Poached : Hunt The Hunter News

The "Personal Computer" Update, which adds a whole new dimension to the PC inside your rangers caravan. Introducing a new "Go Online" mode which allows you to trade stocks in the new virtual stock market in game as well as shop online for new upgrades to your camp and lifestyle. In addition I have many other fixes, additions and improvements based on user submitted feedback as well as my own testing.

1. Improved PC user interface slightly.
   
2. Added new online section as index 1 instead of book golf appointment. Golf appointment bookings have been moved to online, but you won't be able to actually book any yet for as you know - they are very hard to come by.
   
3. Added new stock market mini game available from online. Trade & buy stocks to make money, or lose it all and overnight. The choice is yours!
   
4. New online shopping that can be used for other purchases apart from the on-site shop. Order special seeds to plant around your camp which will be delivered directly to your door the next day or save up and purchase upgrades for your camp. I've started with only a few things you can buy, and will slowly add more as the game development progresses.
   
5. New email inbox available from online. Receive spam email from various sources or even legitimate ones sometimes, perhaps if you look closely enough one day you might find a lead for some secret bonus missions or even win a custom knife in an online sweepstakes! You never know. Added 20 inbox emails for now, will expand on this in future updates to include new emails that appear the further along the story you go and including some important emails that can unlock new quests or features.
   
6. Capped Ingozi Games splash screen frame rate to prevent GPU squealing caused by FPS of over 2000-3000FPS+ (on certain cards)
   
7. Removed some unnecessary detail from crafting table that was potentially affecting performance.
   
8. Optimized game texture memory usage for increased performance.
   
9. Optimized scene memory footprint in open world map areas.
   
10. Fixed rare scaling issues for mouse sensitivity slider on certain screen sizes.
    
11. New plants to be grown and some other new "craftable" items as listed below in the shopping purchases section.
    
12. Improved fishing mini-game challenge aspect by adding a QuickTime event to prevent the fish from escape the line once caught. Hold down the fire button to fight against the fish, but let go of the button when the line turns red to prevent it from snapping.
    
13. Shebeen fumigation event that occurs after the game is finished will now only occur once the player has visited the shebeen before, otherwise will happen the next time they visit it if they are visiting it after the game end for the first time. Also improved the appearance of the actual fishing line renderer as well.
    
14. Fixed issue causing glass window to still show in vehicle if the player broke the glass from the outside via shooting it.
    
15. Fixed issue causing it to rain inside the vehicle at times.
    
16. Fixed issue allowing items such as fires/tents to sometimes be crafted or placed indoors with descriptive tooltip.
    
17. Due to unforeseen economic inflation the price of RPG rockets has been regrettably increased by 300%
    
18. Made optimizations to the games animation system.
    
19. Experimental procedural generation has been phased out, but still accessible through cheat commands/mods.
    
20. New graphics option to enable/disable "Screen Space Reflections" [Reflections have always been on by default in all previous versions, just now users can disable them in case of very old GPU's that struggle with SSR]
    
21. Optimized bird flocking code procedure as well as fish schooling algorithm.
    
22. Optimized player internal player controller and weapon/ironsights code.
    
23. Vehicle third person state preference will now be remembered during game session.
    
24. Fishing rod animations for "reeling in" now look more realistic and custom tailored to the situation instead of looking like the player is simply trying to beat the fish to death.
    
25. Various other small improvements and fixes.
    

Online shopping purchases that can be made:

• Hiking Boots : These will show in your inventory but are automatically equipped. Owning a pair will increase your characters running stamina, allowing you to run for longer times. Add some coffee to the mix for even more stamina boost!
  
• Tent: Already a common item, but you can never have enough. Used to sleep anywhere, anytime as most players would already know.
  
• Herb Seeds: Use to grow your own medicinal herbs.
  
• Tiki Torch: Use to create beautiful ambiance in your camp and light up the night. Can be toggled on or off, or shot to be removed completely.
  
• Character controller Update Loop code optimizations.
  

- More to follow soon!

