Poached : Hunt The Hunter News

It's been a long time I've done a substantial update to the public branch since November last year, but I've still been working as hard as always. Since the core game framework within the engine, [the game ecosystem engine within the Unity game engine] needed a migration to the new Unity Input System to allow true support for all gamepads and future Console releases within a single code base and new optimized event subscription based input vs Update based if(statement) polling.

The next update after this shall focus on content added to the game, while this update finally brings controller support to the main branch at the same time as major features including disk streaming based open world exploration and new wildlife entities.

[h3][/h3]

• 1. New full controller support, including haptic feedback and optional "Aim-Assist" mode as well as customizable controls for all gamepad buttons. (Still not tested on every single controller in the world, but stable enough to release out of Beta into Early Access public branch)
  
• 2. New weapon wheel for quickly selecting any of your available weapons without needing to remember the exact number. Also useful for controllers. Currently not bindable but can be open by pressing the mouse wheel when using mouse/keyboard or by using the d-pad when using a controller.
  
• 3. New asynchronous loading for terrain zones outside of the main reserve center to improve memory consumption by streaming in detail from the disk instead of loading everything into memory at once. Also allows much larger amounts of entities such as other animals to be a part of the game.
  
• 4. New animals friendly animal - Gazelles. These are semi endangered in the reserve, and not to be killed. Killing more than 5 will cause the mission to fail.
  
• 5. New dangerous animal: Crocodile, currently only one can be found near Waterfall #2, but is very dangerous and can be killed without consequence if it attacks you.
  
• 6. New improved glass shatter effect for vehicle windows when shot.
  
• 7. Optimized keyboard/mouse control scheme performance.
  
• 8. Improved NPC character texture quality inside shebeen.
  
• 9. Improved quality of dragging items when unarmed. (such as meat!)
  
• 10. Fixed issues with default settings on each option type not resetting.
  
• 11. Made options menus slightly less confusing with a few more concise labels.
  
• 12. Increased legibility of in-game graphics options menu.
  
• 13. Improved animation procedure for "Noise Complaint" side quest.
  
• 14. New safeguard to prevent player from being able to use a health kit when they are already at max health to prevent accidental wastage.
  
• 15. Fixed issue with meat stopping cooking too soon if extended cooking tactics are employed such as dropping the meat on the floor first or trying to burn both sides as evenly as possible. (For realism)
  
• 16. Improved lighting in final tunnel.
  
• 17. Fixed missing notepad info in 'Tutorial Part #2 / Hornet Mission' and other side-missions.
  
• 18. Optimized rhino & zebra rendering from large distances.
  
• 19. Improved loading screens, loading screens now only use actual screenshots of the game instead of concept art for a thorough consistency.
  
• 20. Added new DRM to prevent the game being played outside of Steam.
  
• 21. Added new infinite sprint mod to the mod menu. [Accessible via cheats, apply on Discord]
  
• 22. Large amounts of code refactoring through every single game module.
  
• 23. Fixed issue causing scope U.I. to remain on screen if you swap weapons with a pickup item while the scope is engaged as well as reloading at the same time. Extremely rare, but infuriating if it does happen. Resolved.
  
• 24. Fixed issues caused by exiting the vehicle while in third person driving mode, sometimes causing the next level to either load you inside the car even though you were not in it.
  
• 25. Fixed issue causing secret stashes to be infinitely respawnable when save/loading the game per mission.
  
• 26. Improved giraffe tail fur texture material.
  
• 27. Improved quality of save game thumbnail screenshots, in terms of when the screenshot is taken to prevent thumbnails being shots of the scoreboard more often than not.
  
• 28. Slight adjustments to final tunnel area lighting and collision geometry.
  
• 29. Fixed issue with flashlight causing foliage to "pop" in and out of lit/unlit states when playing on higher FOV settings.
  
• 30. Fixed issue causing master volume setting to be reset every time upon loading a new level or reloading the current scene.
  
• 31. Improved wandering algorithm for animals to prevent them from just standing still during mid gallop or trot.
  
