Second Extinction™ News

From the day we launched Second Extinction into Early Access, one area of the game that we realized we needed to improve a lot was stability. The number of crashes reported was far more than we were expecting.

You might ask yourself, how do games with plenty of crashes get released?
We are a small team, and we are all on similar hardware and software setups, so with the variety of PC hardware (and software) that exists, there's plenty of things that can slip through our testing, unfortunately. Before we launched into Early access, we did compatibility testing, and those results were very positive. Then when we actually launched, we received many reports of crashes, so our coverage wasn't as good as we had hoped for. We chose to release with Vulkan for our graphics rendering, and that's seemingly a choice that has caused us some problems. Third-party software that injects into the Vulkan driver is something we often see as culprits in our crash reports.

Another thing we did not expect was that we got a lot of players with machines below our minimum hardware requirements playing the game. We have made some fixes to make it work better on lower-end hardware. We have also added a pop-up that warns the player when they are playing on hardware that is below min spec. The plan is to improve upon this more in the months ahead as well.



So how do we work with improving stability?
First of all, by accepting our EULA, you agree to allow us to send crash information to us. No worries, we don't collect any personal information, and it's only intended to allow us to improve the game’s stability.
When a crash happens on your side, we use Microsoft's MiniDumpWriteDump functionality to write a crash dump and also attach some additional data, such as what mission was being played, which CPU/GPU was used, which graphics driver version is installed, etc. This is then uploaded to our backend crash service, which symbolicates the crash report (turns it into a human-readable format, and by human, I mean programmer :)). It then passes the crash report on to Sentry, another service that bundles crashes together based on their call stack and allows us to filter crashes to identify any trends and see graphs over how many crashes come in.

What we receive on our end is what's called a "mini dump.” It's a very limited crash dump, where we pretty much only can see where in the code it crashes. We can’t see information on what was going on in the game when it crashed, so it can be very difficult to understand exactly what happened to cause the crash and also the steps and hardware required to reproduce the crash.



What are we doing to make the game more stable?
We are constantly trying to find solutions for crashes, but we often don't have a clear reproduction for them, so it can be very time-consuming to try and recreate the circumstances for the crash. Sometimes it's easy to speculate what the cause could be and apply a code fix without a repro-case, but not always.

Another thing we are doing this year is to build a hardware Test lab, where we can try the game in a much more varied amount of hardware setups and use this to reproduce issues that we get reported to us. Dxdiag reports are something that we rely on to get more detailed information about hardware. You can follow this guide to send us your Dxdiag if you’re experiencing crashes.

To summarize, we are constantly working on improving stability, and we still have some ways to go. Please keep reporting issues to our support team here, and if you find reproduction steps for crashes, that information can be invaluable to us!

Tobias Johansson - Lead Programmer on Second Extinction

Hello, Extinction Elites!

Welcome to the Pre-season 5 State of the Game. There are a few things to talk about, so I’ll jump right in.

[h3]What We Have Learned[/h3]

Tutorial
Our Pre-season 4 survey asked for your feedback on the new tutorial that we put in place. The early experience for our beginner users is an area of focus for us, so it was interesting to see the results:



Pretty good reception; however, we also received some fantastic feedback about how the tutorial can be expanded to be more like an open firing range where you can test out weapons and perks as well.

Rewards
Last SotG, I mentioned that we were looking into rewards. The way our system is set up is that you get reward packages for running missions well, doing activities, completing contracts, and, in some cases, merely logging into the game. Contained in those rewards are cosmetic items, beautiful skins to customize your appearance.

Well, it turns out, we were (unintentionally) a little stingy. Take this lovely skin, our Matte Red Pistol:

Currently, only 473 people own this skin - and it was supposed to be a drop in a common loot package! So, armed with this data, plus a few other things, we’ve rejiggered the loot drops a little bit for now, but come Pre-season 6, we will have overhauled our cosmetics system to accompany our Wardrobe function to make it both clearer how to get these sorts of cosmetics as well as make the system a little more generous and in line with what you’re supposed to get.

