DayZ is "moving to a new engine", says Dean Hall

It's been a while since we last caught up with DayZ. Let's see how it's doing, and hope it's not one of those awkward meetings where we stand around and make small talk because nothing's really happened. Huh, well, it turns out the game does have some news. Its makers are in the process of moving it to a new engine, and, through that, fix some of the quirks and oddities of the current alpha build.

"I guess the big news that we've been telling here at E3 is that we're actually moving to a new engine," Dean Hall explained during a Reddit AMA. "It is called [Enfusion]. So that is going to allow us to do DirectX 10 and 11. It is going to allow us to do dynamic lighting, which means no more flashlights going through walls, proper dynamic shadows, stuff like that."

Hold onto your hats, though—this isn't as dramatic a shift as it initially sounds. DayZ producer Brian Hicks explains:

"When DayZ started - we took the source from the existing RV Engine - Over the last many months, extensive clean up, new functionality, and so forth has been created for that engine - while at the same time, vast amounts of it were removed, or rewritten entirely. The changes Dean spoke of entail major leaps forward in that work, with those changes and the many more that will come through out development - we have begun to approach the point in which DayZ's engine is so no longer recognizable as RV, and because of that - and the massive work to come, it is now known by its own name, Enfusion."

"It is a complete rip out of everything, but we're definitely leveraging existing tech," Hall continued. "So if you look at Bohemia as a studio they actually acquired a great number of other studios, so really were kind of looking around and taking up tech that is available there and mixing it into the engine, rewriting new stuff from scratch that we want to do as well."

Hall also used the AMA to talk about the upcoming implementation of 64-bit servers, which he says have been successfully tested internally. "It opens the doors for once we deal with the performance issues we can then triple the number of loot spawns, triple the number of zombies and animals." In addition, he confirms the addition of various planned systems, including drugs, alcohol and physics-based barricade creation.

You can read the full interview on Reddit.

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.