• 32. Cursor now hidden during splash screen.
  
• 33. Fixed an issue with some assets including a shed popping in and out of view in specific areas when loading in near the delta zone of the reserve caused by a deadzone in the delta zone trigger.
  
• 34. Fixed issue with mouse cursor being able to escape into a second monitor during inventory screen, craft menu and other assorted pause menu-type scenarios if a second monitor is connected.
  
• 35. Cursor is now invisible in the beginning splash menu.
  
• 36. Fixed issue causing player position to not save/load inside Mission 9 tunnel.
  
• 37. Fixed some weird glass material issues found on certain Bulldozer type construction vehicles in Chapter 2.
  
• 38. Improved overlay for key binding for easier feedback as to when you are in fact re-binding a key or button.
  
• 39. Improved quality of door model inside warehouse during Mission 6 interior.
  
• 40. VSync is now enabled by default, to prevent screen tearing and also to prevent GPU overheating in interior scenes. Disable it if you find the game too slow, but should naturally cap the game at roughly 60FPS depending on your monitor.
  
• 41. Removed all deprecated internal functions for procedural generation, as the game will now be relying on hand crafted outskirts detail streamed in from disk for more reliable outer reserve foliage population and density.
  
• 42. Fixed an issue with loading the radio time when parsing float with invariant culture using System.Globalization on certain systems. Sometimes causing issues when loading older save games.
  
• 43. Added a 1-second buffer on tent pickup after placement to prevent the immediate appearance of the sleep menu.
  
• 44. Removed some redundant functions from shop keeper codebase for optimization purposes and clean workflow as well as preventing an extremely rare null reference exception case.
  
• 45. Fixed some beer bottles as well as a lantern that appeared to be floating slightly above the crates at the poacher camp zone in Mission 3.
  
• 46. Adjusted the armor amount to better match the color palette when it changes to green while wearing camouflage armor.
  
• 47. Fixed a number of floating inventory weapon items found in Mission 9 underground tunnel.
  
• 48. Fixed issue allowing inventory screen to be brought up while driving which allowed all sorts of other issues to become possible.
  
• 49. Fixed an issue where loading your game while in the vehicle would cause the game to load in the vehicle even if you didn't save while in the vehicle.
  
• 50. Refactored save game manager code to read the "Last Modified" DateTime directly from the save game files, instead of storing the save game times in the registry to prevent times from being reset when the PlayerPrefs are reset.
  
• 51. Added ability to interrupt sleeping during any time by pressing "Escape" during a sleep cycle initiated by bed or tent.
  
• 52. As always, many other small fixes, improvements and polishes too numerous/minor to mention.
  

As always, a huge thank you to all my early access players as well as my pre-public early access Beta testers on Discord for your continued support and non-stop help in testing and bug-reporting the end to end polishing of the game and all it's systems. I appreciate you all endlessly.

Hi all! Due to numerous requests from Mac users, I have finally created a version of 'Poached' that can run on MacOS devices.

It is worth noting, that as of the time of writing Mac users only make up 1.43%-2.00% of all Steam users. Nonetheless, since I have been asked I am more than happy to provide.

The updates for MacOS might not be as frequent, and most likely I will push a major update to this branch for every 4-5 updates made to the PC version. Also baring in mind, that I am currently preparing for a console release possibly at the end of the year.

Before releasing it to the public as usual, I will conduct private beta tests with a small group of roughly 20-30 users, if you are a Mac user and would like to get involved please get in touch with me via discord via https://discord.gg/HZh8kXt8QNor simply email me at [email protected]


In other news, as the controller support is finally wrapping up - I am happy to announce that the next phase of development is going to be the translation of the game into various localized languages, including store page, U.I. as well as all subtitles for in-game spoken radio communication and mission briefings. More info on this to follow soon.

Happy hunting!

- Twelv

Hello all and it's been a while! I've been hard at work re-writing the input system from scratch to provide not only controller support for PC users, but also to pave the way for a future console release.
Starting off I have a new private beta available to all owners of the game, which can be accessed through Steam.

