The Isle News

[h2]FTessaro - Lead Programmer[/h2]
This month, my main focus was on enhancing and resolving issues with various mechanics. We had several strange behaviors concerning physics and other various interactions when multiple abilities occurred simultaneously. Such as with the introduction of troodon, a new playable capable of pouncing, that brought forth additional scenarios that had the potential to disrupt existing mechanics. On the topic of pounce; I’ve made some significant changes to the aftermath of missing a pounce, now it does not “stagger” the pouncer anymore, allowing it to be more fluid, fast and more visually accurate. Moreover, with troodon, I developed a system where nearby troodons will emit specific vocal sounds whenever a target becomes envenomated. This feature aids in synchronizing attacks and will be further improved upon in future updates.


Pickup is another mechanic that has received some attention. We noticed some odd behaviors relating to both Organs and Meat Chunks, especially when their physics decide not to simulate properly. In that regard I also added a dynamic math that allows “Grab High” animations to play, when grabbing fruits, for example, from tall trees. I also fixed a bunch of smaller issues such as loading screen causing a crash, double calls issue, UI hints, the “pitch black skin” bug, vocal distance being short and much more. Overall I’ve squashed hundreds of bugs this month.


[h2]Fred - 2D Artist[/h2]
I've been hopping around different types of assignments for a while now, one of which is returning to the environment concepts. Specifically, I’ve returned to finish the line of Underwater Environment Concepts.

After discussions about visuals and gameplay needs, I do what I always do and start looking for references and inspiration. A bit of a challenge was the visuals. Normally, when we think of coral reefs and kelp forests, we think of images like those from Blue Planet 2 & Planet Earth 2: beauty and serenity with all kinds of gorgeous colors. This would need to be toned down to fit our horror gameplay and visual style for the game. It can be pretty at times, but not always. I also had to take into consideration the types of terrains and biomes of the ocean and to hopefully create an interesting environment for players to traverse and explore.

So, as you’ve seen before in the “isle-phase-three” channel on the official discord, I started by making a simple study of how these biomes and formations will be loosely mapped out based on depth. As you can see below, we’ll start at the shallows with coral reefs, and as we get lower, we’ll see more rock formations. Kelp forests will be sprinkled throughout both. As rock formations become bigger, corals start to disappear. Eventually, at the barrier of the map, we plan on making it pretty desolate.



For the reef concept above I wanted to keep variations of color, but needed to make sure I didn't go too far to where it looked like an underwater paradise or a screenshot from ‘The Little Mermaid’. My color choice of rocks could’ve been better, but with the different forms and corals, I think it looks good. On the right, we see a rough sketch of Rock formations. We can look forward to placing them around the medium depths of the environment. What I have here is probably the largest these formations will ever get. Not only does this show how they will fill some open waters with interest, but how we can look forward to bridging the gaps between our underwater players and coastal pterosaur players above. Underneath the Rock formations, we have a scene of animals interacting at the edge of a Kelp Forest. Typical Kelp forests in documentaries look really beautiful and welcoming, with rich, full fronds of bright green or orange leaves. We probably won't be doing that and taking that opportunity to make them feel dark and claustrophobic. Hopefully that will be reflected in our lighting and assets.



Finally, after studying and planning, we get to the fully rendered concept above which showcases all the elements mentioned before. There was a lot of coral and rock to paint, as well as getting the right hues and colors down, but I’d argue this is one of the better Underwater Concepts made. I look forward to seeing this being built in game by our lovely Jace, and eventually seeing the player base take a dive and explore what we have planned.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
This month has been a month with a variation of bug fixes and massive in global, but seemingly minor updates to the Modular Kit. We’ve now solved the stair, door, and all kinds of problems that were linked just by being modular. Not only that, the kit for now, features over 250 objects, making it the most granular kit we have so far, and it being new, and this granular allows us to do so many variations with the buildings.

This is by far the end of the kit, as the kit will now only get upgraded by new parts as we go on. Not only that we will feature a distinct and clearcut way of knowing which building serves what purpose, with various techniques.

