Dean Hall may be in the process of creating a standalone version of his DayZ mod, but he isn't letting the task at hand prevent him from accomplishing his dream. That is, climbing to the top of Mount Everest — which is exactly what Hall is doing on a two-month sabbatical.
This may seem like a random trip taken at an odd time — with the dev team pushing to release an Alpha version of the game — but Hall assured fans that his sabbatical is "not something planned on a whim." It actually involved "non-refundable costs of up to $100k." So you can kind of understand why he had to accomplish this dream now and not another time.
Hall isn't letting the mountainous peak stop him from working, though. Despite being 5,400 meters above sea level, Hall is constantly overseeing the development of DayZ via satellite connection at Everest Base Camp.
"I realize some people are upset at my departure from the project for two months to climb Mt Everest, but hopefully from this you can see the large team Bohemia have assembled behind the development that are continuing to innovate and develop DayZ Standalone in the direction of the game we all want," Hall said in his latest dev post, which details much of the work that will be done while Hill climbs Everest.
"This is going to take as long as it needs to," Hall added, referring to the release of DayZ Standalone. Although I'm sure his trek up Everest will also take quite a while. "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. But while this task is being completed, we can continue with other activities."
For Hall, the activities will be training in fixed lines and ladders. For the rest of the DayZ team it means map design, radio implementation, and lots and lots of animation and programming. Where would you rather be?