The next update after this one is going to focus on adding new content, including optional side quests that can be accessed by the caravan at any time as well as new NPC companion A.I. and some major potential camp upgrades that can be purchased through the new online shop. Alongside the new content will also be a bunch of new Steam achievements that can be acquired by playing the new content. As well as any other reported bugs, the next few updates should add quite a few more hours of gameplay to the game, and many new items to purchase as well as any polishes to the new systems such as stock market, fishing and more.

Weekly update fixing issues raised by users as well as developer planned updates and enhancements including a new fishing mini-game as well as seed planting mechanics and more.

1. Made water look beautiful with realistic translucency that reacts to changes in the environmental ambient lighting.
   
2. Fishing mini-game now available in the nearby pond. Follow the fishing way-point when using the radio or vehicle in order to access the game. Select the rod to fish, use fire/left mouse to cast a line or zoom/right mouse to cancel a cast depending on what you've assigned those actions to. The line will automatically retract if you catch a fish so you only need to manually reel back in if you wish to re-cast.
   
3. You can now grow plants using seeds! You can plant them anywhere but its best to plant them in your grow hut or campsite. Locate some seeds in the bar or on the reserve and then plant them using the inventory. You can locate your new fully grown plant in the next mission after the one you planted them in. Currently available seeds can be only be used to grow "Elder Thyme" power-up used for slowing down time. More will soon be available to purchase online using the PC. Once seeds have been planted you will need to wait until at least the next mission for them to be fully grown.
   
4. Removed weird bubbles coming from the fish inside the pond.
   
5. Fixed strange colliders near fishing pond.
   
6. Improved some detail in certain terrain areas near outskirts.
   
7. Improved pistol hand holding position.
   
8. Improved some character arm skin materials.
   
9. Optimized post-processing code for color grading and sun shafts.
   
10. Optimized various scripting modules and code performance.
    
11. Fixed numerous typos found in subtitles.
    
12. Fixed ability to attain infinite money in final bunker through relentless quick loading.
    
13. Fixed collision for pool balls to stop them from falling through the floor at times.
    
14. Fixed overlapping notepad text in final bunker.
    
15. Improved Silenced SMG Left hand thumb holding position appearance. (76.4)
    
16. Procedural generation now off by default, as it is only an experimental feature to fill up the outskirts of the terrain where I've been too lazy to detail it by hand but after latest updates it is unnecessary unless you crave pure chaos/randomness in your bush exploration. Feel free to activate it if desired, and also to turn it on/off when exploring thick bush outskirts for a comparison of what it does. Procedural generation quality slider is now also deactivated when the option is off. I plan to phase this option out entirely in future so consider it as a purely experimental feature at the moment.
    
17. Cleaned out resources database of un-used inventory icons and resource files and optimized crafting "ghost" objects.
    
18. Fixed issue of time of day being frozen in place during Chapter 2.
    
19. Final boss fight will now always take place in the day regardless of time when entering the final bunker.
    
20. In the previous update the game had allowed custom "Time Of Day" to be set with a slider, after testing and fine tuning with this, a new system has been integrated which makes the days twice as long, and the nights 2x shorter for a gameplay balance. If you wish to re-enable the custom time of day, simply type "TIMEOFDAY" in the options menu while paused.
    
21. Game score will now submit to the leader-board if "Submit Score" is enabled whenever the player exits the game to prevent high scores from being lost if a player does not complete an enemy wave beforehand.
    
22. Changed wording when defeating all enemies in Chapter 2 to "Wave Completed" instead of "Mission Completed" since the enemies will keep respawning indefinitely in this part.
    
23. Leader-board now displays the top 100 scores/players instead of only the top 40.
    
24. Added slightly more detail to bar interior.
    
25. Removed some shaders from game memory that are no longer being used.
    
26. Increased volume of "Introduction" speech when playing a new game.
    
27. Secret level ["Noise Complaint"] can now be found when finishing the game if the player misses the warp zone for it in Mission 1. After you have completed the game, you need to sleep in your caravan to activate it, although if you skip it after this or complete it - it will not activate again.
    
