H1Z1 vs DayZ: More Zombies and Lessons from Previous Games; Big Changes Planned for DayZ

Danilo Napalan Plays the New Zombie Survival Game 'Dying Light' in the Warner Bros. Booth at E3 in Los Angeles — Danilo Napalan plays the new zombie survival game "Dying Light " in the Warner Bros. booth at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, in Los Angeles, California, June 10, 2014. REUTERS

"H1Z1" is still very much deep in the development process for its Steam Early Access version, that even technical director Tom Schenck was unable to share a specific release date.

In fact for now, the top priority of the team is to make sure that the antagonists--in the form of zombies and even the wildlife--are polished, and Joystiq reports that this involves fine tuning combats and hunting for bugs in the game.

But it seems that the developers do know what they need to do in order to make sure that "H1Z1" does standout from the horde of zombie games.

PC Gamer quotes an interview with Jimmy Whisenhunt, senior designer for "H1Z1" on how they plan on adding more depth and meat to the gameplay experience of "H1Z1."

"We're leveraging our world in a new way. We've shown a little bit of the hordes, and we can support more zombies than a player could kill in his entire life," said Whisenhunt as quoted by PC Gamer.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, "H1Z1" will follow PlanetSide 2's microtransactions approach as a free-to-play game, but at the very least, the developers have made it clear that it won't become a game where the richest survive--all the necessities that have an effect on the gameplay will be sold with real money.

'DayZ' is Looking at Updates to Boost Its Gameplay Appeal

While many are already touting "H1Z1" to be a better game when compared to "DayZ," developer of the early access zombie game is actually readying to rollout massive changes to the game to make it a lot better.

GameSpot goes on an exclusive interview with Dean "Rocket" Hall, the creator of the project, and gets the lowdown on what these massive changes will be.

One of the biggest would have to be the new engine to replace the DirectX 9-limited ARMA II engine. According to the source, "DayZ" will now have support for DirectX 10 or 11 or OpenGL for Linux in the future.

"The big benefit we get is being able to implement dynamic lighting so we can have dynamic shadows. It really just gives us options to play with," said Hall to GameSpot.

Dynamic lighting will then be paired with even more zombies and loot items, as another change brings in a 64-bit server upgrade, which Hall emphasizes will allow for more spawning zombies, a problem that has been criticized by fans of the franchise.

Gameplay will be even better, now that the hard-to-manage controls powering "DayZ" is currently being redesigned. In fact, Hall has already identified possible inspirations from which the controls will be modeled after, including "Skyrim's" Frostfall mod and "Minecraft."

For now, Early Access is pretty much under renovation at this point for "DayZ," but the expected changes to the gameplay may make it what fans have always wanted it to be--the zombie game that they had wanted to play.