The Isle News

[h2]Filipe - Lead Programmer[/h2]
This month I’ve primarily been focused on the Elder system, which the current roster is having their curves put in for players who meet the requirements once they become adult. We had to replace the growth curve system to allow more entries, which will help us to easily edit and balance normal and prime elders, but also allow even more expansions in the future if we want that. All the curves have been set up and the Elders morph targets are also functional. We will be setting up some UI systems and specific animations to use in the elder stage and after that it can go to QA for some balance testing.

Rex crush still had bug work to do but it seems to have run out of edge cases that we can find so it seems this will be ready almost directly after trike’s release.

Besides those bugs, I also worked on the human locomotion and traversal systems. The focus was to establish a base locomotion system to use, but in a way that we can easily maintain and continue to develop. Most importantly we wanted to include features from Epic and support modding in the future.

That's it for now. See you soon.


[h2]Ariel - Programmer[/h2]
I started the month with a bit more work on the climbing features of herrera and hypsi, which now also made it to QA testing and will be released alongside the triceratops. I’ve also altered the ceratopsians’ thrash attack to make its activation much more strict on quick double clicks, so there should be far less accidental activations, while still being able to quickly use it whenever desired.

Afterwards I continued work on the pteranodon’s new takeoff and fixed some issues related to thermals and slipstreams. The end of my month has me starting on a feature that will provide a pteranodon (and other animals) with a new and more interactive way to hunt small animals and fish, but it’s still in early stages as of now.


[h2]Tapwing - 2D Artist[/h2]
I’ve had more plants on my plate for this week as well as some edit concepts for the Giga elder model. It’s got some fan favorite elements from the older giga model that’s making a comeback in its more wizened age.

On the plants side, I've been working on what’s essentially ‘living barbed wire’, the very angry looking Razorbark plant. It needs to attach itself just about anywhere (within reason) which is why I gave it little graspers that the plant could use to adhere to walls or other not-so-upright surfaces. The other idea it needed to get across was “try to pass through me and you’re in for a bad time” It needed to be thick and absolutely covered in spikes, even the bark of the stem I wanted to look jagged and unpleasant to touch.


Some of you might remember the other one on this list. An old concept that’s been floating around is getting its name and home, the Arborburst Redwood. I’ve always pictured the plant having some influence from the type-H strain which is where the extreme growth and armoured appearance would come from, also why the tree bares some resemblance to the Metallivore plant.








[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month I have been rounding out Triceratops’ suite of sounds. The remaining adult sounds have been created, including sparring which has been implemented, horns and all; just wrapping up some attenuation and volume so these big brutes can be heard from afar when shoving one another around. I have made my way through the majority of the juvenile Triceratops sounds as well with only its sparring and a few other erroneous sounds remaining. It's been quite the undertaking but the Triceratops is very soon to be audio complete after some testing and quality of life passes over its sound suite.

I have also added sounds to Hypsilophodon’s new latched animations and made some improvements to the setup of the new foliage audio system, making more adjustments to the behaviour that dictates how volume, the mix of layers and attenuations scale with the speed and size of your dinosaur.


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
Originally, our plan for the horde test was to evaluate the Triceratops on its own, then the Tyrannosaurus, and finally both together. However, we’ve decided to skip directly to testing them both together following the release of the Triceratops to the evrima branch. This adjustment is essential, as the additional stage was determined to be counterproductive given how long the initial testing has taken. While we'll continue to refine them after their release, they need to be in a solid state at launch.

QA has been busy this month focusing primarily on the Triceratops, ensuring that all of its mechanics are functioning correctly with the existing systems. While it does share the same ability as the Diabloceratops (sparring), it weighs a heck of a lot more once it goes beyond its subadult phase, meaning that we had to check that its interactions past this point made sense for an animal of that size. We’re comfortable that the Triceratops is working as intended in our latest QA build and will be prepping it for its official evrima release, which we are aiming to have released sometime next week.

In other news, we’re going to be sending this update with some other new features and quality of life changes, including the long-awaited Hypsilophodon Climbing feature.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Acting almost like a hybrid between the Pteranodon latching and Herrerasaurus climbing systems, the Hypsilophodon is now capable of latching onto objects, but with the difference that it cannot move as freely as the Herrerasaurus can. This requires the hyspi to have some consideration on where it’s latching on to. Once latched, the player can jump and re-latch to another point; this utilizes its charged jump ability and launching itself to even greater heights. Taking your time between jumps will preserve your stamina and knowing which paths to take during a vertical ascent are key. This feature is the foundation for us to expand on its other potential systems, such as being able to create nests within trees.


