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Primal Carnage: Extinction News

St. Patrick's Returns!

It's here again! Saint Patrick's Day has returned and brings with it an assortment of visually stunning items infused with the colour green.

That's what it's all about right?
Some sort of plant-related celebration?
That's why there's all the 3-leaf clovers, and the drinking... no...?



Anyway, if you check out the store today there's some great deals on classic emerald finery, from returning mutations to classic veridian skins. And there's more...


[h3]Lucky Drops are here again![/h3]



From today until the next game update, Lucky Drops have been enabled! The drop pool is now saturated with St. Patrick's event themed items and you can earn twice the maximum random item drops while playing the game.

These items are only here once a year, so don't miss out!


[h3]Major Update Coming Soon...[/h3]



We're currently testing the March update for Primal Carnage: Extinction, and it's a doozy. From new mechanics for Flyers to reworking the spawn system, here are some of the highlights:
  • New manual divebomb ability for Tupandactylus
  • Reworked grab ability for Pteranodon
  • Updates to roar abilities for Oviraptor and Ceratosaurus
  • Brand new weapon shaders
  • Weapon sound overhauls for certain guns
  • Entirely revamped Colourizer menu for customizing dinosaur skin tones
  • Team shuffle when the server swaps to a brand new map
  • Filesize optimizations and performance improvements


All this and more will be coming your way soon, and we're looking forward to porting these latest improvements and upgrades to the PlayStation platform as well.

Until next time, happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!
-The Primal Carnage Team

Happy Valentine's Day!

We hope everyone has a great Valentine's Day today!

While the development team is hard at work on the next game patch, we have a whole bunch of classic items coming back to the store with some seductive discounts.

Check out the details below and read on for a hint at what's next for Primal Carnage: Extinction...


[h3]Valentines Store Event[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We have dozens of returning skins, mutations and taunts back today. From the spiky Saevus Rex to the adorably cute Spitter Rolling Taunt, this week's selection shows off some of the lighter side of making things extinct.

Pick up a Valentine's Gift to share the love, showering up to 24 other players on the server with presents and receiving a special item as a thankyou for your generosity!


[h3]Up Next: Flyer Focus[/h3]



Currently in testing are some fairly big adjustments to the flying classes. The next update for Extinction will be a major TLC pass on Pteranodon and particularly Tupandactylus. We're experimenting with changes to how Ptera grabbing works to make it a bit more reliable and trying to find a sweet spot with making them a tad more maneuverable without speeding them up too much.

Tupandactylus will (finally) be receiving its secondary ability with the next game update, giving it both a new attack and a way to get a burst of speed quickly. We'll be testing it soon and can't wait to share more about how it will work. Needless to say, you'll want to keep an eye on the sky.


[h3]Cooking & Console[/h3]



As mentioned previously, we're getting close to having our new game cooking process ready to go. This is a different way of packaging PCE's game files, which is much more efficient. Our latest test puts the full game install size at 9.6GB using the new cooker. That's more than 20GB saved!

We hope to have the new package cooking process ready to go for the Flyer event in early March. It's an important change that benefits the upcoming PS4 rework as well, optimizing things for both platforms. The team is currently investigating ways of clawing back even more performance on PlayStation 4 in addition to the new packaging process, and those adjustments will have positive impacts for everyone.

With any luck we'll be able to tell you more about all of the additions and improvements coming to console soon, and hope to make an official announcement in the next couple of months about when these will be landing. For now... we have a lot of programming to do.


[h3]Happy Valentine's Day![/h3]

Thankyou for playing!
Keep an eye out, as we'll have Featured Class Weeks returning after Valentines has concluded.

See you again in March for the flyer update!
-The Primal Carnage Team

Patch 2.7.6

A new patch for Primal Carnage: Extinction is now available for download on Steam.

Version 2.7.6 changes how the game handles rounds.
To ensure players get to take a turn on both teams, the map now reloads itself at the end of a round.

The server keeps track of who was on each team previously, so after the map has reloaded, players are then swapped teams depending on which side they played last time. The new setup stops people being stuck playing the same faction over and over again and side-steps certain bugs.

This is a change that we had been considering for a long time. Many issues we've historically encountered would only appear on second round, where everything would attempt to reset mid-game. The new setup forces the map to reload, essentially a hard reset of the game logic between turns, which helps avoid a lot of problems.

In addition to this new setup for TDM, GTTC and CTE, today's patch fixes several issues that had been reported after the recent January Update.

