be a non-zombie survivor and my DayZ doodles.

oh, here's a creepy Gif. 

DayZ - Most Clever or Common hacks used on players in DayZ.

If you are one of my regular blog readers, You may of noticed that I had stop writing my adventures in DayZ for a few reasons.

1. Hackers (aka kiddy scriptors) are a pain in the backside and are kill joys.
2. The fact that my character gets spawned back at the coast (even though I am logging in the same server with the updated files) and I have to head back into the mountains.
3. My character dies from random bugs.

What most players do not realized DayZ is in it's Alpha/Beta and it will have bugs and hackers and exploits.

So today I will talk about what hackers/Kiddy scriptors do in DayZ.

1. Welcome to the ThunderDome!
In the mid 1980's there was a movie called "Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome".The plot was about the whole economy collapsed when Gas was tapped out. In the movie, people where thrown in a pit with a giant metal dome cage and would fight to the death.


The normal location of where it is held is the major airfield. They also put a tents down with weapon and ammo creates.

Players were then instantly transported to the airfield, where all their gear gets  stripped except their clothes & backpack with the message...

"WELCOME TO THE THUNDER DOME, GUNS ARE IN THE AMMO CRATES, FIGHT TO THE DEATH! UH1H WILL SPAWN IN 5 MINUTES!". 

UH1H is a helicopter that allows you to leave the dome but i heard stories that it never happen.

People from all over the server are now scrambling to get weapons to kill each other, DayZ is a dog eat dog world. Of course if  they all realized that if no one kills each other, their chances are better at escaping. If you get killed or win you do not get Teleported back and get your gear back, nope. You will have to restart from scratch.If you abort and come back later you be back in the airfield with no gear.

2. The Axe Murders

Even though I detest scripters, this is one of the most creative and horrific hacks in DayZ.

Imagine this, you and your buddies are on your own running through the wilderness heading to some location. Smoke appears near you. You all ask each other "Who did that?" Then you hear a little girl singing "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring" continuously. You scratch your heads of the events that are unfolding. Then suddenly Jason Voorhees holding an axe appears from the smoke.  

Your face wrinkles with confusion as Jason comes running at you. One of your buddies decides to unload an entire clip into jason with  m16, The bullets doesn't even phase him. You wised up and fired your bullets at  Jason but find out as well that it is fruitless.

As one, you flee while axe murderer is hot on your heels, while still playing that creepy music.

There are variations, Jason would go invisible and just play the creepy child song over and over, or teleport in front of you.

From what i vaguely grasp it is a combination of scripts of teleportation, invisibility, creating items (Axe and smoke grenade), invulnerability and changing the skins. Arma 2 actually has a very large selection of skins but we only see a few skins in DayZ.

3. Teleportation of Death
One of the most common and unoriginal way of hacking in DayZ. So you are doing your own thing and next thing you are teleported to a various location and the following would happen.
A: You are in the sky and you fall to your death like lemmings.
B: You just die instantly with every one near you.
C: You get shot.
D: You get nuked.

E: Run you over with a vehicle like a Bus or a helicopter.

*The only way is to Abort instantly when you get teleported.

4. Server Nuke or Town Nukes.
Server nuke is they instantly kill every one alive or a nuke blew up the entire server in one go. Difference of the two is the first one just kills all living things. Second destroys buildings also.

Town Nukes is when some one blows up a building or a town.


5. Loot bait.
Another common hacker trick is to leave creates of loot lying around the game. Where a player would find it, loot it and then find out that they got banned entirely by battleye.  My advice, do not take loot from suspicious crates.

DayZ the Stupidity of Scriptors.

Today I wanted to talk about a post on the DayZ forum. I normally just read up on the forum's questions, debates, bugs and people needing help with. I never posted there or I have an account to the forum for most people with the same frame of mind like myself would respond.

I found a thread that kind of amused me.









So, Let's guess what he got banned for?