[h3]What We Are Doing[/h3]

Pre-season 5 was intentionally a little smaller for a couple of reasons. One, summertime in Sweden is typically when most people go on holiday (COVID notwithstanding). Our team deserves a little break after the madness of the Xbox launch! But secondly, and more importantly, we have a lot of features stuffed into Pre-season 6, and we wanted to make sure their functionality is tight.

As you can see on our roadmap, a substantial number of your suggestions and feedback will finally be implemented in September. Cross-play is a major milestone, where players on Steam can play with players on Xbox. This, combined with changes with matchmaking and the multiplayer lobby system, will make it substantially easier to find others to play with. In addition, you will be able to talk to them! Voice chat will now be enabled in-game; text chat is coming later (it’s a little hard to text chat on console).



The aforementioned Wardrobe, with revamped loot, cosmetic rarities, and valuations, will also be introduced, so now you know what you need to do to get that sweet, sweet Jack Hyper Hoodie. Our last Operative will be introduced, Brazilian-Portuguese will be a language option... and who could forget HORDE MODE with its own Leaderboards. This has proven to be really fun in our internal playtests, so we can’t wait to share it with you.

In addition to the items on the roadmap, we’re always working on the smaller problems that have emerged. In Pre-season 5, this patch has allowed for some recovery of items in the event of a disconnect - in other words, if you crash or disconnect from a mission, you are treated as if you failed your mission and will receive a portion of the items that you collected. This is a game where failure is always a possibility, and while being kicked out is not necessarily through any fault of your own, this is the first step we’re implementing to soothe that frustration. Pre-season 6 will contain the actual message pop-up letting you know what you got - we, unfortunately, couldn’t do the work for Pre-season 5 in time (but you at least still get the items!). Obviously, solving the problem of disconnects is very high on the list, but it is also one of the most complicated systems we have, so it will take some time to identify what the problems are before we can solve them.

We’ve also got some substantial performance improvements identified for Pre-season 6 as well, and a couple of other goodies.

Looking towards the future, in addition to fixing more of the technical, network, and performance issues, we’re also focusing on creating a more understandable user experience for the game.

[h3]A Major Milestone[/h3]

Pre-season 6 will mark a major milestone in our development cycle. We’ve been clear from our introduction into Early Access that we wanted to focus our efforts and time on crafting the right kind of kill-dinos-in-the-face experience - tightening up our systems, introducing features that help facilitate co-op play, and making the War Effort robust so that each week as you log into the game, a new experience awaits you. A lot of what we introduce in the next patch fulfills those requirements - by then, we will have a full roster of characters, three modes of play (Expedition, Missions, Horde), three difficulties (Normal, Hard, Insane), a pretty nice pool of Emergence Events, and two ways to customize your play via weapon upgrades and armor augments.

While we aren’t quite yet there for launch (did someone say a new Map for launch?:)), many of the core features one would expect for a co-op, online game will now exist, and around this time is when we’ll be asking “are we ready for 1.0?” As such, we have decided to raise the price of Second Extinction by $2 USD/EUR when Pre-season 6 comes out, just to reflect the significant progress we have made so far in this past year. [Edit: after this post was published the plans have changed, and there will not be a price increase coming with Pre-Season 6.]

[h3]One Final Note[/h3]

Pre-season 3 contract rewards will be available as weekly login rewards for Xbox players ONLY since they missed out on Pre-season 3. Make sure to log in and claim that reward! The schedule for what reward is available will be in your newsfeed. In addition, if you were affected by the weapon upgrade issue where you lost both the upgrade and the materials to purchase the upgrade, please contact customer support - we will try to find a way to return what you lost as best we can.

Our long, hot summer days are here, and we’re very glad you’re with us. Be safe, stay hydrated, and double-tap. In the face.


Cheers,
Julianne Harty
Product Owner

P.S. Join our Discord!