[h3]Full Change Log[/h3]

  • Updated logic for round reset to force a map reload
  • Added server-side tracking of team composition that persists to next match
  • Fixed server browser occasionally being out of sync / sending clients to the wrong destination

  • PC-Waterlogged: more collison fixes, can no longer phase through the rear wall
  • PC-Waterlogged: updated customization area, various optimizations
  • PC-Waterlogged: added new water troughs and flooded floors for dinos to jump in if they're on fire

  • Adjusted flamesaw hit detection to have a wider side to side reach
  • Increased analog stick default deadzones to 20, adjust these in the options menu if you have drift

  • Fixed an issue with Royal Alpha Dilo spikes
  • Taunts are now cancelled when you enter customization, to prevent ice skating around as much
  • Fixed colour sliders moving on their own when switching between classes in Customization
  • Moved main menu options higher to avoid accidentally clicking the social buttons below
  • Heavy melee camera shake is now affected by the Screen Shake ON/OFF option
  • Fixed server boolean options failing in some cases


[h3]New Server Options[/h3]

MatchScoreTarget is now hardcoded in the regular competitive modes to allow the new auto team swap and map loading system to work. There are two new server config options added this update:

  • bRepeatMapsTwice
  • bSwapTeamsBetweenMatches


These options must remain enabled to ensure players are swapped teams automatically after playing once as each side. Disabling the RepeatMapsTwice option will only have one "round" on each map before swapping to a completely new map.


[h3]Until Next Time![/h3]

We're going to be pretty busy bringing the PlayStation side of things up to date for quite a while, though we may have some smaller patches to fix and improve certain areas on PC in the next few months.

There's also a lovely collection of heart-stopping Valentines items coming back again in February, and more classic skins, mutations and outfits will be returning for St. Patrick's Day and Easter!

Thank you all for playing!
-The Primal Carnage Team

Winter Finale and January Update

A new patch for Primal Carnage: Extinction is now available on Steam!

Today's patch includes numerous gameplay tweaks and fixes, including improvements to melee hit detection and human weapon accuracy.

It also marks the end of our special festive event, with the Winter Finale store rotation...

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Check out the highlights or scroll to the bottom for a full list of changes...

[h3]Melee Madness[/h3]



We introduced melee abilities for all long guns with the December update, unfortunately they didn't function as reliably as we'd hoped. As of the January patch we've implemented a new way of doing melee traces for weapons, which is much more consistent and efficient. That means no more being unable to whack a dino that you've netted to finish it off because you just.. can't... quite.. reach it.

Finally, managing to land a killing blow using your primary weapon's melee ability will now return a good chunk of your stamina back, as a reward for pulling off such a feat. So if you were forced to use your last ounce of energy to take your enemy down, you are now newly reinvigorated with bloodlust!


[h3]Chainsaw Carnage[/h3]

Speaking of melee improvements... the Pyro has a new ability!



When using the chainsaw, he now has a degree of damage mitigation. Certain attacks from smaller dinosaurs only deal half their regular damage so long as he keeps the blade spinning to block them. Raptor slashes, Cryo and Bruiser bites are among the damage types he can resist. So, if you see a Pyro revving their saw, you might want to think twice before engaging!

Larger attacks such as Bruiser *secondaries* are unaffected and it won't help him against Tyrants. His new ability is also balanced out by the saw overheating slightly faster than it did previously, and the chainsaw does not have such a long reach now.

After receiving positive feedback during testing, we're interested to see how this update to Pyro's toolkit plays out in the wild!


[h3]Muliticoloured Menagerie[/h3]

A new addition to the customization screen for dinosaurs is the ability to modify the colour tone of your dinosaur skin, adjusting the hue spectrum and intensity. This works for the majority of dinosaur skins and allows a lot of new possiblities when tweaking your dino.



How noticeable the difference is varies from skin to skin. A black and white raptor won't suddenly turn red if you adjust the slider, because there were no colours to adjust to begin with. You can also change the colour of dinosaur eyes with this update to customization!



Many skins use the eye layer of the dino shader for their glow effects, so adjusting eye colour tone on those may change the colour of their glow (with the exception of Ultimate skins).

We hope you like this colourful new feature! This is just our first pass at implementing a wider range of colour customization into Primal, we'll be continuing to improve the feature and are also considering similar adjustment options for human clothing and hair colour in future.


[h3]January Store Rotation[/h3]



The winter event has concluded, but we still have a few frosty friends showing up this week such as the simply magnificent Aurora Spinosaurus and majestic Ice King Rex.



Since we opened up submissions for Royal Dilo variants recently we've had a flood of great designs appearing on the Workshop (link). Today we have two new Royal Dilo skin sets - the Generation 3 triple pack and an Alpha Royal double-pack who bear noble fringes running down their spines.