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
We’ve been toiling pretty hard getting things properly in order with hordetesting. Which has been challenging and taken longer than we’d have liked unfortunately. Classic case of surprise bugginess. But we grabbed a shoe and went to work.

The team has expanded, so there’re new faces, internal shifts, various system/mechanic/interaction tweaks/overhauls etc so it has been quite busy. Many of those changes should roll out with the release of triceratops. Who’s getting its missing sounds plugged in so we can get that umph in there. It’s a big animal with big bellows. There’s still more to do yet but now we’ve got more hands…errr EARS!

We’ve been making some combat changes here and there. A few are changes to recovery times on abilities that should allow you to respond in combat in ways more appropriate to the animal so you won’t feel as “stuck” in certain instances. Those alterations will be doled out over time since we’ll be going on a case by case basis but we won’t change all of those instances should they be placed there deliberately. But for the instances we agree are unintended and break the intended flow, we’ll be looking to take those shackles off, free up your movement a bit and make some abilities/interactions more responsive.

The animation team has been crushing it. They’re tearing through avaceratops animations in record time. Really goes a long way when the dinosaurs behave and the avaceratops has been a gem to work with but it won’t have anything to do with their demeanor on the island. I’d be careful tangling with one. The animation team has also largely completed the non-unique animations for the baryonyx, so it will be entering its holding pen awaiting its introduction onto the island alongside the austroraptor, allosaurus and kentrosaurus. I’m exceptionally proud of and impressed by their efforts and they should be as well. I’ll scrounge up some clips for you guys and give you a peek at the process of rig checking for the oviraptor and a test animation for the ovlet. Be good to each other. Toodles!

[h2]Ariel - Programmer[/h2]
This month I mainly worked on the climbing features for the hypsilophodon and herrerasaurus. The former will be able to latch on to walls and jump around, but not climb around freely like the herrerasaurus. It will also be able to use the spit ability while latched and use it to knock down other climbing dinosaurs. I also had to make some changes in the background for the charged jump to work together with the aimed jump using RMB. As for the herrerasaurus it's getting some visual flair, latching on to walls on its side will first put it into a horizontal orientation, from where it can transition into the normal climbing mode. This should help make it not suddenly snap into the latched pose after some jumps.

As usual there were also various bug fixes and improvements too. I fixed some issues related to the ceratopsians' thrash changes and also made some changes to the stagger mechanic because the triceratops was taking very long to recover. I've also seen some photos of very impressive construction work involving hypsilophodon nests, but I'm sorry to say that they will no longer be possible. We also have some balance changes in progress for the ceratosaurus's bacteria that I should get to the end of soon.


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month I’ve been getting through a lot of triceratops’ vocal sounds and have completed the design for a majority of the adult sounds. Ranging from basic idle and generic vocal sounds used for mechanics such as the sniff and resting. From completing the pain sounds, making subtler vocalisations like eating and drinking, to longer and more complex designs such as its courting vocalisations (among many others). The designs are focused on conveying the size and mass of this creature whilst expanding on the sound palette established from the calls and attacks designed previously. With just a couple of the base mechanics left to design for, as well as any bespoke sounds needed for Triceratops’ sparring, the adult vocalisations are nearly rounded out.

I also had another look at the setup for the foliage sounds, making improvements to scaling between both size ranges and the varying speeds, adjusting volume and pitch modulation, the sounds used and the attenuation ranges that dynamically change based on those parameters to have a more audibly distinct differentiation.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
This month has primarily revolved around building the labs, which will soon be featured in the game. It contains a wide variety of areas to explore, from the armory, to various offices, testing rooms and much more. I won’t go too much into detail, instead I’ll show you.


This is just a small glimpse as the area is fully finished and ready to be implemented once the time comes. Here you can see an image of a top down layout showing the highest floor, but it also gives you an idea about the size of the facility.



Alongside the labs I’ve also been working on some other additions to the tunnels, a bunch of minor fixes and the infirmary section which will be revealed in due time.

That’s pretty much it, see you next month!


[h2]Tapwing - 2D Artist [/h2]

Watching grass grow is boring, but you might find it a tad unnerving when watching these plants grow.