A) Banned from a certain server for Spawn killing?
B) Banned from a certain server for Camping Loot by logging back in hourly?
C) Banned from a certain server for Talking in Global Voice Chat?
D) Banned from a certain server for Killing the admin?
E) Banned from for hacking (I prefer the term kiddy scripting)?
F) Banned from a certain server for no real reason, that the player was a ware of?
G) Banned from a certain server for heckling the owners youtube videos?

The answer is:

If you picked F, Then you are totally incorrect, The answer is E.

So lets compare the title of the post to the story. So he got banned for no reason, yet he openly admits to scripting on a private server.

The members of DayZ Forums explain to the banned player that what he had done is a global ban and well, he screwed himself. One member just tells the person to stop hacking, He replies.

Well, Yes, Yes you are stupid. You got busted for Scripting. The banned player openly wonders why people of DayZ Forums are not being helpful so he had tried to defend himself.

 Let's say you got arrested for stealing in a store, Now you have a criminal record, it is stuck to you for rest of your life, Now if  you went back to the same store two weeks later and bought the same product that you failed to steal, doesn't mean every thing is even now. You did the crime and you do the time.

Don't get me wrong, there are ways to get unbanned in DayZ/Arma 2.

Why did I even post about this? It's to show the people how pathetic these hackers/scriptors are when they get caught and act like what they did was a minor offense. 

IMO.

DayZ - Paper Simulator.

A lot of my friends and co-workers ask me about DayZ, They tell me it sounds cool, Which it is. So I made a Paper Simulator on what is DayZ like when you first start.

DayZ - Debug Zone?

A lot of new players have asked about the function and reason of the debug zone. I have been there a few times (moving freely), Mostly because of a glitch or idiot hackers warping me there.

It is advised to not try and find these places as people do get kicked or banned (from the server or if reported, the entire game by battleye).


There are three debug zones in Chernarus, One is in the ocean, One is in the forest to the north and the other is to the east in the plains. All of them are outside of the map but it doesn't stop people from stumbling on it since the game has no boarders.

Unlike games like world of Warcraft, where your character is slotted to only one server in Arma 2 your character can go to server to server. When you load in the game, you can some times see an empty field, an ocean or a forrest and you may see some green triangles before spawning in your last location.

In the debug zone is where the server places you until it finds the coordinates where you originally were and the gear that you are carrying.

What you see is all players right next to each other, holding weapons and looking like a bunch of NPCs (none Playable characters) but i assure you, they are all players.

Question: Where is the debug zone spawn areas?
Answer: Sorry, I am not giving the coordinates or the map location to avoid trolls going over there, You can find it by googling it if you are that desperate.

Question: What happens if i kill those players?
Answer: You get their sweet loot but you also most likely get banned from the server or the game it self.

Question: What if i was killed while loading into the game?
Answer: Report the server, DayZ/Battleye will check the logs and ban the player. Sadly you will not get your stuff back.

Question: Can I steal stuff from their backpacks?
Answer: Sadly yes, I remember  logging in once and having my blood packs stolen. I couldn't figure it out at first until one of the admin was cussing at some kid and then banned a player for stealing in the debug spawn area.

Question: Can they see me?
Answer: Only for a split second between loading screens.

Question: Can they hear me?
Answer: Yes, They can hear your gun fire while loading in the game and they can hear you moving.

Question: In one of your other blogs, you mention about swimming in water will make you lose items.
Answer: That is true but in Debug Ocean you are not meant to lose any gear but i have heard complaints of gear vanishing when loading in.

Question: What if I am bugged and spawned at the debug spawn area.
Answer: Well if you are in the water, you are screwed. if you are in the debug forest or plains then I hope you have either a compass or a map. Debug plains (just pure grass) head west. Forest (I believe south west).

Question: What happens if I just keep going off the map.
Answer: Map just keeps generating.

Question: Apart from players, what else is there?
Answer: Birds, sky, floor and well animals.