28. Fixed some issues with terrain textures not loading properly in Secret Level
    
29. Improved visual clarity when using PC inside caravan domicile.
    
30. Improved loading times for Main Menu from splash screen.
    
31. Added new states for the bar in chapter 2 where you can find more people or even at times find it closed due to fumigation complete with new NPC's to discover.
    
32. Any cheat codes entered will now save/persist between sessions until deactivated with the same code again such as unlocking the mods menu or modifying the time of day mode.
    
33. Removed a large amount of un-used code from the internal game codebase including some unnecessary asynchronous mission briefing methods.
    
34. Added a "peaceful mode" to the unlockable mods menu which will allow players to deactivate the infinitely spawning enemy waves during chapter 2. This will not deactivate enemies during chapter 1 as in this chapter defeating the enemies is the only way to advance the story. When the game is out of E.A. the mods menu will unlock after completing the game and all side quests, currently it can only be unlocked through a cheat code which is available on request.
    
35. Added descriptions to all mods in the unlockable mods menu.
    
36. Disabled stack trace logging in the built game to increase game performance. I also plan to move the game over from Mono scripting backend to the IL2CPP backend for further runtime optimization once I am done with more development, as the internal editor stack trace logging with IL2CPP has some issues that make it harder to debug certain things.
    
37. Increased enemy A.I. hearing distance when considering nearby gunshots by 30%.
    
38. The dustbin near the caravan which provides a unique random mystery item near the campsite can now only be harvested once per mission.
    
39. Fixed issue making it impossible to leave the shooting range with the "Leave" button.
    
40. Shooting range can now also be exited by pressing "Use" on a nearby vehicle which is implied as the method of transport in and out of the range.
    
41. Hippo Bonus mission can now also be exited back to the main story campaign by using the "Leave" button.
    
42. Fixed weird texture tiling on the hippo bonus mission totem statue.
    
43. Fixed some missing water collider sounds near waterfall with baby elephant as well as some other water sources not triggering the sound of the player wading through them, as well as optimized water scripting.
    
44. Updated early access information on store page to reflect the games current story campaign completability state as the story campaign was not yet finished when the game launched into early access 22 days ago but it now is.
    
45. Updated store page to show support for English subtitles. More languages are on the way hopefully by the end of the year.
    
46. Fixed some internal warning issues for binoculars relating to the parenting of tagged waypoints to the main waypoint canvas.
    
47. Fixed issue causing the FAL FN rifle to behave as a silenced weapon when it is in fact rather loud.
    
48. Fixed issue causing bullet proof vests and anti-venom to spawn again when loading a game even if they were taken allowing for infinite amounts of that item in their respective missions.
    
49. Fixed an issue causing game loading to fail and lose your inventory items if a new pickup item is added to the game loader registry and game is updated during a playthrough
    
50. Optimized the open world maps internal geometry memory resources by removing unnecessary hidden meshes.
    
51. Fixed issue causing "Noise Complaint" mission to become incompletable if players made a certain choice near the end of the mission.
    
52. Improved character #4 FPS hand fingernail texture.
    
53. Made achievement description for "All In A Day’s Work" clearer, specifying that you need to "Progress to the next mission by sleeping in your bed on Medium or Hard." as when playing on Easy you exclusively use the radio tower to progress to the next mission instead of the bed.
    
54. Fixed some floating geometry near the informal settlement outside zone B.
    
55. Optimized shader loading time with a newly baked Shader Variant Collection to preload shaders on game start.
    

The next update after this one is going to focus on improving the amount of things you can do with the Personal Computer located inside the ranger caravan including online shopping, an E-Mail inbox and a mini stock market game that you can use to generate income for yourself by buying and selling stocks from various organizations.

Thank you everybody for submitting all your feedback in the community forums and on the Discord. I have been listening closely and my appreciation for you all is endless! Keep it coming.