This month I’ve been very focused on drawing up the concepts for strain plants. So far there’s the Metallivore. Conceptualized to break down (As the name suggests) the less organic things you’d find around the island. I played with a few different styles of branch and grippers for the plant, some skeletal-like with filaments that corrode what they’re attached to, some a little more subtly armoured with adhesive grips

The one we wound up going with was a segmented ‘Strangler fig’ inspired “ivy”. Something that could crawl along the ground, burrow and reemerge to wrap around metallic objects, break them down and leave a frame of what once there. Creating a kind of plant ghost of modern structures or objects.

The other plant is a little more devious. This is the Mendys. A sneaky carnivorous thing that’s helpful one moment and dangerous the next if you’re not careful. With that in mind the design needed to be somewhat inconspicuous. The leaves were to be reminiscent of our ivy that’s going to be used on buildings and such in the future, but the flowers and the grippers are where the strangeness begins. ‘Cat's claw creeper’ was used as inspiration for the hunting mechanism of the plant. Little claws that would run along the nodes of the Mendy's vine turning it into living barbed wire ready to wrap around any animals that’s gotten too comfortable around it. The only indicator of the plant’s intentions is the strange flower that changes colour when it’s about to strike.


[h2]Fred - 2D Artist[/h2]
Marty and I have been quietly cranking out skin patterns for many of our playable animals for the last few months. Many hours going into rigorous details in order to get them to feel real and believable while looking interesting and fun. From old faces to brand new ones, we’re hard at work bringing them that much closer to you to be able to tinker and create interesting skins.

For now I’ll only show a few, and I’ll let you all have fun figuring out what the sneak peeks are of:




[h2]Bryan - Animator[/h2]
For me, most of this month has been lots of little things going on. I’ve been working with the Austroraptor, getting it sorted out for implementation and doing some Kentrosaurus locomotion.

We want Kentrosaurus to be in a good spot speed-wise, so it’s a little bit faster than the Stegosaurus because we know how you Stegosaurus players are.

I’ve also been working on Elder morphs for all our current roster as well as all the upcoming beasties who have been rigged.

That and crab walkies.


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
We’re now on the verge of releasing our latest build to the hordetest for the Triceratops – this will be the last patch for Triceratops before we move onto the Tyrannosaurus testing, which I know you are all eagerly waiting for.

Over the past month QA has been finding all manner of bugs within the hordetest, from simple issues such as finding holes in the map that players have been getting stuck in, people being knocked off by bushes when latching with a pounce, fish not spawning in certain areas of the map, to some attacks dealing knockdowns but no damage at all! Rest assured, the patch we will be releasing within the next few days will be rectifying a lot of those issues and bringing some much-needed performance improvements.

Tyrannosaurus is coming along very well now and will be ready for testing publicly very soon. It has an ambush speed mechanic, similar to the one present in legacy, without the need to crouch first. It gives the character increased sprint speed at the cost of a higher stamina drain, perfect for catching those that you have been able to sneak up on. Coupling this with its crush ability makes for a deadly combination.

The Tyrannosaurs’ crush ability responds differently to its target, depending on their weight. If a creature is small enough, such as a Dryosaurus, the ability will grab and pick them up, allowing the Tyrannosaurus to thrash them against the ground, instantly killing the target. Those that are killed this way will see their bodies being slammed into the ground, which makes for a brutal display of the character’s strength. These execution-style kills are something that we’ve talked about potentially extending to other species as well.

When knocking down a medium-sized creature, such as the Ceratosaurus, the crush will knock them down to the ground, allowing the Tyrannosaurus to maul them. This does a tremendous amount of damage and more often than not, will kill the target or leave it with critically low health.
Hitting a larger creature will result in the crush ability either staggering the target or, if too large simply, dealing damage.

Those that have been setup to interact with sparring will instead enter that state with the Tyrannosaurus, such as a Triceratops locking its horns within its jaws, making the players enter push/pull interaction. As you’ll see in the following video… It might need some more time in the oven.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
Gonna keep this one kinda short as there’s much to do. This month has been a lot of tweaks made all around. We’re still hammering away on the issues presented on the hordetest. Animation changes, map changes, balance changes, optimization changes, AI changes and many others. So, while that’s being a lengthy cook, we’re working on other things which, is customary.

The austroraptor is looking pretty sleek. Definitely has a different look and feel to it compared to the others on the roster in my opinion. We did have to correct a hierarchy issue that was fairly annoying but we knocked it out pretty quickly when it came into focus. Mostly just reexporting and reimporting. But tedium consumes time all the same. Anyway, it’s a very lithe animal so I’m curious to see how it measures up. Especially in your hands.