That and the, in the works, new shader to support this level of modularity, should bring a lot of life to the island and the human environment and its effect on the world.

Keep in mind these images are still work in progress and do NOT feature the new shader, and is one of many possibilities. This is just a very rough showcase of what we can show, without any detailing done to the buildings.



While waiting for the magic shader, and before we proceed to new textures to encompass it and make it fully functional.

That is it for this month!


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
Main priority and the majority of my time this month has been occupied with fixing as many bugs as possible, as well as making improvements and addressing any missing or incorrect audio cues where possible.

Other than any work that I’ve done this month to go towards the polish of audio in 6.5 I’ve also made some more headway on some Diablo sounds, however the focus on the new update has slowed this progress slightly. I have the majority of Diablo’s adult sounds designed or at least undergoing iteration and finalization, only a handful remain to create such as courting, sparring and some generic or filler vocal sounds for use in idles, resting and filling in gaps where necessary etc.

I’ve started bringing dilophosaurus’ calls up to the quality bar we are setting with Evrima, with its attract and broadcast vocals already complete. These two calls are revamped versions of the original legacy calls, retaining the sonic quality and character of the existing sounds but bulking them out with a bit more presence and weight using various additional layers and some cleaning and processing techniques on the existing raw files. The other three calls are going to need more work and some deviation from the original concept to get to a similar standard.

I’m also working on a new sound that will be used in place of the broadcast call for gallimimus’ mobilize ability, a brief honk with that signature gallimimus flavor effectively clearing some space in the mix so it's not a barrage of long and noisy calls.


[h2]Seiza - Video Editor[/h2]
My focus in the last weeks was completely on finishing the release trailer for update 6.5. Since the new species bring many new mechanics into the game, there is again a lot to explain in the trailer. While the trailer starts relatively calm with the beipiaosaurus, the atmosphere gets more and more stressful. At the latest when the troodon is introduced, you notice the horror aspects of the game, because this is the first time I used night shots for a trailer.

I also got inspired in the stress test, so I was able to try out the game mechanics myself and thus better represent and explain them in the trailer. As always, I'm staying rather abstract in explaining the mechanics, but I hope it's easy to understand. The presentation of the gallimimus mechanics was the biggest challenge in this project, as he has to keep moving all the time. However, I found a smooth solution that shows the mechanics well. In the coming days I will finish the final touches.




[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
This month has been rather weighted to be honest. Got the stress test cranked out which has greatly assisted in helping us track down bugs and refine mechanics. So thank you to all that participated! It has been fun to see how the new playables are being wielded and all the new strats that are emerging with each. Especially how they fare against the already established animals. Each new creature changes the island's dynamics and that is very interesting to observe. Once we iron out the kinks we’ll be in a good spot to release update 6.5 which is much larger than we originally intended but in a good way. So thank you for a thousand years of patient waiting. It has definitely taken a bit longer than we would have liked. But we want to get you in on the fun as much as you want to have it and want it to be as solid as we can get it. So hang tight.

The team has also grown and will be growing further still. Lots of new talent swirling around, keeping me on my toes. The animation team has been expanded by several artists which are performing spectacularly. I’m crazy proud of their strides! The diablo, dilo and herrera are well on their way to being the next creatures you’ll see running around on the map, decimating your hp and adding to the soundscape. When their unique mechanics are a bit further along I’ll try to slip some content of them to you so you’ll have an understanding on what they will play like and be capable of. Following in their footsteps will be the Tyrannosaurus Rex which enters production fully next week and boasts some interesting adjustments I’m sure the keen-eyed will notice. .

All in all, this month has honestly been a bug hunting slog but we’re clawing our way to the surface and seeing the light at the end of the 6.5 tunnel. I am very excited to turn these creatures loose on the general public and affix my gaze on Update 7 which I personally have been anxiously awaiting forever and the team is probably tired of hearing my talk about. Also, alongside the release of Update 6.5 or very shortly after will come roadmap changes as previously mentioned which will alter the way we disseminate information and how we update the game as a whole. Aiming for something that suits us better as a development team and is better for you all as well. With the media embargo lifted, I’m sure there’s a lot of 6.5 content to snack on while we rev this bad boy up! Bye bye for now!

