Devblog #5: Production Insights

[h2]Filipe - Lead Programmer[/h2]
The battle for performance continues in both client and server fronts, it is not over yet, but we are definitely winning! Several bug fixes this time, with some related to old friends of ours, especially Pounce and Drag. Pounce is still WIP after this update, we are also reworking several things with the mechanic, including new animations. Also, as we’re talking about reworking stuff. We’ve decided to rework our Ability system to prevent any Animation from ever running on the server side, which has resulted in significant performance improvements. Some people may wonder how it's going to work for replication. But that’s just part of the magic, we won't say anything :P

Besides all that and bug fixing, I’ve lost count of how many bugs we’ve already fixed. I also worked
on fixing and improving upon a variety of UI elements and additional mechanics that will be added to the game soon, such as chunks of meat from corpses that you can't carry or drag. Fancy audio mixers per species and size differences affecting how sound should be perceived. Buffs, Debuffs and other things that are still being discussed internally, but we’ll talk about those later on. See you all next time!


[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
First of all I finished the post process volumes for the rivers. It took several tries to get right and we had to adjust some rivers to fix some graphical artifacts, but in the end they now act like you’d expect them to.

You might remember me writing about how I improved the performance of footprint scent clouds. I decided to rework it once again and this time it performs even better. The engine has a feature that lets you render identical meshes for very little cost, which I put into use. It requires a more complex management of the footprints, but it was definitely worth it.

My main addition this time is the new utah attack that we teased previously. It works similarly to the Tenonto’s claw attack in the sense that it turns you towards the camera direction whilst adding some movement. The big difference between them is that the Utah moves significantly faster. In the Tenonto’s case I was able to get away with using the standard movement logic, but now I’ve had to add a new state to support this kind of behaviour, which also benefits the claw attack you’re already familiar with. The control scheme went through some iterations, the winner being to press your left mouse button whilst holding the alt key. This ties nicely into the free look mode, you can aim your attack efficiently without changing your movement direction and then execute it. I also made the Tenonto claw attack deal damage during the turning sweep if you aim behind yourself, giving you a better fighting chance against nimble predators.

Other than various bug fixes I spent much of my time looking into our performance issues and remedying them. We made many improvements on the whole so the game will be much more stable and enjoyable.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environment Modeler[/h2]
Glorious fences are taking a bit longer this month, I’m close to perfecting them so you might see some new perimeters soon put up, but it’s TBD (To be decided) where and when.

Besides that I’ve been managing to pull new assets for some undisclosed locations like barrels, pallets, crates, new trim textures for the *!”$!”$)!”)=%=%#”!% REDACTED, fencing and the kit for the *!”$!”$)!”)=%=%#”!% REDACTED as well with all new walls and a different style than the Utility stuff to breathe a little more life into the humans of course.

All this is tested to fit the modular style so it’s taking some time to get it proper and right rather than rushing it, which would result in a lot of clipping and margin issues, so I’m mostly handling a lot of models right now, which you can see here:







Alongside the modular trim and some new textures for the ranger which are more robust and solid.


[h2]Tapwing - Concept Artist[/h2]
Minmi nature sketches-



Minmi was one of the easier creatures to brainstorm mechanic ideas for. From the design stage we used a lot of semi-aquatic life for the basis of the design, (pygmy hippo, snapping turtle) so some water-leaning gameplay felt like a natural direction to go.

Underwater walking capability and burrowing were the first ideas (though originally I imagined Minmi to be more buoyant than other dinosaurs, but later I realized that it wasn’t going to help it much against Deinosuchus)

Now in the case of land threats, Minmi simply running away didn’t feel plausible, it was going to need a little more. With that in mind I toyed with a ‘duck & cover’ type of mechanic, considering how many people I’ve seen lose track of targets simply because their prey stopped and sat in a bush. An ability that levels you with the ground should work a treat.

The idea goes a bit like this: If you catch sight of or think someone might be around, you can quickly kick up dirt and level yourself with the ground, obscured but not entirely invisible. However if you’re still spotted, you’ve got one last shot to flee by quickly hopping out of the hole and attempting to juke or make a break for a body of water to escape your pursuer. Mind you this idea is still in it’s conceptual stage.