Before I release the new update to the general public, I will open up the branch to the first 20-100 people who request access. If you do want access, please just give me a shout on the Discord @ https://discord.gg/HZh8kXt8QN

Most controllers should be supported, and I am online pretty much permanently at the moment so feel free to get in touch anytime.

The controller support Beta provides a few other small quality of life improvements:

• Optimized keyboard controls performance.
  
• Improved NPC character texture quality inside shebeen.
  
• Improved quality of dragging items when unarmed. (such as meat!)
  
• Fixed issues with default settings on each option type not resetting.
  
• Made options menus slightly less confusing with a few more concise labels.
  
• Increased legibility of in-game graphics options menu.
  
• Improved animation procedure for "Noise Complaint" side quest.
  
• New safeguard to prevent player from being to use a health kit when they are already at max health to prevent accidental wastage.
  
• Fixed issue with meat stopping cooking too soon if extended cooking tactics are employed such as dropping the meat on the floor first or trying to burn both sides as evenly as possible. (For realism)
  
• Improved lighting in final tunnel.
  
• Fixed missing notepad info in 'Tutorial Part #2 / Hornet Mission' and other side-missions.
  
• Optimized rhino & zebra rendering from large distances.
  
• Improved loading screens, loading screens now only use actual screenshots of the game instead of concept art for a thorough consistency.
  
• Added new experimental DRM to prevent the game being played outside of Steam.
  
• Added new infinite sprint mod to the mod menu. [Accessible via cheats, apply on Discord]
  
• Various other small fixes and improvements.
  
• Currently adding more all the time, so keep checking back to watch this list grow.
  
  

More info to follow soon!

- Twelv

Poached : Hunt The Hunter V0.8.5

Update Notes:

1. Improved enemy A.I. animation jitteriness.
   
2. Improved enemy A.I. cover finding and flanking abilities.
   
3. Improved enemy A.I. movement including speed and general pathfinding.
   
4. Improved enemy A.I. general behavior, while still maintaining their personality as stupid bumbling poachers.
   
5. Optimized enemy internal resources and memory management systems used by scriptable objects for state management.
   
6. Fixed responsiveness issues with reloading and jumping caused by input functions inside physics FixedUpdate() loops.
   
7. Doubled carbine weapon texture detail size.
   
8. Doubled silenced SMG weapon texture detail size.
   
9. Doubled rhino animal texture detail size.
   
10. Increased enemy A.I. chance of shooting you from a far distance.
    
11. Dead animal ragdolls are now "baked" after a few seconds when a mission starts to improve performance and also prevent weird movements and behavior on the still corpse.
    
12. Re-baked occlusion culling for all scenes to make sure culling is up to date for all geometry.
    
13. Decreased likelihood of player shooting up into the air when de-crouching after being pinched into geometry.
    
14. Pressing "Jump" while crouched will now un-crouch the player.
    
15. Sprinting from a crouched position will now also un-crouch the player into sprint.
    
16. Improved rhino path stampede finding A.I. to prevent strange behavior such as freezing or running on the spot for more immersive animation.
    
17. Vehicle driving is now mapped to the customizable movement keys instead of hardcoded to WASD/Arrow Keys.
    
18. Fixed missing collider and some minor texture issues on transport vehicle used to leave shooting range.
    
19. Improved AK47 ADS aiming alignment.
    
20. Deprecated the Scarr/Mufasa rifle to keep game more realistic and also spare more texture memory space to increase detail on other more commonly used weapons. If you did have a game saved with this weapon, you will be given a silenced SMG instead.
    
21. Fixed missing cactus colliders outside shebeen and other areas.
    
22. Added "Cactus Damage" to all cactus objects, which multiplies damage by magnitude of relative velocity of the player. So lightly touch a cactus and not much will happen, run into it with force and feel the pain. Just like a real cactus!!!
    
23. When the player already has an RPG equipped, and takes the ammo from another RPG weapon lying around the model will now show as an RPG with the rocket missing to show that its been taken out of the RPG and added to the players ammunition.
    