[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
In our previous testing the gallimimus was only able to forage near shores, where it could dig up frogs. This does not really fit the playstyle of the dinosaur, so I added support for foraging on land. The system is still essentially the same, with the difference that compies can be dug up instead. They provide a little food, but no nutrients, serving as a more interactive version of grazing.

Originally we tried a leaping attack with a lot of movement for the gallimimus' "alt attack", but it didn't feel right in the end. So it was replaced with a quick kick towards where you're looking without turning the character. On the topic of kicks, I also added support for controlling which leg you attack with while running or jumping. This is not just a visual difference, be sure to use the appropriate one to hit your target.

With some of our dinos having really high juvenile speeds relative to their size (in particular the gallimimus and troodon) it was time to change how our character speeds are determined. Previously it was blending the animations as you grew and determining your speed to match that, but unfortunately this came with issues such as dinosaurs becoming way too fast during the transition period or not having as much flexibility. So I turned things around and speeds are being set directly, while the animation system was updated to figure out the right animation to play. This was actually quite challenging, since the animation blend spaces don't necessarily match the speed you'd expect when you just blend them as they are. So I came up with a solution to adjust the blended animation to make sure there is no foot sliding.

Unfortunately when it comes to programming it can be hard to explain why we have to change things that "already work" just to make them work differently even though the end result is very similar from a player perspective. Sometimes these refactors just have to be made for things to work better.

With update 6.5 moving into the testing phase there were periods where I had time to move on to new tasks. For me this meant the diabloceratops. The base character was already set up with the basics, just missing unique abilities and several animations. Many of you might be able to guess already, but I started work on the sparring mechanic. It's not an easy one, there are two players constantly moving around, performing actions that can affect each other's movement, many different things can happen. It's in early stages, but there's strafing movement, interlocking and basic animation support in place already. Naturally at the moment update 6.5 takes priority, but it's coming along nicely in the meantime.


[h2]Bryan - Animator[/h2]
Once in a while a dinosaur comes along in Evrima where we have to do a bunch of legwork we haven’t done before, diabloceratops is definitely one of those now. I’ve been busy working on the locomotion and watching yaks try to bully each other on Youtube for the ‘sparring’ mechanic and hoo boy that was a lot to do, you don’t wanna know how many animations that was to do. It was 48.

Been a busy month for dinosaurs in general, with the last bits for gallimimus and ceratosaurus being finished at the start of the month. Been nice to continue the trend of breaking away from expanding necessary features for the base Evrima dinosaurs like omniraptor or carnotaurus and working on bringing new animals into the ecosystem. Ceratosaurus will definitely be a welcome addition to remind carnotaurus that it isn’t normally an apex predator just because it’s bigger than omniraptor.


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
I’ve been full steam ahead working through designing sounds for the diabloceratops. Both primary and directional attack vocal sounds are completed as well as vocals for vomiting, drinking, regular/extreme pain and death sounds with more currently in the works. When I have the sounds for all shared mechanics I will be experimenting with sounds for its sparring mechanic

I made some edits and designed some new sounds for gallimimus, its attacks had been reworked. The existing sounds for its directional attack were edited to fit the new animations, and new sounds were made for the others, for its running kick, a short grunt with a bit of oomph, and a bird-like growl for its peck attack.

I have also put some attention towards fine tuning the crossfades and pitch/volume modulations for all 4 of the new playables to ensure there is a smooth and appropriate transition across all vocals when blending between juvenile to adult sounds.


Besides working on creature sounds I also finished up on a fairly demanding design, a sound to accompany the pulsing of a colony of bees displaying near synchronicity. The sound consists of a bed layer, the ambient hum of the swarm. The clattering and vibrating of the wings is made up from various sources, such as rice on plastic, foil packaging inserted into a handheld fan etc. They are processed granularly to emulate the clustered sound of dozens of tiny wings vibrating against each other. The pulsing motion is created using dopplers to simulate the motion with dialed in variation to amplitude, pitch and panning. I then processed with a resonator to extract some subtle natural pitch and added a synthesized low bass sound that compliments the pulsing rhythm and adds some restrained tonality.