I was able to get some more work in on the hypsilophodon. Not only can it climb but it can also spit while latched. Which makes them even more annoying than they already are. But more than that, it assists the hypsilophodon in defense of its treetop nests. Which may be of interest to other island inhabitants.

The pteranodon is still in the works. Additional aerial animations to help gameplay feel more alive when you’re flying as well as terrestrial characterization, movement and attacks, to help players feel more comfortable and capable on the ground.

Kentrosaurus is wandering around in its holding pen awaiting release on the island. That will transpire once some of the other new additions have a firm footing. Herrera is getting some latch adjustments to make place to place traversal more dynamic when on the go. To make leaping from tree to tree a swifter experience if your timing and aim are good.

Baryonyx is well on its way to being animation complete. Just another set or two and we’ll be in a nice position. Of the 3 spinosaurids we have, it’s the most agile and flexible. Able to do things the others may not excel at in the same fashion. Each should feel unique to one another despite overlapping territories.

Also more work on humans. Really looking forward to giving them the full focus they need as I’ve mentioned before. Pleased with the results thus far though. There’s also more work on elders, skins, environment models and more. Till next time, take care.

[h2]Filipe - Lead Programmer[/h2]
I completed the main setup for Rex montages. The Deinosuchus needs some special treatment due to its morph target setup and animations. The core systems for Rex and Trike are now mostly finished, with the Crush ability undergoing some bug-fixing, leaving sparring as the final step for full release.

I have been working on a variety of systems. There are now interactive foliage sounds which trigger when animals move through larger vegetation. This really helps communicate dinosaur activity to players that they were missing before just because they couldn’t see one another.

Besides that, I also have been working on the Allosaurus, primarily it´s special ability that allows them to pull a victim down or pull themselves on top of it, depending on victim size. The main setup for this is done, allowing for balance to be set up before we move into bugfixes and visuals.

And, some more changes have been done server side to improve its stability and performance with good results so far. Plus several bug fixes in general. See you!


[h2]Ariel - Programmer[/h2]
I spent much of the month working on the triceratops, fixing various issues that came up and also making some improvements to sparring in general. The sidestep in particular is more responsive and it is now easier to follow up with other abilities or to disengage. The thrash attack is now activated by double-clicking LMB and can be done from all forms of locomotion. It might take some getting used to at first, but it provides far better control.

I also made various improvements and fixes here and there. Many of the dinosaurs are getting fixed to feel more responsive from how quickly they can move out of their resting states to movements after using certain attacks. I also made the camera movement smoother when sitting down or standing up. Finally I also worked a bit on the hypsilophodon’s climbing feature.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
This month has been all about the tunnels, aka GUTS. Who would’ve guessed? This month I’ve built the whole construction to be able to be used mostly with simplicity, while keeping the amount of pieces as low as it can get, to not introduce any unnecessary complexity where we in fact don’t need any.

This does not mean that the tunnels are simple in nature, but rather than its assembly has been brought down to be as simple as it could to assemble, giving Jace, our level designer, a lot of room and freedom to maneuver, while giving him ample time to decorate the actual interior of the GUTS connections.

These models are for now called “corrective pieces” as they make sure that we allow full scale of verticality and horizontality during building, such as various pieces of staircase, diagonal rooms, ramps, etc.

Alongside those, I’ve made short pieces of the tunnels to allow very interesting mixing such as 2 tunnels or even X tunnels side by side, without breaking the grid.



Very simple tunnel layout made in less that 20 min with our pieces:


Some Diagonal Pieces:


New Elevator lobby piece for the tunnels:


And finally I’ve begun work on a massive new HUB which isn’t the industrial one, who, I won’t for now disclose much, and will sadly have to wait for the next dev blog.
I will leave with this though:


That is it for me this month!


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month I have been finishing off Triceratops vocal call sounds, firstly working on final adjustments to the design of the adult vocal sounds and then working on the mixdown for each and ensuring that each call sounds weighty and powerful at both full and out of breath stages.

I have completed both the subadult and juvenile vocals as well, making sure each vocal was both a similar length to match the new animations and the adult vocal as well as carrying the aesthetic design of the adult vocals but reflecting the growth stage for each.