24. Fixed some trees with exposed roots showing holes in the mesh.
    
25. Fixed issue with certain areas of the wall not receiving light when using flashlight/lantern inside Mission 6 warehouse.
    
26. Fixed issue with Tranquilizer Rifle reload animation not resetting if players switches weapon while Tranquilizer Rifle is being reloaded.
    
27. Fixed issue with Rocket Launcher reload animation not resetting if players switches weapon while Rocket Launcher is being reloaded.
    
28. Fixed some texture issues in final mission bunker.
    
29. Fixed some minor audio compression issues in final boss fight.
    
30. Made poacher conversation heard in camp when returning to find it invaded after first mission more audible.
    
31. Added 6 more enemies to wave 2 of mission 3 when playing on "Hard" difficulty setting for extra mayhem.
    
32. Made running audio of coins and bullets jingling in players pocket while sprinting slightly less high pitched and easier on the ears when heard for long period of time.
    
33. Made television audio in shebeen more audible.
    
34. Made "Piet of the Jungle" Arcade cabinet music more audible in shebeen.
    
35. Made "Piet of the Jungle" Arcade cabinet controls work with custom binded movement keys instead of defaulting to WASD/arrow keys.
    
36. Made "Memoirs of General Gideon" Tape 02 - The Hippo - as found in the shebeen more audible.
    
37. Fixed missing enemy finder waypoint in Mission 7.
    
38. Fixed some waypoint issues in Mission 10 that could cause certain enemies to stand idle without a purpose.
    
39. Enemy A.I. head-look inverse kinematics now makes the enemy face their personal target position instead of only the player, to prevent unrealistic animation scenarios when enemies are hunting for the player while staring directly at them.
    
40. Fixed issue with binoculars sometimes leaving behind their loot "ghost" highlight after being picked up.
    
41. Fixed strange fishing rod animation issues.
    
42. Added asynchronous loading to the intro splash screen to prevent issues before loading main menu on older/slower systems.
    
43. Improved main starting menu loading speed.
    
44. Fixed issue with weird red overlay on death screen when being killed by a rhino.
    
45. Increased Rhino stampede collision detection accuracy.
    
46. Fixed issue with master audio volume sometimes not saving when restarting game or any other parameters caused by prefs not always being saved if user exits menu with escape key instead of the back button.
    
47. Fixed issue with poachers in Mission 1 camped by water tower sometimes hearing you a little too soon before you have approached the mission zone.
    
48. Fixed issue causing visual side-effect from hallucinogenic "Bird of Madness" healing item to not display.
    
49. New improved pencil-sketch style loading screens.
    
50. Fixed issue that would sometimes cause pistol ironsights to be misaligned if reload animation is played when the weapon is selected.
    
51. Added audio cues for when buying or selling stock from the online stock market.
    
52. Increased weight and torque of vehicle to reduce floatyness while driving.
    
53. New achievement for acquiring the Hiking Boots from the online shopping same day delivery service to increase running stamina time.
    
54. Cleaned up many unused scripting assemblies and references.
    
55. Optimized game scripting and memory usage as well as general performance.
    
56. Fixed issue causing leader ragdoll to sometimes exhibit weird breakdance-like behavior when defeated during Mission 8 rescue battle.
    
57. Inventory window can now also be closed with "ESC" key instead of only by pressing the inventory key. ["Tab" by default]
    
58. Mission 8 rescue mission waypoint now points directly to the target instead of the target area in case target strays too far from the objective.
    
59. Added new Graphics Option "HUD DAMAGE EFFECT" which can be used to disable the red flash on screen when getting hit, if desired.
    
60. Added an option slider to adjust intensity of screen-shake effect when getting hit.
    
61. Mission 8 rescue mission waypoint now points directly to the target instead of the target area in case target strays too far from the objective.
    
62. When game autosaves progress after completing an enemy wave it will do so without a screenshot so as to not cause weird flashing during the heat of battle end, as well as when loading a new level to not have a black and white screenshot as the new level loads or during a end of mission scoreboard so the screenshot does not interrupt the screen.
    