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

They are small, they are many and if you thought compsognathus were bad for stealing food, wait till you meet Pterodactylus. They are ravenous little corps cleaners and it was fun helping come up with different ways they could be tiny menaces on The Isle. Like breaking down large bodies, bullying smaller creatures off their kill and some potential egg thievery too. So keep a close eye on anything of yours that could be deemed food, you might find it munched on or snatched away when your back is turned by the mini toothy pterosaurs.


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
This month has been a whirlwind of action for the team all around. Stress testing has begun and we’re fleshing out the new playables as testing dictates their adjustments for live release in addition to a lot of engine problem solving. As with any engine change or update there are unforeseen issues, interactions and bugs that can arise that may not play nicely with old tech or downright break something entirely. Luckily, many of these engine bugs and incompatibilities are known to the gamedev community and the engine developers and will hopefully be tackled soon. Aside from that the troodon’s testing phases have been promising for their intended playstyle feeling unique among the roster. With a few knob twists and lever pulls it should be in a nice spot that doesn’t leave it feeling too under or overpowered. Though we’ll have to keep an eye on especially coordinated groups. Completion of ceratosaurus, gallimimus and beipiaosaurus playtesting should go much swifter. Fingers crossed.

Additionally, the diabloceratops is animation complete pending any alterations to established animations for the sparring mechanic. dmIV has laid down some impressive first iterations that we should be able to share soon. We hope you like it! The dilophosaurus is also well on its way to being animation complete after some directional attacks and injuries. So there’s a chance it will enter testing alongside the diabloceratops. If that weren’t enough, the herrerasaurus is also entering full swing production. Some team changes have been made that should allow us to crank animations out a bit faster than usual which will be a welcomed change of pace.

There’s also been a lot of pre-production rounded out on some features to come for both the Gen 1 and Gen 2 humans which I am excited to work on despite being more of a dinosaur fan personally. Getting 6.5 out the door will be a welcome relief for us all and get us one step closer to the reality of what The Isle really is as a horror survival experience. Catch ya next time!

[h2]FTessaro - Lead Programmer[/h2]
Much of my work this month revolved around the gallimimus, which has a different way of grabbing things, as it may use either its mouth or hands, so I developed a small system to control when to use one or the other, including swallowing something that was grabbed using the hands, the system adapts automatically. Included to that change, pickup also adapts to the size or position of the target. Like for tall trees it would use a Pickup High, or Pickup Mid animation in some cases. For stuff on the floor it would use Pickup Low.

Some more work animation related to beipi and diablo too, for all the shared abilities. Did some work on troodon Venom pounce visuals, mostly, but also adding support for the future uses of Pounce and transitions mid pounce, interesting things that are coming. Troodon is also getting some new small mechanics for Venom Pounce to help the troodon players to know about the condition of the target, envenomated or not, which stages, etc.

Lots of work done for fixing a significant amount of bugs or wrong behaviors, including diets. Besides that some code improvement, balance changes, optimizations and new things for camera and audio.

I have also added the option for server admins to enable/disable species through the admin panel, allowing or preventing further spawns of those animals.





[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
I continued working on some gallimimus abilities. Its main damage source is from a kick attack, which can be performed while standing, running or jumping. If the animal is swimming or had its legs fractured it can use a peck attack, but it’s not very effective. When playing as a gallimimus it’s very unfortunate to break your legs, since you not only lose your ability to run away quickly, you also can’t fight back properly.

To help with that, there is one more trick in the gallimimus’s bag. It can protect itself from some fall damage by automatically springing forward to soften the landing. Falling from too high can still result in fractured legs or death, but it’s safer than other dinos.

