DayZ was originally released as an Arma 2 mod which suddenly became immensely popular. As a result, the game’s creator, Dean Hall, decided to create a standalone version of the game. Unfortunately, that standalone version still isn’t out, and DayZ fans have been waiting very, very patiently for it . Why isn’t it out yet? Dean Hall took to reddit to explain some of the issues.
Supposedly, the reason that the game isn’t out yet is that the team is still working on server optimization. “We think we need a minimum of 15 FPS will 50 players, 2000 zombies, and 25000 loot items,” Hall said. “Our latest tests have all shown some runaway systems in the code we have to tidy up. The variable synchronization system that was developed for work with the network bubble, is checking the variables very often. We’re optimizing this. Also, there are many string comparisons. These have been refactored so references are used (lookup numbers) to speed up the process. things like animations etc… are generally recorded as strings – ArmA wasn’t built to handle very large numbers of things so this has been a large area of optimization.”
Hall has also stated why he refuses to give the client a solid release date. Simply put, he doesn’t want to give a date and then fail to meet that date. People may be angry now, but they will be even more angry if they counted down the days to a specific date only to get a delay message. Besides, he says that giving an announce date and then failing to meet it will cause more people to ask him when the client will come out than already are. For now, the standalone version of DayZ will simply be out when it is finished.
Source: Reddit