The summer heat has hit us, and so has the next Pre-Season filled with new content perfect for long summer days. We have a new addition to our enemy roster - The Dasher Raptor that can appear in certain Emergence Events. Our Enforcers Rosy and Jack have a new gun to play with - The Artillery Cannon, and in the loadout selection you’ll find a new addition if you’ve reached level 5 - Sticky Firecrackers. Speaking of levels the cap is now 50, and while you climb the leveling ladder you’ll unlock new contracts to complete.

On top of that, the team has been working away at crushing bugs, cracking codes and improving the experience, and as always, you’ll find the full list of improvements and fixes below.

We hope you enjoy the update, and if you find any bugs, please report them directly to support here, and if you have any questions or feedback to share join our Discord server - the best place to get in touch with the team and become part of the community!

General Improvements

• “Lost items” functionality added. Mission progress is now stored on the server and if the player disconnects or crashes, the items he already got are not lost, instead he receives partial rewards.
  
• Level cap increased to 50 for all the players on all platforms
  
• Contracts unlocked at level 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50
  
• Improvements regarding consistency in description of contracts. Now the contract objectives are easier to understand
  
• Added the ability to view current contract from the game session
  
• Rosy Quality of Life improvements:
  
• Static Barrier
  
• Ability’s Icon now shows the number of uses available
  
• Timer added to Static Barriers giving players a better indication of a Barrier’s duration
  
• Players are able to continue placing pylons as long as they have uses without having to re-activate the ability each time
  
• Stability and world optimization for all platforms
  
• Apex Connect UI improvements: added more context about the rewards that players are going to have after creating an APEX account
  
• “Credits” list updated with new names and roles
  
• Links in Newsfeed are clickable now
  
• Newsfeed survey functionality added
  
• The star rating thresholds have been rebalanced
  

Abilities and Perks

• Hitting enemies with Jack's Charge ability at low speeds is now less likely to cancel the ability
  
• The Hair trigger perk is now functioning for the Grenade Launcher & Revolver ⭐
  
• Jack's Charge ability now knocks enemies aside when used very close to them
  
• Air Strike and Jurgen's Satchel Charge kills are now counted towards the progression of contracts
  
• Player is no longer able to call Supply drops under dropships
  
• Pistol and Assault Rifle have now consistent fire rate with 'Burst Fire' perk
  
• Shrapnel damage from 'Slugshot' is now counted correctly towards total damage dealt in the mission summary
  
• The 'Fully Automatic' perk on Pistol now works as intended
  
• Corresponding indicator is now displayed correctly when the player’s character uses 'Health Stim'
  
• Amir's Orbital Surveillance ability is no longer highlighting enemies after they are killed
  
• Fixed an issue where falloff wasn't being applied to the explosion from the Carbine's Explosive Rounds perk
  

Accessibility

• Added a specific UI icon when the player is about to get hit from behind by a raptor
  
• Controller Remapping Presets are available now
  
• Audio
  
• Fixed issue with Jack lines of dialogue being overlapped
  
• Fixed several audio issues when switching from party chat to game chat ⭐
  
• Fixed weapon firing sounds during tutorial
  
• Footstep SFX now matches with Jack's Charge ability
  
• The VO for releasing the Kinetic Converter is not delayed anymore
  
• Thank you response is now functional for Jack
  
• The Slugshot sound effect works correctly in all conditions
  

Contracts

• Contract Subduing Calamity is now completable ⭐
  
• Deadly Alterations contract objectives cannot be completed separately now
  
• Demolition Expert is now completable ⭐
  
• Contracts that require Mission can not be completed in Expedition now
  
• Description for achieving Insane Bull nameplate is more clear now
  
• Fixed several inconsistencies in contract description
  
• Fixed issues with unintended contract repeating
  
• Fixed issues when several contract objective were not displayed
  
• Fixed issues when contracts were unlocked without completing the previous stage
  
• Controls & Settings
  
• Player can now rebind "I" key for movement ⭐
  
• D-pad and Sticks are now work as intended after switching tabs
  
• Buttons work correctly after unplugging and plugging controller
  
• Fixed issue when rebinding keys 1 & 2 worked incorrectly ⭐
  
• Fixed issues using gamepad affected both Title and Overlay UI windows (XBox version)
  