Other than that I’ve been looking at various smaller tasks, such as the ceratosaurus’s vomit scent, bug fixes, balance changes, moving some blueprints to C++, smaller optimizations here and there.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
The Dome and only the dome has been my soul focus this month, as it's a magnificent, yet massive object and point of interest in the map. Since transitioning to nanite, we are now open to options of having massive modular pieces like this dome, which we will feature in the new Gateway map.

To further reveal this massive structure, it will have four primary entrances for now, three of which are land based, and one directly connected to the river.

To ensure this all works and fits perfectly, I’ve made a Dome kit as we do work with modularity here at The Isle for human structures, which now consists of various height elements of the dome, and its main features like the massive window hexagon shape details.



Alongside that I’ve translated one of the small parts of the Dockyard kit to fit into the Dome kit to ensure more flexibility for the interiors, especially giving a lot more to the dark metallic look of the Dome, as it's far more industrial.



Dome Kit which features more concrete and industrial look.








[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
The majority of this month I was focused on working on audio for the gallimimus, which now has all the sounds it needs for both adult and juvenile stages. I have also created some ambient spot sfx such as rustling and twig snapping that are implemented to play for Galli when in forested areas to keep players on their toes and consciously aware of the sounds that are happening around them.

I have also spent some time cleaning up and improving diablo’s calls, introducing processing to the legacy sounds, especially increasing the level of the higher frequencies which previously were lacking leaving the sounds seeming dull, as well as adding additional layers to elevate the recognisable calls in line with Evrima’s sound. Its adult calls are complete and implemented, but I am experimenting with a slight change to its 3 call, instead ending the call on a quick and sharp beak clack in a threatening display.

I’ve also made some adjustments to certain elements that relate to audio, the positions of ambient zones on gateway have been adjusted, volume balance to the ambiences as well as the volume and attenuations on the waterfall and ocean surf sounds.

I am now spending time play-testing troodon, cerato, beipi and galli to make any necessary improvements to their sound design as well as balancing audio levels and tightening up the implementation of audio for these creatures so they are sounding their best.


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


This was an interesting animal to approach. Fun to draw, but difficult to come up with scene ideas for. We had to hash out a few conceptual ideas to nail this one down. It’s similar to tenonto, but more visually limited, lacking utility of its tail or something like claws. How and where does it travel, or what can it do in the face of predators? Thinking of ways Maia can use its bodyweight or how it can interact with its environment were among the main features.

The other focus was maia’s motherly rep. A characteristic predominantly depicted by gentleness, but one can’t forget the other side of being a good parent means defending the hell out of your offspring. Good (vengeful) mother lizard.




I’ve been looking forward to this one.

Anatomically it’s a mix of clunky and elegant which is an interesting combo of characteristics to find poses for, how dynamic can you even make the pose without having the animal look completely off balance? There’s definitely a balancing act to say the least. We definitely wanted to make sure the deinocheirus looked dominant when holding its own in its native environment.

On the shading side, this was a perfect opportunity to play with water effects for the swamp setting. It’s mostly just doubling up on the shading layer, but it works well for differentiating between what’s above and below water.


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
This month has been a busy one for QA as far as bug reporting and balance testing is concerned. With 4 upcoming playables, it has proved a challenge that we were more than happy to take on.

There have been hundreds of issues that cropped up over the course of integrating the new species to EVRIMA. New playables introduce new mechanics that can break almost anything we had previously done. Now we have to consider totally new scenarios, such as what would happen if a deinosuchus is to lunge at a ceratosaurus while a troodon is envenomating it. Does it cause a crash? Maybe! We didn’t know until we had tried as many possibilities as we could think of. I am happy to say that all playables now seem to be in a good place as far as bugs are concerned, so we’re now getting to the part of just playing the game. Stress testers will play a big part in this process soon, as they will be our first line of feedback after QA to determine how fun or unfun they are to play as, and will allow us to make tweaks to them accordingly.

On the topic of tweaks, have a look at some of these more notable balance changes we’ve made for this update:

Unique night vision ranges have been set up for all existing and new playables. Much like in legacy, there are some characters that will excel in the dark, while others will have a more difficult time. In most cases (not all), playing a larger character will result in reduced night vision range as a way to balance their immense power.