I also finalised the implementation of the vocals, making sure that the vocals both crossfade cleanly across all the growth stages and that pitch modulation for each vocal of the individual growth stages is manipulated so that the transition at each individual growth value is clean, clear and sounds appropriate.

Finally I have now moved on to working on the rest of Trike’s vocal suite starting with its directional attack sounds.Looking forward to working on the rest of its suite and bringing the Trike to life.


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
This will be short and sweet since the hordetest has been dominating our focus largely. Thanks again for those of you that have participated. We’ve been spending time bug fixing and keeping a watchful eye on how the triceratops is performing. There needs to be some adjustments here and there, like with nightvision but largely with triceratops we are pretty satisfied with how the creature landed. However there is still more work to be done to ensure the triceratops and tyrannosaurus are able to have their epic showdown in a fashion befitting two of the most popular dinosaurs of all time.

So, while all that bug smashing stuff is happening, the rest of the team is working on other things. From knocking out skins for Acrocanthosaurus and Suchomimus, to elder related work on Spinosaurus, Quetzalcoatlus and Parasaurolophus. I have been doing some animation prep work for things like baryonyx’s defensive stance, avaceratops attacks, hypsilophodon climb finalization, dryosaurus springboarding, kentrosaurus defensive stance, parasaurolophus revisiting, omniraptor crouch pursuit, charge jump and more. Austroraptor is rebelling a little bit but nothing we can’t handle. All in all we’re going to be touching up a fair amount of the current roster so they can all nestle into their niches and mechanics for the foreseeable future.

That’s pretty much it for this month. Bugs, changes, tweaks and the steady standard. I’ll drop some pics and clips though. See ya!

[h2]Filipe - Lead Programmer[/h2]
It’s been another busy month with a primary focus on the new playables like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops and Allosaurus. The T-Rex’s signature mechanic, Crush, is nearing completion, with only a few animation adjustments left to finalize.

Another mechanic for sub-adult and older tyrannosaurs is a short, but effective speed burst to aid in ambushes. It has worked fairly well during internal tests, but we’ll be continuing to monitor its impact after release. We may also extend this ability to other animals, depending on its performance and balance, otherwise removed if deemed problematic.

In addition, I’ll soon be wrapping up the Throw ability for the T-Rex. This is primarily a gore-focused mechanic rather than a damage-dealing one, allowing players to throw corpses or enemies that are already guaranteed to die once released, which is an extension of the Crush ability but for smaller prey.

I also worked on Spawn Codes, which allows you to invite your friends to spawn alongside you. This feature is already available in the ongoing Hordetest. The Cannibalistic mutation now comes with unique skin colors. Once the mutation is active, your chosen skin will be overridden by a specific color set that indicates to others your dietary preference.

Besides that I also added an option to swap asset sex from within the skin creator panel, which has been a long requested QoL change that became necessary with the introduction of spawn codes.

Thermals and Slipstreams are also finalized and are exclusive to flying animals. While these systems could have even more uses in future, we currently have no plans beyond their current intended functionality.

To wrap things up, I’ve implemented new admin commands, made various improvements and fixes to pounce (including collision and animations), addressed animation issues for Triceratops, and resolved various other bugs across different areas.

See you next time!


[h2]Amarok - Programmer[/h2]
Hello! Most of the last month I've been working on AI which includes Carnotaurus, Tenontosaurus, Omniraptor, Dryosaurus and Deer along with a new behaviour debugging tool that works with the new AI logic system. I also spent some time working on an extension of the engines navigation system for pathing around water and dynamic obstacles.

Bug fixing for the Psittacosaurus and its object carrying feature. I’ve been prototyping a new system for grass trails which are basically just flattened or grass being pushed down as characters walk through it. There are lots of challenges with this in terms of replication, culling and performance. I'm looking forward to finishing the production version of that soon.

I’ve also been working on the new replay filters which are designed for replays to give a more cinematic or immersive feeling to replays. Reworked some of the audio for animals to have “attenuation” meaning instead of fixed distances for an animal to “hear” a player the perception adheres to the sounds actual attenuation, This also comes with the advantage of more granular control of when and how audio is played. Investigations are also underway for various issues and server performance on hordetesting.

I’ve also added a small QoL change that's worth mentioning, If you are disconnected for some reason or the game crashes you can now reconnect without needing to queue again. This is entirely dependent on how long you take to restart the game, if the game detects an active session when you get back to the main menu it will prompt you to reconnect.



