DayZ development team doubled, cooking system on the way

Dean Hall may eventually be leaving Chernarus for pastures new and hopefully less zombie-infested, but for the time being he's still committed to the game that finally allowed the internet to track down and kill PC Gamer like the dogs we are . His latest Weekly Report brings the news that DayZ's development team has been pretty much doubled, along with details of a new cooking system "heavily inspired by the outstanding [one]" in Project Zomboid. Hey, zombie survival games need to stick together - it's a grim world out there. Details after the break.

Cooking in DayZ, unlike in the real world, will be a relatively simple process. Step one: switch your cooking implement, ie stove or fireplace, on. Step two: place food item in said cooking implement and wait a bit. Your food will either achieve 'cooked' status or be transformed into a new, related item (for example soup). Leave things heating up for too long and they can become overcooked, or eventually go cold. I haven't played Zomboid beyond the demo, but Hall's description reminds me of the cooking system in Monster Hunter, albeit (probably) without the catchy jingle and jaunty haunch-rotation animation.

You'll be able to discern the temperature of cooking implements and food by their redosity, which is a word that's totally in the dictionary and you don't even need to look. The image above helpfully explains that "more red = hotter", which in general is a good rule for real-world cooking too. Food preperation will arrive as "part of a wider push in March to focus on Survival aspects of the game in general", although no date was given in the post.

Food aside, Hall provides an update on the Standalone's animation system: two-handed melee animations and "stab attack with hay fork" are on their way soon, together with a new reload animation for the Ruger MKII. Also: bug fixes, which are always appreciated. (Cheers, Gamespot .)

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.