EGX Rezzed is in full swing, and DayZ’s creator Dean “Rocket” Hall hit the stage today to talk about upcoming plans for the open world zombie survival game.

During his talk, Hall hit on several key highlights for the future of the game:

• Refrigerators and cupboards that actually hold items
• Improved path finding for Zombies
• Animals
• AK47s
• Cars
• 64 Bit Compiling

These are the highlights, but much more was hinted at. So, lets breakdown the above items.

In an effort to improve the number of items on a server without bogging the game down, the team is implementing searchable refrigerators and cupboards. The goal is to make them part of the game world rather than just decoration. This is also going hand in hand with the improved pathfinding for the AI. Hall explained that the AI will soon see a voxel based version of the world and that the team is adding “walkable” polygons. In essence, this will tell the AI where it can and can’t go, eliminating those pesky zombies that phase through floors and hit you from inside walls. ANimals are also on the slate to round out the hunting and survival mechanics of the game. Be warned though, Dean also promises hostile animals such as wolves and bears. Lastly, he touched on the inclusion of the AK47 and vehicles stating that they are things that will take time to add and we shouldn’t expect them until the third quarter of this year.

The big news though was that the game is being compiled into a 64 bit version. While not a big deal for players, this will open up many possibilities for servers. The goal is to make the game as robust as possible while keeping server memory load to a minimum. The changes the team are making will allow the game to be updated for loot based on quadrants of the map, allow admins to speed up or slow down time, implement snow and wind effects that affect weapons ballistics…..and build barricades and even persistent structures. You read that right. DayZ plans to let you build your own buildings , barricade them and then hide in them while you slowly starve to death because you are to scared to go out and look for cans of beans. Which sounds awesome to me.

It seems the team has a lot in store for us, and some really exciting plans in terms of the meta game of DayZ.

For all things EGX 2014, stay tuned to Sanitarium.FM.