• Gamepad input no longer disappear after changing resolution in the pause menu
  
• Fixed occasional issues when customized keyboard controls reset after restart
  
• The Backspace button on the keyboard now functions the same way as the ESC or B-button does in the Frontend menus
  

Enemies

• Fixed T-Rex spawning issue during the Gas Pump activity
  
• Fixed T-Rex not being aggressive towards nearby players
  
• Fixed issue with too big Flatback's attack range
  
• Fixed inconsistencies in damage from Armoured Bull
  
• Raptors do not anymore spawn out of thin air in the Comm Center in 'Lata Plains'
  
• Raptors infected by necrosis no longer kill themselves
  
• Necrosis puddles spawn in their correct locations
  
• Necrosis pulse added to Necrosis Kylo, a pulse infects the surrounding raptors 🔺
  
• Dinos can get stuck under ammo supply and mission can't progress
  

Gameworld

• Mine entrance is now not opened in Expedition mode
  
• Fixed several issues where player could get stuck inside or between objects ⭐
  
• Fixed several issues when dinos could not attack the user standing in specific location
  
• Burrows are no longer spawn under the ground
  
• Fixed several issues when player could climb some unclimbable objects
  
• Enemies are no longer stuck in a cave inside the 'Hollow'
  
• Burrows in Vultus Bay now spawn dinos and highlight them correctly on the map UI
  
• Fixed issues when unlocking one camp in 'Magna Petram' region automatically unlocked the second one
  
• The user can not reach out of bounds part of the map in the Black Site building
  
• Radar relays can no longer be activated through walls
  
• Players should no longer see through some hangars
  

Graphics

• Fixed issue when outfit selection screen was too dark in some cases ⭐
  
• The resolution is not changed anymore after PC goes to locked mode and back
  
• Game in borderless mode & windowed mode no longer stay as active screen if not selected ⭐
  
• Screen is now longer blurry and distorted when player activates the 'Positive Reinforcement' skill
  
• Fixed Dino reflections quality when fighting on water surfaces
  
• Fixed several lighting issues inside the caves
  
• Menu, HUD, UI, etc.
  
• Mission waypoints are now shown correctly after failing mission
  
• Fixed issues when players could lose all weapon upgrades after a failed mission 🔺
  
• Homebound objectives markers are now removed properly when the player clears the objective
  
• Fixed threat level color while person is in the dropship in the 'Magna Petram' region
  
• The main menu lighting is fixed (Sometimes it was too dark)
  
• Fixes Russian text not fitting some UI buttons
  
• Fixed issues when yellow cross appeared when the player marked anything on the mission map and exited to the Main Menu
  
• Fixed issue when map lines were not drawn accurately in Lata Plains/Valtum Valley ⭐
  
• Fixed discrepancy in collected eggs in the counter after respawning during the 'Harvest Eggs' side mission
  
• Map symbols are now have appropriate size when entering the map screen
  
• Fixed UI scaling issue on 21:9 screens
  
• Fixed several Terrain visual bugs in the map ⭐
  
• Region and objectives are displayed correctly on gameplay UI
  
• Setting yourself on fire by using a barrel no longer causes hit-markers to appear for the duration of the debuff
  
• Fixed issue when player got red x on War Effort results after successfully completing region ⭐
  
• Redundant (X) 'Abandon' button is no longer shown in Active Contracts
  
• Fixed issue with the Nesting Ground activity progress UI after respawning
  
• Icon of marked dino no longer persists in the air after the dino is killed
  
• Selection hero screen is now translated correctly after changing language
  
• Improvements and a fixed bug with Matchmaking Filters options
  
• Icon for inviting players in the 'Equipment' menu is no longer available to use after the user has joined the party
  
• Main Menu is not visible anymore behind the Sign in screen on Ultrawide screen
  
• Star ratings do not appear in Expedition anymore without the first completion
  
• Player should no longer experience problems spawning next to an objective on the map
  
