Hunters Inc News

Greetings Hunters!

For Update #4 we have focused on significantly improving the experience of fighting our first boss monster and improving the difficulty level of the game.

Some of you may remember the predecessor to Razan, the crocodile formerly known as the Sandsnapper. Razan is the first boss we started working on, and it has gone through a number of iterations. In this update we made significant improvements to boss encounters and want to start giving the monsters a life and personality of their own - hence the name change!

Razan is a giant lizard that inhabits the sulphur plains. Thematically it is all about acid and uses its acid immunity to hunt down and destroy its prey. While hunting it, you will need to avoid its acid pools, be mindful of how close you are to melting your armor and avoid its acidic bile projectiles. Killing the Razan will give you the crafting materials need to upgrade your weapons with acidic properties that will be useful against other boss monsters.

We hope you enjoy it - as always if you like to talk with us or have any questions about the game, we look forward to chatting with you on our Discord Channel



[h2]NEW FEATURES[/h2]

[h3]Razan Hunt[/h3]

• Tuned mission to have a single, significantly tougher monster (was previously 3 small monsters)
  
• Added new direct acid spit attack
  
• Acid no longer does immediate damage, instead applies the acid status effect
  
• Reduced duration and size of spawned acid pools
  
• Killing Razan unlocks an acid upgrade for the sword that applies acid status effect to enemies
  

[h3]Boss Monster Behaviour[/h3]

• Monsters can now relocate to a new area on the map when they reach a certain damage threshold
  
• Boss will throw players off their back when relocating
  
• Monsters can now become enraged - increasing attack speed and damage for a fixed period of time
  
• Monsters can now break through objects when relocating to a new area
  

[h3]Game Difficulty[/h3]

• Added system to dynamically scale difficulty based on player count (updates every time a player leaves / joins a hunt)
  
• Solo players now have 3 lives. Being knocked out will respawn you back at base camp.
  
• Reduced Spider Queen to 3 from 4
  
• Reduced number of spiders spawned during Spider Queen hunt
  
• Scale number of mob spiders based on player count
  

[h3]Status Effects[/h3]

• Implemented a feature where status effects are applied after X seconds of build up, and then trigger an event upon filling the bar.
  In this update standing in acid pools will cause ACID BURN to accumulate, trigger damage over time when the bar reaches max. Stay out of acid for X seconds to make the bar start dissapating.

[h3]Other Features[/h3]

• Added an "Unstuck" button to manually respawn players at camp. Will not be in shipping game but intended to reduce the need to restart missions in the event of bugs during pre-release. Might by glitchy
  

[h2]Other Updates and Improvements[/h2]

[h3]World & Hub[/h3]

• Increase skirt on nav mesh to improve monster pathing
  
• Pass of boss monster spawn locations
  
• Pass of all world modules adding more collectibles
  
• Decoration pass on all world modules
  
• Added placeholder class selection station to hub
  
• Fixed collision issues in hub
  

[h3]Miscellaneous[/h3]

• Reduced spear count to 3 and increase the damage they do
  
• Made it easier to stand on spears
  
• Make Tracking Bone Pile bigger and more obvious
  
• Increased Aggro range on spider
  
• Decreased spider damage
  
• Improved wall jump
  
• Made breakable objects able to be mantled up
  
• Improved performance from acid pools
  

[h3]UI & UX[/h3]

• Updated map screen to show recommended player count for difficulties
  
• Added highlight to show currently selected difficulty
  
• Updated main menu w/ new logo, background and buttons
  
• Updated upsell screen
  
• Updated welcome message w/ Japanese and Brazilian Localisation
  
• Updated avatar icons in HUD
  
• Updated loading screen images
  
• Updated mission preview image for Spider Queen mission
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed After Action Report sometimes missing for clients
  
• Fixed crash caused by throwing meat on the ground
  
• Fix for Razan using an old material
  

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• [Common] Aggressive fog on lower graphics settings (medium and lower)
  
• [Common] Using unstuck feature may cause issues with UI updating
  
• [Common] Hitting your team mate with the acid upgrade causes them to see the poison damage status effect but not take damage
  
• [Rare] Game may crash on reviving team mates
  
• [Rare] Dying directly Spider Queen will cause players to get stuck inside the body
  
• [Rare] Returning to hub may cause upgrade station to be missing content. To fix leave and rejoin session
  

[h3]UI / UX Improvements[/h3]

• After action report now shows all stats for each individual player
  
• Second pass on the weapon upgrade screen
  
• Added wishlist buttons to pause menu and on game exit
  
• Players can now quit to desktop
  
• Gold reward for completing missions now shown in upgrade screen
  

[h3]Performance Improvements[/h3]

• Optimized order in which content is loaded in, making it faster and preventing players staring into he void
  
• Improved Loading times
  

[h3]Other Improvements[/h3]

• Added main menu music
  
• Added Hub music (multiple tracks)
  
• Updated ping SFX
  
• Added 4 new modules to the world to increase variety in mission generation
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed issue where AAR would break after playing multiple missions back to back
  
• Fix for sword swing input not working after throwing grenade
  
• Fix for enemy HP bars being present on mission start and visible regardless of range / state
  
• Fix for issue where occasionally clients would load in invisible and be invulnerable
  

[h3]Visual Improvements[/h3]

• Added gradient effect to landscape models to improve readability
  
• Added dirt mask to orc and world structures to make them less jarring
  
• Tweaked default fog / color grading values
  
• Improved out of bounds wall
  

[h3]Boss Improvements - Sandsnapper [/h3]

• Re-contextualised boss to be more acid themed.
  
• Now shoots acid that creates acid pools that deal damage over time
  
• Spin attack will now breaks rocks
  

[h3]Boss Improvements - Spider Queen[/h3]

• Cutting off legs now reduces Spider Queen move speed
  

[h3]UI / UX Improvements[/h3]

• Resized and Re-organised HUD to be less intrusive
  
• Implemented tech to interact with whatever item in currently under the cursor in the event of interact volumes overlapping (for example, Orkyte crystal that spawns next to bone pile)
  
• Added wishlist / discord / feed back buttons into main menus
  
• Added upsell screen to communicate future features
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• No longer lose partial stamina on dash
  
• Fix tier 2 weapon upgrade
  
• Fixed issue where F interact prompt would stop animating for host
  
• Fixed crash caused by throwing spear at vine wall
  

Listen up you lot!

This week we spent some time making the world of Hunters Inc. feel a bit more fleshed out and lived in. In update 3 you'll find:

• Orc Attachments! Orcs now look significantly more orc-y
  
• New Fracture actors with improved destruction effects. More stuff to break
  
• New environment modules and more foliage throughout
  
• Endemic Life. The world is now populated with some creatures that
• don't* want to kill you.
  

• Improved Hub Spawn Points
  
• Updated visuals on session join screen
  
• Ongoing after after report improvements including animated levelling up bar fill and stat tracking (still WIP)
  
• Stamina tuning. Players start with less stamina and apples now stack up to x2
  
• Improved mission select screen
  
• Padded out the upgrade tree with more things to buy
  
• Clients can now dismiss the after action report
  

• Fix for collider issues with spear that was stuck in enemy
  
• Fixed issue where croco wouldn't get stunned on hitting boulders
  
• Fix for regular spiders not dropping bones
  

• Upgrade screen may not show upgrades for clients after returning to the hub from a mission. In that scenario you can re-host the session and buy upgrades before you depart on a mission.
  
• Occasional issues with save / loading of data after playing multiple missions back to back.