For the humans, we have a unique remodel for the Desert Eagle, a "premium weapon skin" that gives it a radically different appearance. Pick up the Antique Desert Eagle Bodykit in-store today...



[h3]Freebies![/h3]

As you may have seen in the announcement video, we have a fresh collection of free drops entering the game with the January update....



These new drops range from the wild and wonderful Howling Cerato, to the understated Cooler Pachycephalosaurus, to the intricate Paisley Double Barrel and even a cheerful Winter Bobble Hat.



All of these will start dropping soon in-game so keep an eye out!


[h3]First Signs of Spring[/h3]

You may notice some new foliage types on a few maps with this patch. We're looking to improve the visual variety in certain areas going forward, so that everywhere doesn't look green and brown if you squint. There were some sprinklings of flowers in the past, but areas like Airbase now have vast fields in bloom to help break up the monotony.



Expect to see more varieties of interesting plant life decorating the world as we get deeper into the year!


[h3]What's New In 2022[/h3]

We have a lot of ideas on how to improve and expand Primal Carnage: Extinction in future. Some of these we've mentioned before such as Sandbox Mode, but for the time being we're going to be focusing on polishing and fixing up issues with the game as it stands. These fixes and tweaks will be making their way to PlayStation later this year and will be taking up the bulk of our time.

Having said that, our rough goals for the first half of the year include:

  • Finally finishing the Tupandactylus class, giving it a unique secondary ability
  • Polishing off major revamps of the Contingency & Marsh maps
  • Adding more customization options for humans and dinosaurs
  • Further updates to Survival mode gameplay
  • Fine tuning dinosaur camera controls to be smoother
  • Implementing even more gamepad options and control schemes
  • Improving network efficiency and optimizing game download size


That last one is important, as we hope to eventually deliver smaller bug fix patches that do not require large downloads. We managed to reduced the install size of the game from ~30GB to below ~10GB in our testing, and once the issues with the new build process are resolved we hope to roll it out ASAP.

We'll also be continuing to do small visual improvements wherever possible, such as adding new color grading to differentiate each map and updating one or two of our older dinosaur models. One of these is the classic feathered raptor base model. You can see a work in progress render of the new mesh below...



In addition to all that's going on with the game itself, we're also still hoping to launch a Primal Carnage Merch Store this year that will sell official posters and apparel inspired by the game. We're already working with community creators to make some beautiful artwork you'll be able to wear and drink from before too long if all goes well.



That about does it for now. You can read all of the January update changes in full below.

Until next time!
-The Primal Carnage Team



[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

[h3]HUMANS[/h3]
  • 200% increase in maximum camera turn speed for humans
  • Fixed a bug where scoped weapons were using an overly long fire interval when aiming

  • Pyro now receives 50% less damage from non-tyrant primary melee attacks when revving the chainsaw

  • List of damage types that are reduced when chainsawing:

    • TupaPeck
    • PteraPeck
    • CarnotaurusBite
    • RaptorBite
    • OviraptorBite
    • CryolophosaurusBite
  • Reduced time til saw overheats to 2.75 secs
  • Decreased range of chainsaw

  • Bleed damage from heavy melee now behaves the same as bleed damage from bear traps for consistency

  • Heavy melee attacks can now be used instantly after firing a gun
  • Implemented a new trace method for heavy melee hit detection
  • Humans now receive a jolt of stamina back when they successfully kill a dino using heavy melee
  • Updated assault rifle first person melee animation
  • Fixed muzzleflash appearing in 3rd person when using heavy melee
  • Fixed heavy melee timing interfering with fire interval for m4 when scoped
  • Made sure fire interval for m4 is the same whether aiming or not
  • Should now be able to reload immediately after assault cannon fire animation has completed

  • Reduced ammo for bow secondary fire from 6 to 3
  • Reduced unscoped (hip-fire) spread on sniper rifles
  • Increased crouched spread for sniper rifles slightly
  • Doubled the damage falloff distance for sniper rifles

  • Increased maximum range for the following guns:
    assault rilfe, double barrel, dual pistols, m4, shotguns, snipers

  • Fixed a reloading issue with shotgun
  • Updated third person trapper pistols run animation
  • Updated flamethrower over-pressure particle effect to be a more intense blue burst
  • More intense generic explosion light effect

  • Increased arming time of thrown zap traps
  • Reduced time between zaps for zap traps
  • Reduced damage radius / shock radius of zap traps
  • Reduced trigger delay of bear traps snapping shut
  • Small reduction to scale of land mine model
  • Timed grenades can now be thrown further
  • Fixed being able to throw your throwables while holding LMB or RMB
  • Fixed throwable items phasing through dino healing corpses


