DinoSystem News

But starting a new game is always recommended.


FULL CHANGELOG






This is a feature I've always wanted to add to the game, and, although it was not a priority, I decided to invest some time into it anyway, and I don't regret it!

Basically, you can now name any zone of the island: just press N (you can change the key in the settings menu), type a name in the textbox and left click on the map area you want to assign that name to. This is especially useful in Survival mode, as you may want to give important zones a name to remember them when you come back, considering they could change drastically during the game.



Also, when starting a new game, you now have the option to give all map zones a default name defined by its distance from the sea (sea, coast, midland, inland), you can always change them later if you want to.








Finally, the character can now hold multiple items in each hand, including non-weapon items in the left hand (the hand previously used just to hold and use weapons). The number of items each hand is capable of holding depends on the item size, but this aspect will be expanded in future updates, with the addition on the item weight system.








The character can now get hurt by performing some actions with sharpen or blunt tools (such as Axe, Sharpstone and Stone).
Now, some of you could complain the game is already unforgiving as it is, but consider this: the chance to get hurt is, by default, very low, and is gradually reduced by the skill related to the performed action (lvl 100 skill, no chance). Also, when triggering, the hurt event is not very severe, it could give a -3 Health hit and 30% Bleeding at max (only when using the Axe, otherwise it's always lower). Getting this low Bleeding can help increasing the First Aid skill, which previously was very hard to skill up, considering that Bleeding was obtainable only by fighting with dangerous dinosaurs (which would lead to death in most cases)!



So yeah, this addition, although seems making the game harder, should in fact make it more balanced, especially considering this update already makes changes that decrease the difficulty (holding more items with hands).






As always there are several additional tweaks, improvements and fixes in this update, check the full changelog for the complete list!






Last month (24th and 25th June) I've been in Genova, Italy, to attend to the "Game Happens!" event for indipendent videogames. It has been a great experience for me, considering I've been all alone in my little room developing DinoSystem during the last 2 years, and meeting other people who share my same passion is extremely rare in my every day life!



I'm looking forward to be part of more events in the future, as I've got great feedback and it has been an awesome experience.




Dan

FULL CHANGELOG


This is a minor update to expand the newerly added Taming system and make some additional improvements, tweaks and fixes. It's much smaller than what you're used to, but I'm going to be once again fully operational soon, as I'm back to Capri from my trip!




Tomorrow 24th and Saturday 25th June I'll be in Genova to attend to "Game Happens!" and present DinoSystem. I'll have the chance to finally meet other developers and players, instead of interacting with then exclusively from the internet as I did in the last 2 years from my little room!
I can't hide this is really exciting for me and I'm looking forward to show my project, in which I put so much effort and expectations in the last years and in the future to come.



If you're interested in the event, here you will find all the info about it. I hope to see some of you in Genova soon! (please let me know down in the comments if you're coming!).





Daniel

FULL CHANGELOG




To tame a baby Troodon, drop a meat nearby and wait, if your Zoology skill is high enough and other conditions are met, it will be tamed, you can check the ingame guide for more info, as a new guide section has been added explaining how taming works.

This new system is very basic, but will be expanded in future updates with the ability to use the tamed animals for hunting and other activities. Also, only Troodons can be tamed for now.









AI patterns have been improved to make animals more responsive to both environment and player actions. For example, when a Triceratops eats, it will quickly check what is its next priority instead of staying still for a while, same when player attacks.

Predators prey-hunt priority is also reworked to allow them to select preys based on prey population, instead of going for the nearest/easiest prey. They also hunt youngs of their species if they're over-populated. This means they will effectively act as a population regulation agent, instead of leading animals to total extinction.

Along with the AI improvements, there are some vegetation reproduction changes that should improve the long-term plant eaters-vegeration balance as well.





As always, there are several little additional improvements in this update that you can read in the full changelog.

This update is smaller than usual and also the next one will probably be: reason is this is a bad period for me for personal reason, so I decided to go to Milan and stay there with a friend to distract myself. I'm still working on the game and I will return to full time development as I'm back to Capri (where I live) next month. Please do not think even for a moment I'm losing interest in the game, as it's and will be my focus for many months to come, at least until it's complete (and even after that)!



Dan

Saves from previous versions are automatically DELETED as Steam updates the game, as they're incompatible with the new version. Do not update if you want to finish a previous playthrough first!


FULL CHANGELOG




Added a new game creation parameter: Jagging, which decides how "jagged" the island coastline is, therefore producing more varied and interesting islands. Setting Jagging to 0 creates the same oval shaped island of before this update, while setting it to 100% generates a very jagged coastline, with peninsulas and gulfs:







Note that increasing Jagging will indirectly reduce the island total landmass.