[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
This month I’m happy to reveal our next, massive structure on the island. The original and monstrous DTA (Dinosaur Transportation Area). While it's been a large undertaking, it is now ready to be used in-game, and it features almost twice the size of our regular dock DTA. It is meant to house the largest of the dinosaurs for further transportation and has massive fences and sally ports to keep everything contained.



Next up, I’ve been working hard with Jace on some minor river fixes that came with the new waterfall area, however, most importantly I was and will be on the GUTS assembly for the interior to finally bring it full circle to life. I won’t go too much into detail right now but rather give you really nice snippets of what we are building here, in which all of the areas and hallways will connect to various hubs and GUTS parts.



That is all for this month, I hope you enjoy the snippets. Until next time.


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
At the beginning of this month after a bit of time away at the end of January I finally finished off Maiasaura with a new pinned vocalisation that better shows the distress with more visceral screams throughout the animation.

I spent some time readjusting footstep attenuation ranges to travel to more appropriate ranges for each size and speed, giving crouch and sprint their own ranges opposed to sharing with walk and trot respectively. The ranges have been reduced slightly to work together with the introduction of new audio for moving through foliage. With the reduced footstep ranges this will give more opportunity for stealth play to be a viable tactic, if you are considering how you approach. The foliage sounds will have a range that carries further so you will need to be aware of how much noise you and others around you are producing in highly vegetated areas. This will also play nicely into the Gallimimus’ paranoia mechanic so it is harder to tell whether the sounds you are hearing are real or not.
After recording a large amount of foliage source material I have created an audio system that dynamically changes the sound of foliage based on the size and speed of your Dinosaur, small crouching dinosaurs will produce a light rustle of leaves whereas large sprinting dinosaurs will create a cacophony of snapping stems and thick swooshing. The snapping sounds will also change based on whether the plant you are moving through has a wood or plant based trunk or if it even has a trunk at all.

For the rest of the month I have been working on Triceratops. Starting with adding in the legacy vocal call sounds as placeholder so it is not silent until its new vocals are complete, as well as adding footstep sounds to its basic locomotion animations. Next, I did a preliminary pass on animations adding more footsteps where necessary as well as foley sounds for all animations. As vocal sounds are introduced for all the various mechanics and animations these foley sounds will be methodically tightened up in terms of sound quality, volume, sync etc.

I have also been working on new designs for its adult stages’ calls maintaining the essence of the legacy calls but giving them the usual glow up. However, some changes are being made to the overall design principle, giving the adult stage an emphasis on a booming quality to really sell its stature and power and keeping the higher elements of the original sounds for its subadult phase. I’m looking forward to hearing these out on The Isle!


[h2]Tapwing - 2D Artist[/h2]
I’ve been busy with a few things lately. Outside of some icon and logo edits or variations, the modeling/concept team and I have been chipping away at the elder designs for our dinosaur roster, trying to make sure each one has its own little characteristics so not all the elders age in exactly the same way.

Outside of the dinosaurs, I’ve gotten a chance to tackle updating one of our older legacy concepts; the tissoplastic reaper!



This was one of my favourite concepts from before I joined the team, so I very much wanted to keep the overall character of the reaper, with its needle laden skin and bat-like appearance.

One feature that didn’t quite make the cut though were the scythe claws that used to protrude from the side of the hands. While it did make for a neat silhouette, its existence just started to look impractical, particularly from a mobility standpoint where an oversized spike coming out of the hand is simply begging to get caught on everything in any remotely tight space. Besides, with talon-like claws and forearms loaded with thorns, it has everything it needs to rip its prey to shreds if it gets the jump on you.

I did try drawing up a smaller “collapsible” version of the scythe claw, but it remains to be seen if it will make the cut.

Scythe-claw aside, we didn’t want to just take away a feature from the reaper without putting something back. After some thought, the idea of adding a membrane to the underarm was pitched with the idea that we might try giving it a gliding ability to allow the reaper more range for surprise attacks from high up places.


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
I hope that you are all enjoying the first iteration of the spawn code system, which was proving to be a bit of a pain to get to work initially, but it seems it’s finally almost there. During this time, we’ve been looking at feedback on how this mechanic can be improved and we’re constantly making changes to it. Speaking of, just recently Filipe made it so that Stream Mode hides the spawn codes from being visible (while still able to be copied), which should hopefully assist your favourite streamers against those pesky snipers!

