Over the years, Bohemia Interactive has become well known in the video game industry for creating several impressive simulation titles. Based in the Czech Republic, the game developer has produced popular games such as DayZ and the Arma series. Recently, the company unveiled plans to push its technology even further.
In an update, Bohemia Interactive provided details about its new game engine called Enfusion. Among the info provided by the developer, it revealed that the next installment in the Arma series of games would utilize this engine. Speaking about the advancements of the new technology, the founder and CEO of Bohemia Interactive said, “Enfusion… is ready to face the technological challenges of the future and will, without exaggeration, form the shape of our games into the next decade." Currently, 30 engineers and programmers work on the project that started over four years ago. In addition, the company has eight more job listings relating to the project on its website.
Beyond revealing this new in-development engine, Bohemia Interactive gave details about the intent behind developing this supposedly revolutionary system. While improvements to visual and audio fidelity were contributing reasons behind the development, other factors played a role in creating the new engine. According to the developer, the goal behind Enfusion was to make games accessible to more players. With this in mind, hardware scalability was an integral part of the development process.
Bohemian Interactive also plans to make a more substantial impact on the console market this time around. Based on information from the developer, the new game engine is compatible with PC, PlayStation, and Xbox systems. Previously, only DayZ was available to play on consoles. Furthermore, the developer stated that games could be developed for all these platforms simultaneously, revealing that different versions of a project could share a common code base and use the same assets.
Beyond these improvements to the engine, the company revealed that modding was a vital part of the development process. According to the developers at Bohemia Interactive, Enfusion will have a dedicated modding backend. In addition, it stated that a possible workshop for mods could be included in future games utilizing the engine.
It will be interesting to see what a future Arma game would look like running on Enfusion. While a release date for the new game engine has yet to be announced, the company noted that the public will be able to use it and the developer toolset soon. In addition, a playable demo is expected to become available sometime in the near future, promising to give gamers a glimpse at its potential.
Source: Enfusion Engine, PCGamesN