[h3]Regular weekly update addressing minor issues put forward by users on the Discord as well as Community forums.[/h3]

1. Made snake that appears near the toilet in Mission 2 now only appear when playing on "HARD" difficulty setting.
   
2. Improved aiming with iron sights when using the R4, FAL & Silenced SMG rifles.
   
3. Improved aiming with iron sights when using the Glock, ZC75 and M83 pistols.
   
4. Made third person bakkie camera mouse control adhere to the players current mouse sensitivity settings.
   
5. Added tooltips to crafting menu to show missing ingredient labels.
   
6. Added a ZC75 Pickup to Mission 4 as the weapon was previously only attainable in the shooting range and not during the story campaign.
   
7. Improved appearance of the Rare "Mufasa" Rifle only found in Chapter 2, as well as improved its ADS aiming alignment.
   
8. Spiders in caves are no longer mysteriously invincible.
   
9. Made leaderboards show the top 40 scores instead of only the top 20.
   
10. If your own score is part of the top 40, it will now be highlighted in red.
    
11. Game day/night time cycle length can now be set from the games menu. Minimum is 30 minutes, maximum is 120 minutes/2 hours. This is the amount of time it takes for 24 virtual hours in game to pass.
    
12. Made jackpot achievement trigger whenever you leave or save the game if your score is over 100,000 instead of only just when completing an enemy wave.
    
13. Made the tracking of animals in the tutorial easier and requiring less distance between them and the player in order to trigger the task completion.
    
14. Made tooltips regarding the braai and vehicle stay up longer the first time a player uses them.
    
15. Improved colliders in the shooting range for increased accuracy when testing weapons.
    
16. Some minor memory optimizations removing un-used elements in game scene hierarchy.
    
17. Improved "Bread" inventory item icon.
    
18. Small internal script optimizations and fixes.
    
19. Fixed a hole issue inside cave #2 that could cause you to plummet forever.
    
20. Fixed issue in both caves that caused items to infinitely spawn each time you entered without saving their state when you collected them.
    
21. Fixed rare/weird issue where going into caves caused your tent and identity document to double in number.
    
22. Added more information to hippo bonus mission tooltips to let players know to find a tranquilizer rifle by the waypoint instead of sometimes frantically searching the entire camp for R8000 to buy one first.
    
23. Made inventory item info text clearer.
    
24. Added numerical option selection for PC in caravan.
    
25. Added missing subtitles to final game section/boss fight.
    
26. Removed "Game Saved" message when in boss fight, tutorials or bonus missions when pressing quick-save since the game is not able to be saved during this time and the message is basically a lie.
    
27. Added a few more content creator Easter eggs.
    
28. Optimized R4 rifle GPU Draw Calls when using as a selected player weapon.
    
29. Fixed newly introduced issue causing ducks to not fly properly when scared by player as they did previously.
    
30. Completing the hippo bonus mission will now make the hippo totem used to access the mission from the shebeen in Mission 1 & 2 no longer appear to prevent players from unfairly farming points by repeating the mission over and over.
    
31. Fixed issue causing radio locator to not show nearest poacher waypoint in Chapter 2 when clearing out enemies.
    
32. Fixed issue causing subtitles to stick after completing game and also causing the final radio transmission prior to defeating the boss to play again.
    
33. Fixed the persisting issue of enemies sometimes spawning in trees or under rocks in Chapter 2.
    
34. Numerous small tweaks & fixes as always too small to be worth mentioning.
    
35. Fixed issues with excessively high frame rates in caves and other indoor areas even when using V-Sync
    
36. Slight tweaks to rhino stampede A.I. to not freeze when it cannot reach the players destination but to select a destination as close as possible to the players position to prevent unrealistic behavior when the player jumps to a place of safety during a stampede. Still a work in progress.
    
