Primeval News

Night-vision is now not as bright while the camera is above water.
Night-vision is now brighter while the camera is below water.

Dryosaurus hair spikes are now rendering correctly.

Fixed titanoboa players floating in the air.

Stopped allocating 80% of the GPU's memory for mipmap textures. Changed this value to a flat 1 GB of vram.

Hello everyone, I've been keeping busy working through the important list for Primeval this month. It may not seem like I've gotten as much done as the first or second half of last month but I was working behind the scenes with a new vegetation system that ended up not working out for the time being but I did walk away from that experience with an updated set of vegetation for a few of the biomes we use in the Savage Lands map. I'll continue to work through the list and will update everyone when the time comes.


[h2]Major Game Versions:[/h2]

• Converted the game to the High Definition Rendering Pipeline (HDRP) for higher-quality visuals. This version of the game is available on the main download branch.
  
• The old URP version of the game has been removed from Steam because it performed poorly, looked worse, and had the same system requirements as the HDRP version.
  

[h2]Optimizations:[/h2]

• Made some performance optimizations to various parts of the project/code.
  

[h2]Maps:[/h2]

• Recreated "The Great Sands" map using the same format as the 32-biome Pangaea map, so the desert map now has more biomes.
  

[h2]New Features:[/h2]

• Added the HTrace Global Illumination system to the game. If you want to enable the feature, go into the graphics settings and enable it, then apply. If you lose too much performance enabling it you'll need to disable it, apply, and then restart the game to gain back the performance. this feature is only available on the (HDRP) version of the game.
  
• Added the ability for your creatures to morph their skin pattern into a random skin pattern. This costs 5 evolution points and is accessible via the "Morph Skin" button in the skins menu. Due to the rewriting of some code your creatures may have a different skin pattern upon logging in for the first time after this update.
  

[h2]Adjustments:[/h2]

• Made nightvision brighter to compensate for HDRP's brightness differences.
  
• Creatures are no longer automatically spawned from player nests. If you want to populate your nest you'll need to hatch eggs.
  
• Adjusted how much bleed damage is dealt to bleeding creatures.
  
• The player can no longer use abilities while the hoard or nest inventories are open.
  
• The player can no longer move while the hoard or nest inventories are open.
  

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• Fixed a glitch where if a creature died from bleed damage it would still behave as if it were alive.
  
• Fixed some problems where the colors generated by shedding your creature's skin weren't being saved and loaded properly.
  
• Fixed, creatures are now spawning from hatched player-laid eggs.
  
• Fixed a problem where hovering the mouse over a fertile egg item would cause the fps to drop considerably.
  
• Fixed nightvision mode not enabling or disabling with the V key.
  
• Fixed the lag spikes that were happening every 4 seconds from the global reflections in the (HDRP) version of the game.
  
• Fixed more errors with the creature color changing system.
  
• Fixed a problem where all fish were dying over time due to hunger and thirst.
  
• Fixed a problem with your creatures regaining their old colors after you morphed their skin and got a new skin pattern with no color variations and then logged out and then back in.
  
• Fixed some problems with the showing and hiding of health-bars and corpse/food-bars.
  
• Fixed blood drops incorrectly rendering.
  

Hello again everyone, after this month's previous update I've continued to get a lot done with the game. I'm still working through the high-priority list I made and still have more to do with it after this update as well.


[h2]Abilities:[/h2]

• Venomous Bite, a new ability has been added to the game. This ability is available for the troodon, dilophosaurus, and titanoboa. It inflicts toxins into its target. The older the creature is the more toxins it inflicts with its bite. Toxins up to 100% slow health regeneration and any toxins over 100% will cause the sufferer to slowly take damaage instead of regenerate health.
  
• Deadly Bite, a new ability has been added to the game. This ability deals a low amount of damage and 5x the normal amount of bleed damage. Spinosaurus, Megalodon Tylosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Sarcosuchus, Acrocanthosaurus, Allosaurus, Daspletosaurus, Dunkleosteus, Ceratosaurus ,Kryptops, Dimetrodon, and Deinonychus.
  
• Abilities in the tab menu now have a basic tooltip with info about the hovered ability.
  
• The player can no longer use abilities if the options window is open or if the gameplay menu is open.
  

[h2]Maps:[/h2]

• The huge Pangaea map has been fixed and re-enabled. It is 16 times larger than any of the other maps and will have a total of 32 biomes when finished. With this map working again I can focus more time into developing a single landscape and biomes to one day replace the other maps.
  
• The Savage Lands map has had a lot of its grass and plants replaced with new Megascans models that have LODs to help with performance. The savage lands map vegetation changes work with the Pangaea map and its biomes carry over to it.
  
• Increased the world bounds of the Pangaea map so your flyers could fly three times higher than previously before getting stuck.
  
• Added 20 new weather types across all of the maps.
  

