What would 2 million downloads of the DayZ mod, as well as 1.7 million sales of DayZ Standalone get you if you were Bohemia Interactive? Well, probably a new studio called Bohemia Interactive Slovakia. The studio is mainly comprised of former members of Cauldron, developers of the last few Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts games, but it isn’t a direct acquisition. Bohemia Interactive Slovakia is a brand new studio, and isn’t just a renamed Cauldron for any technical purposes.
"In 2013, Bohemia Interactive opened a new studio in Bratislava, Slovakia - as part of the Czech company's portfolio of next-generation game development studios," it said. "The new studio is composed by former recruits from the successful Slovak studio Cauldron, and has acquired selected Cauldron's facilities and technologies."
Dean Hall announced that Bohemia had purchased the development team at Cauldron, which ended up at about 25 people who will be dedicated to continuing development of DayZ. We’re probably about a month away from the next update for the standalone as Dean Hall said that it would be out around the end of April, but maybe sooner if things go well, which they never do.
What sort of stuff is coming in the update? Crossbows, cooking on campfires, and [maybe] loot respawning are among some of the features being worked on. There’s also work being done serverside to help with the delivery of updates, as well as removing penalties for re-connecting to the same server you disconnected from.
Naturally everyone’s going to be excited to hear about loot respawning, but how does it work? Well, if everyone leaves a certain part of the map alone for long enough the loot will respawn and the doors will close. If you’re running around and you see closed doors you should probably check for loot.
Looking into the future of DayZ’s development is where some really crazy stuff gets talked about: companion pets, physics, customizable cars, and Steam Workshop integrated mod support. Along with all of those features, they’re pretty constantly improving the AI of the zombies to make them a little less ridiculous.
DayZ might be kind of frustrating to play this early in development, especially since coming in from the mod it can feel like the standalone product is a step backwards as far as content goes, but it’s really neat to see the guys at Bohemia go crazy with the game and make DayZ into a more interesting game by the end of the day. I find myself having a great time with DayZ when I’m not getting murdered by memory leaks...they fixed most of those though.