37. Added Steam Community Leaderboard support to show your high scores on your Steam profile.
    

[h3]Final Important Note:[/h3]
Found a rare scenario, where clearing out all the enemies in Chapter 2 would prevent players from finding and fighting the final boss [? waypoint] while also telling players they had finished the game without defeating the final boss or giving the final achievement. Also players who had already cleared out all the enemies in Chapter 2, would not be able to locate the final area and boss without starting a new game. For players stuck in this situation, the game will now detect if the final achievement for completing the game has not yet been achieved, and set the game back to the pre-completed state and allow players to locate the final boss by following the [?] waypoint using their radio.

[h2]Poached : Hunt The Hunter Early Access[/h2]

This is a fairly impactful update and the first official update after the Early Access campaign release. If you look at the update history on steam, you'll see that usually a 0.x release [as opposed to say a 0.7.x or even 0.7.x.x etc. release] is usually accompanied by a huge list of updates or at least a major feature change. In this case the list of changes not as big, as there are quite a few things added that I simply do not wish to spoil. That is because the 0.8 update focuses on making the games story campaign completable, complete with a new boss fight and an end to main story complete with even more twists and turns than in the "Chapter 1" part of the game. Without further ado, here are the update notes.

NOTE: Prior to launching any Early Access updates, I privately test the update with a small group of people in a separate branch, just to ensure the update you get is as bug free as possible but as always please report any issues you find to the community forums or the Discord and also let me know if you want to be a part of the private testing branch. Thank you everybody for all your reports and suggestions so far, it has been beyond helpful!

1. Game story campaign is now completable from chapter 2. I am of course going to flesh things out here a lot more, and add extra content - but the important thing is that the game can now come to a resolution and be "completed" including the achievement for completing the game. This is of course not including the 8 more additional side quest missions that are coming soon.
   
2. A FINAL "Boss Fight" of which I will not discuss here. Both this boss fight as well as the new story content listed above will continue to be fleshed out and added to in future updates, but I feel this is good enough to conclude the game as an enjoyable playable experience before new updates are launched.
   
3. Other fixes which I cannot list here as they would be total spoilers.
   
4. Improved leaderboard loading screen and increased top scores to top 20 instead of top 10.
   
5. Game SCORE is now also visible in the notepad just below current game time.
   
6. Fixed issue of procedural generation sometimes spawning items on top of trees.
   
7. Fixed issue of enemies in Chapter 2 sometimes spawning in trees.
   
8. Added horn to vehicle in order to scare animals. Press Left Mouse to use it while driving. Vehicle third person mode is now only accessed with Right Mouse, instead of both buttons.
   
9. Fixed an issue with the water from waterfall #3 being cut off by the rocks.
   
10. Fixed some issues with the AK-47 Iron-Sights/ADS alignment.
    
11. Vehicle now re-spawns more aggressively in Chapter 2. Can be respawned just by sleeping with the caravan or even every time you load a game.
    
12. Made the "Customize Controls" button much clearer and easier to see in the options menu.
    
13. Fixed the weirdly and incredibly specific issue of player being unable to get out of vehicle from third person if they previously broke the window before getting in.
    
14. Fixed issue of rifle choice often resetting back to the default choice in-between missions.
    
15. Added some YouTuber/Twitch streamer Easter eggs to pay tribute to all those helping promote the game as of late.
    
16. Fixed issue of inventory U.I. being too bright without a darkened background when player selects the "Disable H.U.D." option in the menu.
    
17. Slightly improved accuracy of front Iron-Sights for Glock Pistol.
    
18. Fixed typo in Mission 5 mission objective. ["Wharehouse"]
    
19. Optimized some internal script update calls, memory & garbage collection.
    
20. Temporarily deactivated the "mechanic" waypoint pointing to nowhere. [This will show the location where you will customize your vehicle in future.]
    
21. Fixed issue causing bakkie to shoot up into the air if player jump and crouches into the back part.
    
22. Numerous other small fixes & improvements.
    

Future updates planned for this year will include:

• New minigamessuch as a golf course, fishing, bakkie racing, A.T.V. racing, new ostrich racing courses and more.
  
• A new vehicle shop for customizing your vehicles appearance as well as buying new parts.
  