Generated islands, regardless of the option selected, are now roughly 25% bigger than before, which when setting size 150% is a huge increase! This to both counter balance the fact that the new Jagging parameter reduces the final landmass, and to produce more immersive islands, since performance are getting better as the game is optimized.





Rain sound has now two different sounds combined depending on the rain intensity, also rain effect improved:



Added wind gusts happening from time to time, momentarly increasing wind speed and triggering a wind whistle sound.





You can take a nap instead of sleeping, which makes you wake up much sooner.





Character info screen now also shows the current character, zoomed and with his/her gear equipped:







- Reduced damage from MILD starvation, which means you will start getting real damage when your fat reserves are very low, making it easier to survive until you get very skinny.
- Rebalanced food kcal / proteins content, proteins are now much higher.
- Proteins are absorbed/digested much more quickly, which makes it easier for the body to "burn" them to produce energy when calories are low.
- Drink more water with one sip: getting thirst quenched used to require too many sips.
- Dropping with Q now drops one item at time, and now if both hands are free, also drops the gear on your back.
- Buried eggs must be unearthed before being able to take/eat them, which requires some time and effort.
- Skills decay rate now scales by 100% with Stamina (instead of 50%), this means that at 100% Stamina decay won't happen. To compensate this, base decay raised a bit, but overall it is much slower now, especially if you manage to sleep well.
- Melee attack with LMB (left mouse) or during Mouse Turn mode, improved in precision and responsiveness.
- Ranged attack made more fluid and responsive.
- Many more tweaks to the Survival Mode!





- Added a floating text appearing when the player attacks (including chopping trees) showing the damage dealt:



- Animals produce more eggs, both to reduce the extinction chances and to use room from the larger map.
- Some objects decay rate reduced even further.
- Graphics improvements to fog and reflections.
- Huge optimizations, especially in fullscreen mode.
- Tons of fixes.


As always, make sure to read the full changelog for the complete list of changes!



Dan

But it's still advised to start a new game, as some changes could potentially corrupt the save.


VIDEO DEVLOG FULL CHANGELOG



Terrain texture have been upscaled by ~50%, along with some changes in the color palette. There are also improvements in weather effects, like snowflakes made bigger and more visible, enhanced rainbow and sunlight reflections.








Yes, it's true! It's finally possible to remap most of the game controls from the settings menu, including all the Survival Mode actions. In addition to this, most of the default control keys have been changed to reflect the keys used for similiar actions in other games; remember that now you can always change them at will!



One of the most common problems reported by players are the controls: they are difficult to learn and counter intuitive. Although I'm doing my best to improve the situation with little tweaks here and there, in order to effectively change the movements I should made deep changes in the whole system, which is pretty unlikely to happen. Therefore I hope the ability to remap the controls will help improve the situation, at least partially!




Main menu background has been replaced by high quality art from the artist Lukas Jevcak. The new background perfectly recreates the sense of mystery, wonder and loneliness felt during the game, along with the wild, inspiring environment.



The main menu music has been replaced by a longer, more inspiring track. In addition to this, game generation and loading phases pick a random screenshot of the game as background, instead of a black screen.




You have now the option to start as a bald or semi-bald character! Hair will gradually grow during the game, based on your conditions (as in real life, hair can grow more quickly based on some factors like metabolism and nutrition).



This still has no impact on the actual game, and you still can't cut them, but in future I'll expand this system to be more organically intertwined with the game mechanics.




Animals will now avoid (or try avoiding) obstacles from distance, not only when hitting them. This prevents them from always breaking your walls or hitting each other like bumper cars. In addition, several ecology balance tweaks should improve dinosaurs survival on the long term, although the work on this front is still in progress.

About the Taming system that I announced for this update, unfortunately I had to scrap part of the work done so far on it as I wasn't satisfied with it, so it will come with the next update if everything goes well this time!




Needless to say you should check the full changelog under the Survival tab to get a clearer idea of the amount of tweaks done to the Survival Mode.

Just to name a few, Stomach Fullness "cap" relation with metabolism is now inverted: the faster the metabolism, the higher the cap, allowing you to eat more. It also scales partially with Body Fat, which means that being fat urges you to eat more (and get even fatter).

Major rework of how maximum Health and Breath are calculated based on Metabolism, Nutrition/Hydration, body stats and skills.

Most of you will love this one: Building a Thatch or Walls now require less resources (especially wall).

Many, many other things...




This update brings the game to a level of polish that leads me to consider it closer to the full version than the initial alpha version: in few words, it's now over 50% "complete". I've used the quotes because DinoSystem will never be complete, as I'll continue improving it over and over, but there must be a time when I say "ok, it's a proper game now!".

Now let me stop dreaming and back to work, there is still a huge amount of features and content to add!


As always, please report any bugs, deliver suggestions, and help me share the word about DinoSystem!



Dan