QA have spent the majority of this month with a large focus on some of our most anticipated playables to date, the Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops are very rapidly becoming ready to be moved over to our horde testing branch. As you may have heard, we will be staggering the introduction of these characters, first testing the Triceratops on its own, then the Tyrannosaurus on its own, before finally testing them simultaneously. The reason for the staggered approach is to have our full-focus on one playable at a time, increasing the number of people testing the individual species, resulting in more bugs caught and for ease of balancing against the rest of the roster. Here’s just a handful of issues that we ran into:


Troodon causing Rex to grow even larger:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Rex taking head fracture to the next level:

Rex turning other characters into a skipping rope:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Omniraptors shrugging off Triceratops horns:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Triceratops abomination:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thank you to all of those that are participating in the latest horde test, reporting issues using our community bug form, and continuing to assist us with making the experience as smooth as possible - we couldn’t do it without you. Here are a couple of highlights from the community reports:

Gallimimus turning upside down when falling with a fractured leg:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Bouncy waterfalls:
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[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
So there’s Hordetesting going on this month. Thank you to everyone that has participated. There’s some additional content that will eventually make it into hordetesting over time but for now we appreciate your feedback.

We’ve been making some tweaks to playables across the board that will slowly start appearing over time. Some changes from mild to wild, in no particular order for ceratosaurus, herrerasaurus, omniraptor, troodon, maiasaura and others. All of that is alongside the trike and rex sparring which is looking quite nice. Hopefully we can get some visuals going on that for you guys. We’re trying to preserve the ability for the trike to also be able to spar with the diablo at various lifestages even if at certain sizes it becomes no contest. But until those sizes, who “wins” is up in the air.

I’m very pleased with the work our animation team has been churning out. Trike and Rex have some filler animations I’ve been creating as testing dictates. The visuals we want to use and the visuals we need to use are not always the same thing unfortunately, so I have to make sure the visuals are lining up with the mechanics as best they can and within time constraints, which takes a bit of trial and error. For instance, what animations the creatures transition into and out of based on what abilities they used prior and which they use next. It’s a whole thing.

The rest of the animation team has been cooking with gas. Not only have they knocked out their contributions for tyrannosaurus, triceratops, allosaurus, austroraptor and kentrosaurus but they have also made quick work of a new roster wide feature that will be coming soon enough. Provided it works the way we want it to. Should help some of the tricky terrain less tricky. If that weren’t enough, they have also begun animating the baryonyx which I’m so excited to see come to life.

Do keep in mind though that animation is but one rung on the ladder of completion. So being animation complete is not the same as being production complete and not indicative of a release. Skin, material, tech animation, sound, programming and balance setup all contribute heavily to the completion of a playable. So lots of support for the other departments as they are all important.

Speaking of departments, I’ve got a few things I can share:

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[h2]Filipe - Lead Programmer[/h2]
Hope you all had a great holiday season with your loved ones. After spending time with family and friends it’s time to get back to work.

The main ability of the allosaurus has received more attention this month. While the main code is the same as some existing mechanics, visually the allosaurus looks very different when performing the action, so some adjustments are specifically made to accommodate this. We are in the phase of getting all the animations playing as they should and then we can move into QA testing and balancing.

The tyrannosaurus also required some additional work. There was some experimentation with mechanics to better balance its movement and hunting capabilities during its different life stages. Keep in mind these are additional mechanics focused on balancing; the pre-existing ones you already know about are unchanged.

Migration and Patrol Zones now support custom shapes, whereas previously they could only be made with generic ones such as Box or Sphere. Now those areas can be customized to just about any shape. This is very useful since most biomes and areas of the map will never be accurate using sphere or box shapes. This will help in making the areas more accurate to the map landscape overall while interacting with the migrations, but also allows all plants to spawn more accurately, avoiding edge cases with plants and trees spawning in areas of no traffic or even unreachable locations.

Lastly, the “Friend Spawn Code” is under testing with QA. I believe the system is close to fully functional, but we are also working on resolving a few possible exploits before it goes out.

See you guys next time!


[h2]Bryan - Animator[/h2]
I’ve been spending pretty much all of January going through the upcoming roster to make sure everyone has their bone meshes and rib meat. And then horribly mutilating them to do the gore morphs.


It’s an Allosaurus so he’ll walk it off and be just fine.

I’ve also started doing the Elder morphs, which have been a long time coming now so you can all reenact the closing scene of Saving Private Ryan together.