• An online shop to buy new enhancements for your camp such as improved braais or even upgrading your domicile.
  
• New optional side quests that can be accessed via a whiteboard in your domicile to be played optionally at any time performing tasks such as helping put out brush wildfires, taking tourists on game drives, helping rhinos find a mate and more!
  
• Many additional necessary polishes such as menu button highlighting, new animals, improved enemy and animal A.I. as well as general bug fixing and more!
  

[h2]Poached : Hunt The Hunter V0.7.9.3 E.A.[/h2] Early Access Release

1. Made impact sounds more balanced.
   
2. Improved female character FPS arm textures.
   
3. Removed white lines that were appearing on some grass textures.
   
4. New parody brands for beers, chips, etc.
   
5. Improved shebeen ceiling textures.
   
6. Fixed some beer can materials in shebeen that were overly metallic.
   
7. Added tooltip for billiard/white ball for pool table in shebeen.
   
8. Added cheat code to enable/disable mods section in main menu. Available on request.
   
9. Fixed mysteriously shiny broken bark texture on one of the log entities.
   
10. Fixed issue causing game to be stuck if you purchased a tranquilizer rifle before mission 3 where you need to collect a sniper rifle in order to proceed to the next mission point.
    
11. Added new explanations for Chapter 2/Perpetual sandbox mode which is the current end of the Campaign for now, as it was confusing various players.
    
12. Improved Enemy A.I.
    
13. Improved Enemy animation slightly.
    
14. Fixed missing colliders on certain Giraffes.
    
15. Changed shooting range start position.
    
16. Added inverted mouse option.
    
17. Fixed incorrect bolt position on FAL.
    
18. Optimized Occlusion Culling.
    
19. Fixed numerous holes in terrain.
    
20. Fixed enemy A.I. blindspot issues caused by foliage zones in mission 1
    
21. Cleaned up un-used script references and modules.
    
22. Fixed all missing script/component references in game.
    
23. Many script optimizations and reordering operands for better performance.
    
24. Added support for steam leaderboards instead of the built in SQL system currently being used in the demo.
    
25. Fixed issue with difficulty damage modifiers not working. (Hard is much harder now!)
    
26. Fixed internal 'Screen position out of view frustum (screen pos 682.000000, 385.000000) (Camera rect 0 0 1364 767)' errors when loading a new level.
    
27. Fixed issue with secret level warp snail giving the skip level achievement.
    
28. Fixed area in final sandbox mission where player could get stuck in the truck.
    
29. Tent/Fire "Crafting Ghosts" now no longer cast shadows.
    
30. Fixed issue of the "End of Early Access Campaign/Chapter 1" screen proceeding before player has time to read it fully.
    
31. Fixed some floating foliage in Mission 1.
    
32. Mafadi Mining mercenaries Hard-Hats will now always fall off if a headshot is made.
    
33. Improved snake artwork in "Piet Of The Jungle" arcade mini-game.
    
34. Made achievement for sleeping in a tent at night for 8 hours also work if you sleep for more than 8 hours.
    
35. Fixed some major issues in outskirt map zone "H"
    
36. Fixed issues with player being able to intersect salmon pond. Fishing mini game coming here soon.
    
37. Fixed some cut off notes in Mission 6.
    
38. Fixed issues with water reflections syncing to current day/night environmental lighting color.
    
39. Optimized transform position/rotation dual settings when setting both position and rotation at the same time.
    
40. Fixed some bugs caused by shooting out bakkie windows and then trying to drive it.
    
41. Improved bakkie third person camera.
    
42. Updated all rain/particle system API's to use the new standard.
    
43. Fixed issue with zebras & goats walking into bakkie and flipping it over when stationary
    
44. Fixed issue causing weapon/sniper scope to be un-usable on high FOV settings.
    
45. Added waypoint for bed indicator when needing to proceed to next mission.
    
46. Numerous small fixes and improvements.
    

Super happy to finally be releasing this game into Early Access!
Please report any bugs/issues you find on our Steam Community forum or on our discord.