Dryosaurus:

Tenotosaurus:

Omniraptor:

Carnotaurus:

Unique bleed modifiers have been set up for all bleed attacks. Specifics will be detailed in the changelog for the update. This is something that we have been meaning to add for some time now. As it was in legacy, we now have the ability to setup unique bleed modifiers for all the basic attacks in the game – for example, this will allow us to give the tyrannosaurus bite more flat damage than the giganotosaurus, but deal less bleed than the giga bite, etc.

The deinosuchus water sense passive ability has been adjusted to only appear for prey that swim on the surface of water. This was done so that both juvenile deinosuchus and beipiaosaurus have a more effective way of escaping an adult deinosuchus, making for some interesting cat and mouse scenarios between the two playables.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Dryosaurus’ dodge ability now has 2 “charges”, as opposed to it consuming stamina. The time it takes to recharge these is not set in stone, but you can see how it looks here.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Ceratosaurus has a “Charged Bite” ability. The longer you charge the attack, the more damage it will deal. This will also deal an increased amount of bacteria to the target, meaning you do not need to land as many bites to cause them to vomit.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As many of you already know, the beipiaosaurus can breach the surface of the water akin to a dolphin. We decided to take this a step further and allow this ability some use in gameplay, by having it restore a portion of the character’s oxygen when performed.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Gallimimus, when grouped, has a “Mobilize” ability. When performing a broadcast, all members within close proximity will receive a speed increase for a few seconds. When timed right, this can allow a large group to maintain the speed boost by “stacking” their broadcasts, at the cost of being obnoxiously loud to any nearby predators.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Unfortunately, I do not have anything to show you on troodon at this time – its venom needs further work to be clearer to the player what stage it’s at and whenever it has reset.

You will, however, be glad to hear that performance has once again been a large focus of the upcoming update. On top of our move to Unreal Engine 5, we have also been adjusting our default config files to ensure a smooth playing experience for those that meet our recommended hardware requirements.


[h2]Seiza - Video Editor[/h2]
For the past few weeks, I've been focusing on VFX in the video editor. Since we want to give many of our videos an older look, I started using Red Giant in the editor. This will give me a better workflow in the future when I want to create VHS, Terminal or Analog looks. I was able to try this out directly on the latest trailcam video, it's the first trailcam video at night, so I imitated the night vision in the video editor and made it look as realistic as possible.

And of course, the planning of the next release trailer is already in full swing, but the stress test will give me another impression of what is really realistic and makes sense in the end and what doesn't.

I especially want to look at the interaction between beipiaosaurus and deinosuchus and get more inspiration. Otherwise, it's now time to start implementing the first scene ideas.


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
No rest for the weary as they say. While our move to UE 5.1 has been relatively smooth, it has not been without issue which is to be expected with any engine update. This month has been chock-full of hoops, hurdles and bug boss battles. But we’re coming out of the otherside relatively unscathed. 6.5 has been expanded to include a lot more playables than originally intended which we’re excited about and hope you are as well. We look forward to getting this update to stress testers as soon as we can so it can go live pending tweaks. Very excited to see how the new creatures interact with the current roster in your hands.

Aside from the above creatures which the team has gone into decent detail about, work is in full swing on the diabloceratops and dilophosaurus which will be the next playable additions after the current 4 are debuted. The diabloceratops in particular ushering in a new mechanic specific to ceratopsians and those best suited to deal with them. I’m sure the programming team is going to LOVE that process. Sorry guys.

Anyway, expect to see me in the community discord periodically over the coming weeks to take public temperature of a few legacy animals that may or may not be making their way into production after the aforementioned. Wish us a powerful tailwind as we round out this update and move forward. Take care!

[h2]FTessaro - Lead Programmer[/h2]
This month the focus has been adding onto and improving all the new dinosaurs, but also fixing the enormous amount of issues caused by our migration to Unreal Engine 5. But not everything has been about fixing issues, we have new additions such as bee hives (with some very angry bees) and new vocals for the troodon’s venom pounce that triggers simultaneously for each group member of the attacking troodons, to give players a hint of when to apply the target with an additional dose of venom. Some visual indications may be added as well. The new ‘grab high’ animations were also added for all herbivores/omnivores, which are useful for grabbing from tall plants, etc.