This is the video I was looking for about going off the map.

DayZ - How To Fix Loading Screen Of Doom (Steam).

  DayZ - How To Fix Loading Screen Of Doom (For Steam users).

Tell me you have similar problem,  you picked a server to join and spent waiting over half an hour to get in but you are stuck with a full bar with the words loading. This is one of the most easy fix for DayZ for steam users with this problem.

1. Exit out of steam and DayZ completely.

2. Right click on the steam icon and run as administrator.









3. Left mouse click on Games (which is on the top left side of your steam window), then left mouse click View Games library.






4. On the left side of steam you should see your game lists, left click ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead.

5. On the right side you should see ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead with the words Play, Left click play.

6. A new Window will appear, Select Reinstall battlEye Anti-Cheat. Then Hit "Play". For me it took less than 2 seconds for it to reinstall.

7. Load up DayZ and enjoy, if you still are having difficulties then go to dayz 6 updater and update to the most recent files.

There you go.!

DayZ - How To Find the right server

DayZ - How To Find the right server

 If you haven't read my blog, you most likely you are suffering the same issue that I had went through when playing DayZ Alpha/Beta, You waste a lot of time trying to find the right server. This guide will help cut down the time used from checking every server by half.

Currently in DayZ is only multiplayer mode, There is no Single player. The reason is to stop people testing hacks or exploits. Also, there aren't any PVE servers (Player VS Environment or also known as Friendly Fire is Disabled).  PVE is where you only fight against starvation, thirst, zombies, gravity and drowning.

All servers are PVP (Player VS Player), Which means it is is exactly like PVE but you get other players killing you also. 

Note: This guide is for users who do not wish to use With6 or DayZ Commander. I can not use either of those because it would shut my internet when it's looking for servers and I don't want to waste time trying to fix it.



1. Load DayZ

2. Left Click Multi-player

 



3. A server list would appear, simply left click Filters.



4. You should now have filter settings window on your screen.
Next steps will break down what each filter does.

 A. Host: For host you can type what type you are looking for. For example, I can type in the difficulty setting i want to play, So it just type regular, and it will filter all the regular servers for me. You can also put in times (see number 12)that  you are looking for, Server ID numbers ETC.







Here is a list you can Use to help filter. It is best to use one word than a bunch of words because if you wrote "recruit GMT -9) it will think all the words are in that order.

Recruit: Is meant to be the easiest*, Most the time they have white dots that you can see around you that represent players and NPCs (Non-playable characters), Cross hairs are enabled, Third person View is enabled, Enables your icon on the map with hints of possible loot locations.

Regular: Regular is meant to be a bit more challenging*, From my experience it disables white orbs (unless you are below 4000 blood and you have blurred vision) and disables cross hairs on your screen. Also Names of players or NPCs will not list it's name when you move your aim on it.

Expert: Is even more challenging*, It is just a step above Regular but it varies. A lot of servers seem to be exactly the same as regular except they disabled 3rd person.

Veteran: Is meant to be an elite players only*, Veteran server is a perfect place for pissing each other off. If you played World of Warcraft it is like trade chat. Every thing is disabled to make it as realistic as possible.

If you are looking for a private server** you can type private in. 

B. Max Ping: To explain what ping is, Ping*** is lag, Lag is not good, especially if you are in a gun fight or fleeing. Quite a lot of servers will kick (or ban) players over 200 ping since it can cause rest of the players and it's server to lag. I put 150 on mine.

So for example I put 150 and as you see below, My filter would shrink.

C. Min. and Max. Players: This is optional, Some players want to play on low population (rebuild their character and just not deal with players/hackers or players Some crave company or a challenge or just some one to troll.

D. Mission: Leave it blank, has not any use for DayZ (for now)

E. Expansions and Full Servers: Leave it on "show" for now, it has not any use for DayZ (for now)

F.  Password: This means if the servers are password protected, You can tell because they have an icon with a key on it. Unless I get invited but for now i just changed it to Hide****.