Lastly, with animation well under way for Kentrosaurus among the animation team, I’ve started rigging up the Baryonyx.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
This month I’ve been focused on making the final assets for the GUTS, and have been working on making smaller kits that fill out some coastal locations.



The GUTS received further additions this month with additional entry types. It features a sally port, a small control center for operating the doors and the security system.


In addition, some love was shown to our older parts of the kit and the new enclosure fence received some much needed 45 inward and outward fencing to make it feel more natural and assist in building.

And finally to top it all off, I’ve been working on the holding pen for sauropods and strains. I’ll hold off on showing until I’m happy with it, but when it’s ready I’ll have it passed through Phase Three. It’s a hulking structure that feels like the interior area could be its own level. And it’s almost, if not, twice the size of the DTA.


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
It’s good to be back! I took some time over the holiday to get into some playtesting on the official servers to identify many of the current major issues in the game. While this is far from a complete list, here’s a quick rundown of the issues I will be looking to have addressed over the next few patches:

• Plants causing input lockups sometimes when eating them.
  
• Plants disappearing but still being scentable.
  
• Persistent rain sounds, despite it being clear weather.
  
• General audio choppiness.
  
• Omniraptors being kicked when dismounting from a pounce. (Fixed as of the latest patch!)
  
• Grappled characters being able to break out from the pounce, even when pinned.
  
• Cannibal mutation not appearing despite conditions being met.
  
• Fish AI not spawning in certain rivers/lakes.
  
• Various replay issues. Timer not going down, replay not being visible, etc.
  
• DLSS screen tearing.
  
• Dilophosaurus hallucinations sometimes being invisible.
  

Be sure to send in a bug report if you believe I’m missing anything substantial, but the above is what stood out to me the most.

QA has hit the ground running upon returning from the holidays, focused primarily on all of the community bug reports that we amassed during the break; we had over 600 reports to sift through! So, thanks to those of you that took the extra time to submit a bug report, they’ve been a great help as always.

As well as looking at the community reports, we’ve been busy running into our own issues, such as the beipiaosaurus becoming a little too enthusiastic when dolphin diving:

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We experienced some difficulty testing a corpse related bug recently due to a certain AI animal. It should be known that while the psittacosaurus is meant to carry small corpses of comparable size, we hadn’t intended it to take ceratosaurus’ corpse bully niche:

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Hopefully it doesn’t start chuffing!

Then there’s whatever is happening with this poor soul:

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As Filipe mentioned, we’ve just been given access to the new Spawn Code system which is making great progress with each testing session. Being able to spawn in with your friends will be a huge benefit to players that want to group up, while still not disrupting the randomness of spawning that we want to retain. It’s a very simple system that works as follows:

1. The player joins a server, selects their species, and navigates to their group menu upon spawning.
   
2. On the group menu, the player will find a “Spawn Code” which lasts for 5 minutes. They can copy it and send it to their friends.
   
3. A friend can navigate to the “Eggs and Spawn Codes” menu and input the code. Upon being accepted by the code owner, the friend will then be able to customize their own character’s skin, before spawning in near the player that sent the code.
   

The following was taken from the latest QA build, which is still heavily WIP:




[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
Hope you all have had a decent start to the new year. While this month and last month were pretty short, the amount of stuff we’ve been up to is anything but minimal. I spent most of January getting back on the saddle checking in with each department to reassess their needs and having a bunch of meetings on what our first quarter will look like. Some topics of conversation range from rounding out Elder mechanics, spawn codes and more.


We’ve been doing a fair bit of QoL changes and at last returning to work on some of our shelved features for some of the existing dinosaurs, varying in degree. The hypsi and its ability to move about the treetops is a good example. The herrera’s climbing being a bit more dynamic, troodon getting some assistance performing its role etc. I had a bit of time on my hands so I was able to scrounge up some clips. Everything is subject to change of course.

The rex, trike, allo, austro and kentro are all looking pretty good and patiently awaiting their individual debuts. We’re pushing towards a hordetest fairly soon to get some much needed changes in your hands and if luck be on our side, maybe a bit more. The rex and trike need a handful of animations related to sparring before they will be fully ready for testing, the allosaurus needs some setting up and mechanic refinement while the austro and kentro await setup.

If all that weren’t enough, the baryonyx is next. Animation work never ceases.

















































































We also have some minor features that we plan to implement to help the entire roster navigate precarious terrain with more ease as well as a new feature that should allow certain non jumping carnivores the ability to be proficient under more circumstances.

That’s all for now. See you in the hordetest!