63. Picking up a weapon with a lower magazine capacity while you have a higher amount of bullets stored will no longer cause an overflow situation where your weapon has more bullets in the magazine than its technically able to store and the excess bullets from the magazine will be added back to the ammunition pool.
    
64. "Extreme" Violence mode now won't increase the size of the blood pools, as they already a bit excessive but it will still activate the "Blood-On-Hands" effect when picking up weapons from a fallen enemy.
    
65. Ammo text label is now invisible when "Unarmed" weapon slot for dragging items is selected to eliminate any possible confusion.
    
66. Removed all black emissive properties from materials that weren't doing anything with the emission.
    
67. Fixed a small 2 second delay in lighting when opening graphics menu from main menu causing lighting to switch from dark to light.
    
68. V-Sync is now off by default.
    
69. Doubled framerate of "Death" screen by removing unnecessary camera layers.
    
70. Removed unnecessary blend shapes from certain skinned meshes.
    
71. Simplified dung beetle & rhino beetle mesh skinning rigs.
    
72. Made animal bone skinning weights adhere to graphics settings.
    
73. Added 2 more enemies to Mission 1 Wave 2 when playing on "Hard" difficulty.
    
74. Added 1 more enemy to Mission 2 Wave 1 when playing on "Hard" difficulty.
    
75. Fixed an issue causing some poachers in mission 3 to be significantly shorter than other enemies in such a fashion that just looked simply ridiculous.
    
76. Removed all discrepancies between trees placed as meshes and trees instanced as part of the terrain data, allowing for less scene memory usage and increase billboard optimization when rendering trees from a distance.
    
77. Added further optimization to "Zone" culling when loading in extra detail groups outside of the main reserve area.
    
78. Recalculated bounds for all LOD groups in the environment map to increase the accuracy of all Level Of Detail Meshes.
    
79. Optimized A.I. nav-meshes with different more concise configurations for each mission.
    
80. Fixed a glitch that causes the female gardener NPC's head to disappear if you move too close to them during the Tutorial mission.
    
81. Fixed issue causing anti-aliasing settings to not save properly.
    
82. Adjusted maximum "Exposure" threshold in options and added an additional "Contrast" setting slider.
    
83. Made "Exposure" slider from left to right like all the other sliders to minimize confusion.
    
84. Moved "Contrast" / "Exposure" to advanced graphics menu to make more space for gameplay options.
    
85. Fixed once and for all issues relating to spawned enemies in Chapter 2 sometimes appearing in trees or inside rocks by creating fixed spawn points around the map that are randomly selected as opposed to nav-mesh approximation based random spawning.
    
86. Improved quality and brightness of night vision goggles.
    
87. Equipping night vision goggles will now deactivate the flashlight if equipped and vice versa. The lantern can still be used in conjunction with either item, but only flashlight or night vision can be equipped at one time.
    
88. Improved grenade throwing through inventory. Now after selecting the grenade you can aim it and press the mouse to throw it instead of just throwing it on click.
    
89. Re-thought the layout of Mission 3, forcing the player to venture out much further to find the enemies for a more realistic mission as opposed to poachers camping right outside the rangers base, as well as new grizzly set dressing for the poachers operations to drive home the nature of their activities to the player.
    
90. Various other small fixes & improvements.
    

Important Notice:


• This is the the last major update planned for 2023, on account of the fact that I will be taking a small break away between 19 December - 5 January, and I don't want to introduce any new features that might possibly break while I am away from my development PC. That being said, I will still continue to patch this update just launched and fix any bugs found up until 18 December, so please do submit your bug reports to the discussions forum and Discord. [If any.]
  
  
• While I am away, I will still be checking in periodically on the forums and Discord and reading all your suggestions on my laptop so keep them coming!
  
  
• Next year is going to be a huge one with hundreds of updates and changes as well as many new features and content which I have planned, so stay tuned and as always - thank you all for the overwhelming support!
  
  

Speak soon. :)

- Twelv