DEVELOPER'S BLOG

Bohemia Recap - July 2022

Awesome Ymprovements, Killer Community Content, and the Summer that Failed to Slow Us Down

Ah, yes, the dog days of summer. The sunniest and sweatiest time of the year. A time when temperatures soar, ice cream sales skyrocket, and the world slows down to catch its overheated breath. You’d think that Bohemia would be a desert of inactivity, abandoned by all for beaches and margaritas. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong, because July was full of sales, streams, and community content; updates, interviews, and a variety of dev reports - a genuine hotbed of ongoing activity, care of your friendly and tireless Bohemians.

But maybe put your work aside for the moment. Maybe grab an ice cold beverage. Allow yourself some well-deserved pleasure.

Ready? Comfortable? Then let’s dive on into last month’s highlights and headlines!

Vigor

We kicked off July with another Booster Apocalypse, this time for Elimination. That special weekend also saw us wishing our American Outlanders a Happy 4th of July.

Speaking of Outlanders, those on PlayStation and Xbox were able to grab a few deals last month because of our participation in the Xbox Free to Play Sale & the PlayStation Midyear Deals Sale.

All work and no play is no one’s idea of fun. That’s why we stopped our vigorous QA Tester Josefína Juhasová from finding bugs and interviewed her for our series Meet the Vigor Team. Not much of a reader? Then check out Josefina’s TikTok where she shares what she’d do if she woke up in Vigor’s famous tunnel.

Check out, as well, some interesting data we shared with our community.


The second half of July was focused on Update 12.1. Our Partners were able to share some details a week in advance, so we compiled their videos into one neat playlist.

We released Legacy Season 8: Trappers on July 27th, and this time we made a Dev Diary as well! You're also welcome to read our blogpost and the entire changelog.

Great news! Summer won't be a bummer this year. That’s because we’re bringing exclusive Nuclear Summer cosmetics, so everyone can look hot during the scorching weather.

If you’d like to learn more, don't forget to check out our regular bi-weekly streams!

Ylands

Ymproved Ylands is out now! The silly word play doesn’t just capture the style of humor we enjoy, it also states an important fact: Ylands is getting a whole lot better.

Update 1.10: Ymproved Ylands was released at the end of July, and we’ve been getting very positive feedback on the changes we implemented. We started by balancing the game based on our players' feedback, posed a new challenge of finding and taming Mythical Animals, released a beta version of the FPS camera, allowed for certain item use and holding while mounted on animals, reworked fishing (it's so much fun now!), improved Blueprints, and much, much more.

Balancing, in this case, means a change in how progression is scaled. Biomes are now tiered based on difficulty, as well. Surviving on a tropical yland is much easier than in the Arctic, after all. We also made changes to the map legend, as well as other tweaks, like the resource distribution system, weather and temperature systems, and more.

Blueprints have changed in a significant manner. We introduced Game Blueprints, which you can use in Adventure and in the Editor. There are also Creator Blueprints, which replaced Compositions and can only be used in the Editor.

This update is another giant step towards an incredible experience in the vast world of Ylands!


DayZ

Summer is upon us, which means well-deserved breaks and vacations have taken over our team. Those of us who are still at the office are hard at work on our biggest update of 2022. The update is aimed at our 2nd terrain Livonia DLC.

While we’re not ready to reveal any hints or teasers just yet, you can occupy your time by taking a look at our regular streams, including this one by our Creative Lead Adam Franců.


In other news, we celebrated the 4th of July and increased our firework spawns, commemorated Bastille Day and asked our community what the most popular holiday in their country was, and engaged our amazing community once again by asking everyone for screenshots that scream ‘summer day vibes’.

Arma Reforger

We continued making the Arma Reforger experience sharper and more enjoyable in July. We released two updates that fixed various crashes, added features, and much more. Read about it here and here.

We also revised our schedule of updates. We now plan to release updates on a bi-weekly basis to ensure that every version of Arma Reforger is thoroughly tested, as we focus on fixing and improving the game.

Three Dev Reports were released last month. We continue to inform players about our ongoing short and long-term activities as we make progress on bug fixes, optimizations, and new additions. Read about our camera fixes, optimizing the usage of the map, and so much more in Dev Report #7, Dev Report #8, and Dev Report #9.

As for our community's incredible work, you can find beautiful art, videos, and even a tutorial in our second COMRAD. Make sure, as well, to check out the amazing art shared on the Arma Reforger Steam Artwork page from user No name.


Arma 3

July was yet another eventful month for Arma 3!

The 2022 Steam Summer Sale, held between June 23rd and July 7th, brought in a large number of reinforcements to the Arma Community! If you were one of those new players and are figuring out where to get started, we recommend playing the Showcase scenarios and Prologue campaign to begin. From there, you can move onto the East Wind campaign, or, if Multiplayer is more your thing, you can use the server browser to find both Official and Community run servers with many different game modes. If you are interested in joining a unit, you can check out Arma 3 Units, Bohemia Interactive Forums, Steam Discussions, and the FindAUnit Subreddit to see what’s available. There is definitely a unit for every player, from casual to hardcore realism!

Issue #29 of the Arma 3 Community Radar, or COMRAD for short, was released on July 14th. This issue featured yet another excellent batch of community content you should definitely check out! Here’s one of the community screenshots featured this month: British Armed Forces circa 2005 stationed at a Combat Outpost (COP) in Afghanistan by sudo.


On July 24th, Community Manager LeClair was joined by organizers and participants of Rolling Thunder for an Arma 3 Community Play Session Livestream. Rolling Thunder is a regular and long-standing massive mechanized team vs. team community event. The stream was a bit of a different format to previous ones. To maintain the competitive integrity of the event, LeClair recorded Rolling Thunder #35 on July 10th, and then assembled a number of commentators to review the footage for an After Action Report. There were quite a few interesting details of the event revealed in that commentary. If you missed the livestream, you can view the Video on Demand here.

There will be another Arma 3 Community Play Session Livestream, more Community Spotlights, and issue #30 of the COMRAD to look forward to in August!

Behind the scenes

In order to develop games and set them in the right atmosphere, you need to create the perfect environment. This, among other things, is what our Environment teams are responsible for.

Scouting terrains usually involves several days’ worth of Environment Summits. That’s when our dedicated teams travel hundreds of miles to create the best possible environments, which can later be used in our titles and enjoyed by you, our awesome community.

 
 

Community Spotlight

This month's spotlight goes to our Vigor community for all the great memes they create on a regular basis. We're always in the mood for a good laugh, so make sure to keep them coming!

You can find plenty more memes at Vigor's Community Spotlight, Reddit or Discord.



Meet the Pet Bohemians

  

Name: Arnold Jidáš Rimmer

Species: Keeshond

Age: 3.5 months

Team: Vigor Design

Favorite food: Shoelaces

Toy: Carlos the dolphin

Random fact: His official title is Stinklord

Become Bohemian

We’re always looking for fun and creative people who are passionate about games. Check out the career board below and get in touch if you think you’re the right fit.


Can’t find anything that speaks to you? Then head on over to our careers page to see all the positions that are currently open at Bohemia.

What Else?

That’s it for July! If you’d like to learn more about Bohemia Interactive, or want to stay updated on all the latest happenings, make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Until next time, stay safe and game on!

Published on by Bohemia Interactive