[h2]Options:[/h2]

• Added a new save file for the spawning options, where you can change how many dinosaurs of each type spawn on any map. The file is named "Options_Spawning.iop" and it is generated after launching the game for the first time after this update. It is saved in the game's save file directory usually located at "C:/Users/*Username*/LocalLow/Exhibyte/Primeval/". The part of the file you want to change is where it says Dino_Terrestrial=0.5 and so on, change the 0.5 to whatever percentage you want for that spawn type. 0.01 is 1% so 0.5 would be 50% and 2.0 would be 200% and so on. Save the file and then launch the game to have these new values take affect. Spawning too many creatures can have a negative impact on your game's performance. The default values are a good starting point for most users for performance and quantity of creatures. Total value cannot exceed 5.0
  
• The weather sounds can now be turned down with the ambience slider in the volume settings.
  

[h2]Improvements:[/h2]

• Switched the game's rendering API from DirectX11 to DirectX12 so the CPU could offload some of its workload to the GPU.
  
• Turning has been slightly redesigned for a more realistic experience.
  
• Creature AI can now suffer from toxins.
  
• Enabled the Spine Animator component for most creatures so now they'll bend at their midsection while turning. Some creature models, mostly the oldest ones, were not compatible with this feature.
  
• Enabled the spine animator and tail animator for all AI creatures if that species has that feature enabled. This was done to make the AI feel more alive.
  
• Creature AI can now distance themselves away from their target while in combat to add more depth to the encounter.
  
• Creature AI can now stand idle and either play their call sound or play one of their idle animations.
  
• The wound decal system has been reactivated for creatures.
  
• Creature AI carnivores will no longer spawn near to larger carnivores unless they are a scavenger or hunt in packs with the larger creature.
  
• Now the player doesn't have to be so close to the water source in order to take a drink.
  

[h2]Adjustments:[/h2]

• Pressing the escape key no longer cancels auto-eat or auto-drink modes. You can still cancel it by pressing left-click or right-click.
  
• Creature AI that start to flee now clear their aggro list.
  

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• Fixed, the player's creatures can now again evolve the damage trait by attacking wild creatures.
  
• Fixed, the player's creatures now damage wild creatures at the correct time during an attack.
  
• Fixed, the player can once again initiate auto-eat and auto-drink modes the first time they try.
  
• Fixed, the player can no longer control their dinosaur's actions while typing into the chat box, which is accessed by pressing the enter key and closed by pressing the enter key again.
  
• Fixed a problem where if the player was typing into the chat input field and then clicked away from the chat input box the player's dinosaur controls could get locked until the input field gained focus again and was canceled by pressing the enter key.
  
• Fixed, the chat log no longer scrolls from the user pressing the movement keys.
  
• Fixed a lot of problems with chat mode including situations where you could get stuck in typing mode and not be able to control your creature.
  
• Fixed a glitch where if you breached from the water onto land you'd get stuck and would only be able to move forward.
  
• Fixed a glitch where aquatic AI creatures weren't chasing their target.
  
• Fixed a glitch where aquatic AI creatures weren't turning towards their target while chasing them.
  
• Fixed a glitch where aquatic AI creatures would get stuck at the surface of the water or the sea floor while fleeing.
  
• Fixed a glitch where aquatic AI creatures would spin out of control while attempting to flee.
  
• Fixed a glitch where if a swimming AI creature died rotated it would sink in a sideways direction.
  
• There is now a safety check, that if the player's creature falls under the terrain a certain distance their creature will be put back on the terrain's surface. This was useful for the Pangaea map because terrains are loaded in when within range and loading can have a short delay.
  
• Fixed a glitch where creature AI that were swimming and chasing something onto the land were falling under the terrain and disappearing.
  
• Precise movement was fixed for acrocanthosaurus.
  
• Fixed a problem with sunstones, now they'll give the correct amount of sunstone intensity to nearby creatures. Sunstone intensity still amplifies your growth rate, the higher the value the higher your growth rate goes and resting while under its affects are twice as affective.
  
• Fixed some problems with smelling now it should be working properly again for smelling other creatures. Also made carnivores able to smell creature corpses from the same distance they can smell live creatures and made carnivores able to smell carcasses that same distance as well. Herbivores can't smell creatures as far away as a carnivore can. There are still the different ranks of smelling that affect how far away your creature can smell something.
  
• Fixed a problem where creature AI wouldn't play their walking animation sometimes if they were walking.
  
• Fixed a couple of problems with overhead foodbars.
  
• Fixed a glitch where the player's creature could get stuck and not be able to move.
  
• Fixed a glitch where food that was picked up in a dinosaur's mouth was not visible due to its size being smaller than intended.
  
• Fixed a glitch where the creatures you picked up and dropped would have an extra corpsebar.
  
• Fixed, now creatures you pick up will have their corpsebar hidden.