Unlucky Gamer ALMOST plays DayZ - DayZ Diary part I

I don't have much luck with computers or games, I have played every major MMO and never got a good item, I have bought lottery tickets in games, and never won - The jackpot spin on Bejewelled blitz has only ever popped up twice, All the games I play are beset by technical problems, and finally My ISP is rubbish - All of them, without question are rubbish, I have horrendous lag and black holes and have since the days of ISDN - indeed these were the only times my connection actually worked as it should (although it automatically cut me off every 24 hours - and I always forgot, and it was usual during a particularly hairy game of CTF on Unreal Tournament or something) Anyway, unlucky from DAY ONE since i bought a Cyrix 166+ loaded up Quake and was met by a frame rate of 3fps, and then shortly after a blue screen, and having to buy a new processor and motherboard just to play, its always been like this! Nothing EVER works for me Diablo III was (and indeed still is) and immense cluster fuck that i can't even be bothered to play anymore - and if i did, i would get no decent drops, and lag would kill me and cost me valuable coins, so no! that's it, no more Diablo III...

Now i have a new ISP, and for the first week or so, it was excellent, second week in, i began to feel hopeful, sub 150Ms pings, and a connection (in no small part to a mate supplying me with a lovely old clunky router) that lived, all of the time! brilliant, I had been watching DayZ videos for months, drooling over this game, it looked EXCELLENT! just the sort of game I love to play, If you have no idea what it is, its basically a survival game, You spawn with nothing save a torch, a bandage and box of paracetamol, and you're dropped into the zombie infested world of Cherno, where all the signs are in Russian, and everything will kill you... and i mean EVERYTHING - players will kill you for a tin of beans, Zombies will kill you to eat your brains, and Bandits will kill you, because well, that's what they're programmed to do! Not only that, The environment will kill you, get wet and cold, you'll die... fall off a mountain, you'll die... Get too close to some walls, you'll die.. use a ladder... you die... You get the idea?

I really wanted to play this game, more than anything, to join in, become part of the community, join a group, scavenge a town, maybe fix up a car, and make a tent... Survive! and by golly my internet was working, SO I thought, sod it, lets buy this game, and saddle up!

Well that was my first mistake....

Arma II - (yesterday)

To play DayZ the game, you need to buy Arma II and Operation Arrowhead, An ultra realistic military simulator and the expansion pack, the price? a cool £24.99 off steam, don't look for it cheaper anywhere else, you won't find it! trust me, i spend DAYS looking for it, I bought it on steam, at 4pm, and sat and watched as Steam downloaded the game, looking forward to kicking zombies bottom! Oh i was excited!! anyways, As it was downloading I read the installation guide on PC Gamer, this told me the extra files I would need, and how to install them (the guide is here) - I got the DayZ files I needed over uTorrent and after a couple of hours flicked back to Steam to see how my Arma II download was going, Not well it would seem!
For some reason my ISP decided instead of my 5-10Mbs download speed, i was going to have 200k/s downloads instead (for the main program and expansion) which although doesn't sound TOO BAD you have to realise that both games weigh in at a massive 8 gig EACH, which i know by todays standards is pretty small potatoes, and most of you with your fancy fibre would be able to grab these games in seconds, it would seem, for me it was not to be! By 9pm that evening the Arma II game had download but the expansion pack had crawled to 100k/s it was really making me sad... I decided to drink wine and watch tele, until something better happened, but when i returned to my surprise both files had downloaded, and i was ready to go!!

Now if you edit the launch options in steam for Operation Arrowhead you can launch the DayZ mod directly, and play the game straight from there, but i decided that I wouldn't do that, I had never played Arma II and I had NO idea how to play the game, and as a military simulator its BOUND to have bit of basic training (like the quake based game the army released) so I thought I would give that a go first... Launched Operation Arrowhead and waited, the screen flashed, and up popped an error! Typical!!

ARMA II Error (yesterday)

This wasn't the error I was getting, but it was similar, basically ALL my Arma II files were corrupt, I validated them in steam, waited a moment..  It scanned the files, and started downloading the game again, but it started at 31% so THAT was alright!! *sigh* I went to bed, for now, it had beaten me, maybe I would have more luck in the morning...

I slept that night, and dreamt of Zombies...

The next day I woke bright and early, not really refreshed, I was crumpled and my face was swollen up like it is every morning now I'm old, I look like a worn out old cushion in the morning, its a not a good look.. Anyway! hair all over and face all mashed, I didn't care! my download was finished, the CRCs all checked out, I was good to go! I launched Arma II OA and it loaded! i was met by military music, brass bands and I think an aircraft carrier, i wasn't really awake, and not really paying that much attention! I didn't care, let me find single player... check! basic training! check!! there it is.. Loading!! JOY! I am in...

The graphics were horrible, all blurry, and data, it kinda reminded me of this..

Delta Force and Voxel "technology" (yesterday)

That was on FULL graphics too, I had seen videos on You Tube, and it didn't look that bad on there, anyway after a fiddle I found a setting called "3d resolution" i never read manuals, and have no idea what it does, but once i had ramped it up to match my actual resolution all was good! it actually looked quite nice, basic training consisted of some rudimentary first aid, running round a rather rubbish assault course and then some driving, by this time i was bored, and all I could think about was zombies, So i quit, and went to load DayZ!

Now I went into steam, added the launch code for the mod, and clicked Run! just as the instructions had told me, and... Nothing! errors.. and then death.. it won't work, at all :( I checked my install twice, tried it again, still said all the files were missing and bombed out, I deleted all the DayZ files, redownloaded them again, copied them to correct directory, and NOTHING! Still would not load.. by now I was getting annoyed!

Anyway, as an alternative to installing the mod manually, there is a progam called "Six Launcher" which can be found here... http://dayzmod.com/su.php if only I had found this HOURS ago, I'd have saved myself about 3 and half hours of pain, You download it, You launch the "updater" program, and then find the DayZ mod in the list of Mods, click "update or install Mod" and off you go! at least that's what the website led me to believe, but realistically, that's not what happened!  oh no... it's never that straight forward for me is it? Every time i went in the server browser for DayZ game, and tried to launch it i got.. six launcher unhandled error during checksum update...  ARGH! dammit, I uninstalled all the files I had installed manually, ran it again, and eventually IT ACTUALLY WORKED!! I got into a game, and died instantly, when i was eaten by a zombie, I had pretty much no idea what I had to do, but I couldn't get back on the server, every time I clicked "respawn" my dead counter went up by 1, and the came wouldn't even launch again, I quit the game completely, Closed down Six updater, and wandered off for something to eat, at least i had beans in the house...