G. BattlEye required: This is servers who are not using battleye to ban exploiters, hackers etc. Another reason is people have used fake/stolen Cd keys go to play. I recommend having it on Yes, Unless you are a glutton for punishment.

5. After you change the settings go to server selection by pressing Ok.

6. Understanding the Server filters in DayZ
Since you filtered down to possible 10 to 30 You may want to understand the abbreviations used.

A: Server times: Most Servers (That do have information about their server and are  telling the truth about what their filters are) who aren't freaking idiot admins who will changes to make it night time on a whim, will tell you the server times it is currently running. For example GMT or UTC with plus or negative times. The best way to figure out if it is currently at day time is this link.

http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/global.htm

For example a server I see is GMT -12 and my time right now in Arizona is 8:19am then it's 3:19am server time, so that mean i can play this server since It is still day light.

If you looking at other time zones, just go to the greenwichmeantime.com and look for a search bar on the top left where you can put the time zone on what the server is running at.

B: Icons:
The Yellow Question Mark on the left is the icon, DayZ has no real Icon to ID it so it goes question mark.  This mean you can go into the server.

The red X can be either two things, You got banned from the server for what ever reason or that server is running a different version compared to what you are running.
When you left click the server you can see if your version is old to too new for the server by seeing the red font.

They key means it is a private and password required server, A lot of players get sick of hackers and run their own server so they don't waste their characters gear by a pathetic cheap death. 

The lock means no one can enter, even with the password.


C: Breakdown of Abbreviations: 

• The location is a two-character country code. (US, DE, UK, SE, etc)
• The city which is optional indicates where the server is physically hosted.
• The version and beta indicate the necessary DayZ version and ArmA2OA beta version.
• Third person and Cross Hairs (the shoot from the hip cross-hairs that appear green in the middle of the screen):
  • 3DP:on <- thirdperson on
  • 3DP:off <- thirdperson off
  • CH:on <- cross-hair on
  • CH:off <- cross-hair off
• The time zone offset from UTC gives an indication of the day/night cycle of the server.
• Trailing information indicates the provider of the server. 

E: Ping, The number on the end with the color green, yellow/brown and red means how well your ping will run in the server. It's best to try to go for servers under 150 since most servers kick players (or even ban) if your ping too high.

Status: The status is what the server is doing, playing means you can play, Down means its crashed, Loading means it rebooted.



*note: on Recruit, Veteran, Expert and Regular does always not mean that is at that challenge level, The server admins can change the settings to be easier or more challenging.

**In private servers you won't be playing your character from public servers. Do not worry, when you go back to public servers your character will be there.

*** Note: In DayZ you get Ping and latency, Latency is basically the amount of time it takes for information to travel from one point on the network to another. Your ping time (latency) on DayZ is the amount of time (in milliseconds) it's taking you to reach the server from your computer and back. If you have low ping this faster uploads/downloads than high ping. So if you join a server and your ping is low but you are lagging it could be the server latency.

****Note: If you do get invited to play on a private server, Please go back in filters and turn it to show.

DayZ - How to Enable Debug menu.

DayZ - How to Enable Debug menu.

With the new update of Version 1.62.96061, The creators of DayZ had disabled our Debug menu. To enable it again just follow these simple steps.

 Note: Every time I load up my game I have to change it to debug since it is not saving the option. 

 1. Load up the game.

You should see "Main menu", like you see on the right side of the image.


Note: sometimes game crash when you attempt this while you are in a game.






2. Left Click with your mouse on Game Options.

You should now be in the Options portion and you should see the Game options box, left mouse click it.

3. Click the Arrow on the right that is next to Default.

Game options should be titled, On the Bottom there is DayZ UI: And to the right has a <  then the word in white writing should say "Default" then a arrow  >. Click the right arrow > until you see Debug.








4. Left click on the word ok and then back to the main menu and enjoy playing DayZ with debug screen.