• Pause menu is no longer reopened when player is trying to close it
  

Missions

• Vestige scanner is now showing the correct direction of T-Rex nest
  
• Fixed occasional issue when player couldn't open gate in Homebound mission ⭐
  
• Rejoining is no longer causes activities to be blocked
  
• The side mission 'Destroy The Hollow' can now be completed if the player respawns two times after placing explosives
  
• The side mission 'Recover The Black Box' is now can be completed in crossplatform Multiplayer session (XBox and Win10 version)
  
• Timer now is not disappearing after player respawns in 'Blacksite' mission
  
• The regional assignments work as intended when crossing the border between regions
  
• After killing the first wave of raptors the second one now appears as intended during side mission 'Clear out the burrow infestation'
  
• The mission 'Research and Rescue' first objective 'Find the Research Crew' no longer switches location with the side mission 'Repair the Stranded Drop Ship'
  
• Added Prompts for Move and Look tutorial
  
• 'Who's Watching the Watchers' objective in now working correctly after completing the contract during a mission
  
• ‘Clear Out' optional objective is now listed in the map's legend for multiple regions
  

Multiplayer

• Fixed issues when third player could not join multiplayer lobby 🔺
  
• If the host of a multiplayer party leaves a session, it can now join the other two players again either through invite or 'join game' in the Xbox Shell interface (XBox version)
  
• Critical health value shows correctly for all the players in party and divided into segments as intended
  
• Players should not be stuck on the "Difficulty in connecting to party" screen
  
• Fixed issue when player was unable to access 'Rejoin last session' button while using a gamepad
  
• Fixed issues when UI is not updated if a player disconnects from the game
  
• Performance 🔺
  
• Fixed issues when FPS dropped dramatically when a lot of visual effects appear on the screen
  
• Fixed crash when player tried to Unlink profile and exit game (Steam version)
  
• Fixed crash when player changed video settings
  
• Fixed crash when players opened 'Upgrade Account' and 'Xbox Overlay' on the controller simultaneously (XBox version)
  
• Fixed issues when the game became frozen if Player rejoined session for the second time
  
• Player should no longer have infinite loading when trying to login to an already used email
  

Weapons

• Removed input lag from Carbine Rifle, Grenade Launcher and Shotgun 🔺
  
• Fixed issue when ammo and equipment could be picked up through a wall
  
• Fixed issues when shock grenades didn’t apply stun correctly
  
• Pressing 'RT' before throwing a grenade is no longer causes character to perform throwing animation without any voiceover and effect
  
• Fixed issue when player was unable to throw grenades
  
• The ammo kit equipment is no longer stuck to the player's hand in certain conditions
  
• Minigun starts with full reserved ammo now
  
• The Rocket Launcher's accuracy works as intended when using ADS and hip fire
  
• Crosshairs of all weapons when looking through the telescopic sight now detect enemies as intended
  
• Carbine Rifle bullets affected by the 'Explosive Rounds' perk stick to enemies as intended now
  
• Rocket launcher equipped with the 'murder hornet' skin is correctly displayed in the Armory tab
  

⭐ = Changes made from community feedback and reports.
🔺 = Changes that worth special highlighting

Hot summer days deserve hot summer sales. Second Extinction is 36% off on the Steam Summer Sale live now! Get it for yourself or pick it up for a friend you'd like to join your squad just in time for next week's new Pre-Season packed with new content to enjoy during the long days of summer.

Buy Second Extinction at 36% off here.

Hello Extinction Elites!

We hope summer is treating you well and you’re ready for some new challenges.
On July 1st, we enter the next Pre-season in our Early Access journey. It’s time for Pre-season 5 - Longest Days.

Besides quality of life updates and bug fixes, we welcome a new Enemy Mutation that can appear during certain Emergence Events and takes our Enemy roster to new heights. We also have a brand new primary weapon for Enforcers to play with and a newcomer in the loadout selection in the shape of Firecrackers to stop the dinos in their tracks. All this and more to come with Pre-season 5 dropping next week!