[h3]MAPS[/h3]
  • PC-Airbase: test adding more varieties of flowers
  • PC-Airbase: updated helipad material to be two-sided

  • PC-Borealis: adjustments to collision in some areas
  • PC-Borealis: blocked humans from jumping on top of a shipping crate
  • PC-Borealis: added more detailed ice meshes to cave area
  • PC-Borealis: lethal icicles are now placed above the water outlet
  • PC-Borealis: various content optimizations

  • PC-DesertionPoint: fixed humans climbing on top of rock formation

  • PC-Docks: possible fix for a CTE weapons blocker still being present in TDM mode

  • PC-Snowbound: fixed having dirt footsteps instead of snow steps in many areas

  • PC-Transfer: prevented a human exploit (the truck)
  • PC-Transfer- fixed an area lacking collision around the outside of one of the acid pits

  • PC-UtilityBase: increased tree density outside the main compound and added new foliage assets

  • PC-Waterlogged: numerous collision fixes and exploit fixes
  • PC-Waterlogged: optimized stylized lighting and shaders, details pass
  • PC-Waterlogged: fixed player spawn points not working correctly

  • PC-TheFalls: added more varieties of flowers
  • PC-TheFalls: now uses a toned down version of Airbase's color grading

  • GTTC-Docks: dinosaur player starts for point B have been moved further back
  • GTTC-Docks: enabled Airbase style colour grading

  • GTTC-Ruthless: returned the Brachis to the summer background vista with new sequences

  • Made resupply amounts consistent for health and ammo pickups throughout all TDM maps
  • Fixed overly long respawn times for health and ammo pickups on several TDM levels

  • Tweaks to post processing on Ubase and DesertionPoint
  • Tyrants no longer roar over and over again on the main menu
  • Main menu map optimizations
  • Updated a few environment textures


[h3]DINOSAURS[/h3]
  • Adjusted charged spit gravity scaling / arc, now travels further
  • Slowed down speed of spit projectiles, fully charged spit should be much easier to hit now with larger globules at the tip

  • Carnotaurus now accelerates to sprint speed more quickly
  • Tyrants now take a little longer to accelerate to max sprint speed

  • Camera shake now appears when receiving heavy melee damage as dinosaurs

  • Updated Tyrant footstep particles for walking through snow
  • Softened Tyrant footstep sounds when walking on snow
  • Added sounds to Pachy digging taunt
  • Fixed a stutter in the Novaraptor run animation
  • Minor fixup for Acro bite animation

  • Added option to customize colour tint and saturation of dinosaur eyes + skin texture
  • Fixed several Rex and Carno skins that did not have the correct specular maps applied


[h3]OTHER[/h3]
  • Optimized waterfall particles
  • Updated rotation and position offsets for a few cosmetic items

  • Added official social links to the main menu, click to open in Steam overlay
  • Fixed a crash that can sometimes occur while in class selection
  • Possible fix for crashing when autobalanced

  • Added option to disable screenshake (may not apply to all camera effects yet)
  • Deprecated support for 32bit operating systems

  • Updated sorting algorithm for scoreboard:
    - players with zero contribution are now placed at the bottom
    - sorting order now takes kill assists into account

Winter Patch 2.7.1



A new patch is now available for Primal Carnage: Extinction on Steam, addressing several minor issues with the recently released Winter Update.

[h2]Change Notes:[/h2]
  • boosted the maximum camera sensitivity scale
  • humans now use their normal knife melee if they don't have enough stamina for heavy melee
  • fixed Spaz-12 heavy melee not working
  • increased range of assault rifle heavy melee attack
  • fixed light melee interrupting heavy melee
  • disabled being able to scope while reloading
  • raised flaregun ironsights height
  • adjusted position of m4 ironsights view

  • tweaked settings on spawn points for Waterlogged map
  • fixed a human exploit area on Waterlogged

  • fixed missing rancorous acro mutation
  • fixed degrootum acro using incorrect model
  • updated spotted hyena nova feather mesh
  • updated fallen tupa with enhanced texture masks
  • fixed jolly jumper commando not being able to use cosmetic attachments

  • increased timeout period for connecting to economy
  • added a server config option: NoRotation=true/false for setting up a single map server

[h2]Happy Holidays![/h2]



That's all, folks. The Winter Event is now in full-swing with all seasonal items activated! We'll be putting up a couple of 24/7 Waterlogged servers so people can easily check out the new map as well.

The snowy festivities will last into mid-January, when we'll be back with further game refinements and optimizations. Until then, we hope everybody has a great holiday!

See you next year,
-The Primal Carnage Team



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