Rocket and Lightfoot. It sounds like the name of a new cartoon animal duo, but thankfully for us it’s referring to the DayZ standalone’s project lead Dean “Rocket” Hall and production assistant Matt “Lightfoot” Lightfoot, who have teamed up to narrate this 20-minute slice of the impending zombocalypse. It’s the first time we’ve seen the game in motion, and it seems to be coming along quite niceZ.

Among other things, the video shows us DayZ’s revamped food system, which now leaves behind empty cans after you’ve munched on a delicious meal of beans. There are also motorcycle helmets, more detailed environments, and many, many more zombies in the game – around 3,000 currently spawning (centrally) on the server, with the promise of more. All in all, there’s a nice big chunk of DayZ footage here, though it seems we’ll have to wait a while longer to see the standalone’s zombies in action, which are being given fancy new skeletons for the occasion, eliminating the classic zigzagging animation once and for all.

The last update for creator Dean “Rocket” Hall’s standalone DayZ dug a lengthy gameplay video out from underneath a pile of bean cans, motorcycle helmets, and a lot of zeds. There are enough goodies in the fledgling survival title for an alpha, but Rocket’s holding it back for at least three more months to polish up client-server performance.

“We’re going to review the situation in June,” Hall tells Joystiq. “So there’ll be no release between now and June. And we’re quite hopeful that we’ll go then. I know that people get really frustrated because they want to play, but I just think this is the best option.”

DayZ’s alpha keys will go out in waves, Rocket explains, and players will be allowed to jump into the standalone’s loot-ripe lands after his team tinkers some more with the client-server tech to handle larger connection numbers.

“We want to release the keys in chunks of what we have servers available,” he says. “The idea is to very quickly try to release something out there, because that allows us to start capacity testing. We’ve got one final thing we’re waiting for with the release date, which is the completion of our client-server architecture. It’s basically making the game into an MMO, and pretty much the moment that’s done, we’ll release.”

Dean “Rocket” Hall has a mountain to climb. No, not the metaphorical mountain of game development, with the continued creation, testing and reiterating of DayZ Standalone. He’s actually climbing a mountain. Everest, to be precise, which according to geography is “quite big”. Naturally, he took a quick pit stop at base camp to open up Tumblr and draft a development blog update from 5,400 metres in the sky.

Of the areas the team are now working on, it’s the in-game radios that sound the most promising. Players can find the walkie-talkies out in the world, and set a frequency that lets them talk and type to anyone on the same channel. You’ll also be able to disable the speaker, potentially letting you listen in to another group’s conversation.

Furthermore, players will need to craft headsets that attach to the radio if they don’t want its output noise to be broadcast in a radius around the set. So while the feature is being teased as a simplified version of Arma 2′s ACARS radio mod, it sounds like there’s more than enough flexibility and consequences to flesh out DayZ’s grouping and PvP planning.

Elsewhere, the team have been implementing more natural animations – including player movements that feels less militarised, tightening up zombie pathfinding in buildings, improving the towns and implementing the new art assets.

While there’s still no news about an alpha release date, Rocket finishes by saying: “we want to release our initial alpha under the architecture it needs to avoid hacking and security issues – this is the only remaining task stopping us from releasing the alpha.” Well, presumably that and the mountain.

A zombie lifecycle within the DayZ Standalone is one of the intriguing gameplay developments mentioned by lead designer Dean Hall at E3 today. Hall, speaking live with Machinima’s Inside Gaming, said that although zombie behavior remains one of the most difficult and problematic aspects of the game’s development, the zombies should “feel much more authentic” in the Standalone when compared to the original Mod edition of the survival-horror simulator.

While I am certain I never want to meet an “authentic” zombie, Hall said the undead antagonists who will populate the DayZ Standalone universe could see their behavior affected by injuries, sickness, and hunger level. But implementing these improvements is apparently no easy task for the design team. “It’s going to be an ongoing process to achieve that,” Hall said.

Currently in a closed-alpha state of game development, the team behind the DayZ Standalone is currently creating five to six new items each week to add to the game world and those join a list that includes thousands of pieces of loot that have already been created, Hall said. It’s still up for debate, however, whether or not a whole new set of vehicles will be created for the Standalone alpha or if the Arma 2 Mod versions will be used. Hall said new vehicles might be added later as the alpha testing phase advances. He did confirm that the weapons in DayZ Standalone are being created from scratch.

Hall addressed how open—and sometimes critical— the development process has been, especially now that E3 has begun. “It’s sort of like a report card for Dayz,” he said. “I don’t know what we’ll get but I am hoping for a B-.”

When pressed by the interviewer on the possibility of the DayZ Standalone reaching consoles, Hall reported a positive, but cautious outlook. “I think yes,” he said, adding “the onus is on us to not screw up the PC release.” Good news.

DayZ creator Dean Hall told us today at Gamescom that the standalone version of the hit Arma 2 zombie mod, originally expected last year, doesn't have a release window anymore, but he did explain the delay.

"The awkward thing is the only thing we're waiting on is the core network architecture. That's the kind of thing only a few people can work on. It's very specialized," Hall said. "It's like, you can't throw more pilots at a plane. You put a thousand pilots in a plane it's not going to fly any faster."

Hall said that while the network architecture is being developed, other work is proceeding with the artists, animators and designers. And once the network architecture is completed to the satisfaction of the brutal multiplayer survival game: "Bam, it's go time."

Although the success of the DayZ mod made the standalone version possible, Hall actually would like to see the rabid expectation for the game die down just a tiny bit.

"I think the best thing that could happen is if DayZ fell off a little," said Hall. "I think if DayZ has a soft launch it's the best thing that can happen to it. Because then a few people will play it and say 'this is cool, I want to play it with my friends.' The best thing that could happen."

"If most of the community who maybe thought DayZ was cool a year ago and now they think it's lame, I think that's probably good for us. We don't need to sell that many copies to break-even. We want to be a hardcore game and I think if we make a good game people will come back."

He concluded, "The worst thing we could do would be to release too early. Flat out, that's the stupidest thing we could do. [The alpha launch] is going to be riddled with bugs, but the one thing I don't want it to be riddled with is terrible multiplayer, it's a multiplayer game."

downloading dayz game in progress..got any asia server for alpha?