Un fan du mod DayZ sur ARMA II a profité de l’E3 pour discuter avec Rocket, le créateur du mod, et nous livre les 5 minutes de discussion qu’il a eu avec lui.

On apprend que Rocket, qui fait partie de Bohemia, a reçu un franc soutien du studio pour son projet. Il a d’ailleurs été déchargé de son travail sur ARMA III pour s’occuper uniquement du mod. Rocket précise aussi que cette volonté du studio laisse à penser que DayZ pourrait très bien être la première étape du développement d’un véritable jeu indépendant, plus stable et facile à utiliser. Mais pour ce faire le mod doit continuer à être joué par les fans.

On apprend également que Rocket a déjà testé le mod sur ARMA III et qu’il fonctionne bien. Il ajoute qu’il a sorti le mod aussi tôt uniquement pour faire un stress-test des serveurs puisque le mod se joue en ligne. Ils ont également fait des tests avec plus de joueurs et il pense qu’un serveur pourrait tenir facilement 100 à 200 joueurs en simultané.

Concernant les évolutions à venir du mod, Rocket précise que le chat et la liste des joueurs in-game seront supprimés lors du prochain patch d’ARMA II.

On vous colle le texte brut en anglais dans la suite du post.

Hey, I was at E3 today and met Rocket, the developer of this mod. I talked to him for about five minutes about the mod, so I’m just gonna go through how the conversation went.

I first addressed him by saying that I love his mod, and that he should never stop punishing the carebears who want it to be made into a ‘fun’ game. He laughed, clearly loving that sentiment. I first asked him if he was going to get a team to help him out. He responded that Bohemia Interactive is very supportive of games that don’t really have any marketability or exposure, and is willing to take risks in this way on games that may or may not clearly make money right away. I agreed, considering that Arma is basically a simulation engine and not necessarily a game. Because of this attitude, he said, he has been instructed directly to stop his work as a multiplayer designer so that he can focus exclusively on Day Z, and that he believes that Day Z is the first step towards Bohemia gearing up to make it into a full standalone game out of recognition for the opportunity to make something very different and the clear interest people have in it. He went on to say that it being a standalone title is important if only for the sake of consistency and ease of play, as mods are not the most stable or easy-to-use games, and that the only determining factor for the mod’s future is the stability of the unpredictable fanbase.

I told him that the fans are playing it in droves, and with great fervor, even in spite of its clearly-alpha state; in fact, on that note, the forums are blowing up with “WHERES ROCKET” and bug reports while he’s here at E3. He laughed and said he’s been trying to not visit the forums while he’s gone cuz he knows he’s gonna get pissed. I then went ahead and asked him if he thought the mod would end up on Arma 3. He said he’d already sort of ported it to try it out (!!!), and that it works great. The main reason he “released” Day Z so early as an alpha was to allow for it to be stress-tested, as it is primarily a network-based game. At this juncture, I asked if he saw it ending up with more players-per-server in the future. He said DEFINITELY, that it’s been tested internally and he thinks it could handle between 100-200 players easily (!!!!!). The thought of the anti-bandit rage this would induce gave me a semi. Anyway, he said that the engine was developed for such incredible strains, and that such numbers are in fact a natural fit.

I asked him if he thought he’d be doing away with ‘meta’ elements, such as server-wide chat and in-game player lists. He said not only is he doing this for sure, but that he’s only waiting on the next beta patch of Arma 2 and then it is definitely happening. This excited me greatly. At this point, opportunely enough, I noticed his shirt. He said he’d had a bunch made, but that they didn’t ship in time for the show so he had a small batch printed up when he got here so he could wear one. Said he took the idea from 4chan. I asked him if he’d let ‘them’ know about it yet, and by ‘them’ that I meant the entire internet. He said no, so I said “well shall we?”