[h2]Jake Baardse - 3D Artist[/h2]
It's been a little bit since my last dev-log update, but don't let that fool you, I've been working on plenty of juicy projects. For now, we'll delve into one that we promised to share a little bit of the process for, the Therizinosaurus.

Animals with really dynamic surface textures like this are the hardest, a lot of the time is spent planning to make sure it is executed in a way that is both technically sound as well as aesthetically pleasing. I've had to do feathered dinosaurs for a number of different projects and each time I walk away with a slightly altered workflow. This design was one of the most involved projects I've had to do so far for this game.



The workflow always starts with a good base sculpt. Even though feathers will dramatically alter the visibility of nearly all of these forms, I find it good to sculpt in the rough anatomy of the creature. Feathers should flow with the natural forms of the animal, with this base I was able to plot out the volumes the concept calls for, but still define it reasonably in a 3D space.



Next I have to make decisions about how much of the feather volume is going to be the main body geometry and how much of it is going to be alpha cards. The balance is crucial as the cards help break up the shapes and add more detail, but they can also become very hard to manage. Unfortunately for me, with the design being so shaggy, there was no way I was going to be able to employ a minimalist approach. Here you can see where the final high poly sculpt wound up at. It's important that as I place these supplemental meshes I am being cognizant of the planes that will take their place. It's really easy to go crazy and drop in a million different submeshes, but this is where all the planning comes in.



After the high poly comes retopology and baking. I made sure to spend some time on this stage so the textures accurately reflected the sculpt. The final result is something I am quite proud of, I'm excited to see this creature eventually make its way ingame!


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
This month has literally blazed right on by. Which I’ll consider a good thing. There’s so many checkboxes being marked that it’s hard to keep up. This month, even more than last, has been devoted to bug fixing, testing and optimization. We’re so close to finding that sweet spot of optimization and output that we can taste it. So wish us well in that area. As I’m sure you all have noticed, we had to make some swaps in Update 1 and Update 2 due to AI giving us some difficulty. In place of pushing the release of Update 1 back until AI was where we wanted it, we decided to bring the playable Dryosaurus from Update 2, to Update 1 and push the combative AI (Tenonto & Utah) to Update 2. That gives us more time to work on their logic and interactions and gets you a new playable for your patience.

The Hypsilophodon is well on it’s way to completion. We’ve got a handful of animations left for it and then the importing begins, followed by the challenging yet fun task of solidifying its mechanics. Be on the lookout for it’s gorgeous material in the weeks to come. It’s quite a vibrant creature. Do note that it will be playable but will not feature a juvie version until a later update as it is already so small and we have other obstacles related to small size and survival that we want to address before the truly tiny make their way in. Be on the lookout for more on this creature in the coming days and weeks.

Additionally, I’ve had the art team working hard on bringing our dustier dinosaurs up to our current standards of polish design wise. Thus far you’ve seen new concepts for the H. Rex, Anky, Giga and Theri, with Acro, Alberto and more on the way. We’ll post some of those for you guys in the very near future so stay tuned. There are also some interesting new interactive zones that will be coming into the game so you can really live the mud wallow fantasy and take your vitamins as we intend.

I also wanted to give some production insight for you guys. I occasionally see messages from the community wondering why we’re working on ABC instead of XYZ or why we’re doing one thing while another thing is broken. Simply put, like any collaborative effort, there are different departments within our team and they do not always overlap. In fact, they seldom do. So, a delay in one department does not mean a delay for the others. Production moves forward. While we all work together on a shared goal, which is the game itself, it is not sound practice to have an interior decorator help a carpenter build a house or a chef help a maitre d’ seat customers. They all work towards similar goals but their skill sets, while related, are completely different. Naturally that does not apply in every instance but is more often than not the case. I hope that provides some clarity for those types of situations though.

Piggybacking on the previous note, be prepared to see some new people joining our team over the coming months. We are once again looking to grow and expand our team even more! Be safe, be good to each other and to yourself.