[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
My first task was some foundation work for the gallimimus mechanics. I extended our movement system with individual multipliers for each movement mode in each growth stage in a way that also changes the play rate of that specific animation. This basically lets us modify movement speeds without having to change the play rate for the related animations manually. It’s something I thought about doing before for other reasons, so I’m glad there was a good time to do it now.

Then I moved on to actually making use of the system with new mechanics. The gallimimus’ speed will depend on its diet; you will run faster if you take care of your nutrients. Group leaders with a good diet will also be able to have a positive effect on teammates’ speeds when traveling together. It’s also possible to give each other a speed boost using calls. This will all need to be tested and balanced for gameplay, but as you can see there are many different factors that contribute to the final speed of the dinosaur.

A change that’s been planned for a while is to use the “alt attacks'' automatically depending on your movement state. A few things had to be changed in the background, but it is now working as intended. This also helps controller players, since they had no access to these actions previously. I also added a new setting in the menu for those who prefer the old control scheme.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
As you’ve seen, last and this month marks the end of the cages, which was the main starting point of the new year. These cages will be featured in various conditions, and will showcase something down the line. They are featured in 5 sizes, from the smallest transportation ones, to the largest that can house a sauropod.



Alongside that there have been some minor tweaks and a new variation of the crowbar, which now features a pointy end.



Starting from this month, I’ve been tasked with a large structure that will surely be a massive point of interest on Gateway which spans 15 km on its longest distance.




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

This month was a slight change of pace for me.

We have a new dome in the works! With the kind of biome it’s supposed to contain it needed to be bigger than the aviaries and simply scaling-up the current domes/aviaries wasn’t going to look good. So a new design was called for. We took the opportunity to try something a little more industrial and generally simpler shape-wise with a hexagonal based angular design.



Once the base outer appearance was settled on, my task was to start conceptualizing entrances and interior aesthetics of the new dome with the guiding rule of ‘can it be made out of primitives?’(cubes, cylinders, etc)



If so, awesome. Because when making something large like this, you really need something as structurally simple as possible with details coming from the variations of the simple shapes it’s made out of.

Aside from the base structure, the tone of the interior was also drafted, with yellow tinted lighting and winding halls to create a sense of anticipation and unease as well as serving a technical purpose when it comes to something like load times to create that smooth transition from the outer world to the inner dome.



You mess with the bull you get the horns; It’s time for the trike (and not the kind you’d let your kids play with).

Being the largest of the ceratopsians, it doesn’t get to benefit from some of the features of its smaller cousins (burrows, speed) but it more than makes up for that by bringing the most formidable set of horns to the table.

Any creature that wants to target a trike will want to stay faaaar away from the face. Not only is it well protected, but at that point you are asking to get impaled. Likewise it’s not an animal you’re going to be able to toss around; that’s the trikes job. Yes those horns have many uses and like any frequently used tool, will need to be well maintained if you’re to hold onto those formidable weapons.


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month my focus has been to get ceratosaurus audio complete, designing every outstanding vocal sound necessary for both its adult and juvenile stages as well as implementing any foley missing for all animations of this creature. Now that ceratosaurus can be considered complete from an audio perspective, bar some polish and final minor additions, it is undergoing regular testing and iteration from me so that it is sounding as mean and fierce as we are envisioning, as well as making sure everything sounds correct across its entire growth cycle, which is quite an intensive task so regular time away from this creature is required so ears do not get fatigued.

To break up my workflow, I’ve moved on to working on the gallimimus alongside cerato. Galli's calls have remained the same as most will recognise them, but have been processed to improve the overall mix and I’m now facing the challenge of expanding its palette of sounds based on its core vocal aesthetic. I have already got a full sound suite for its pain sounds i.e. regular, extreme and death, as well as some in progress sounds for its secondary attack, its various eating animations and some generic sounds that will be peppered in to fill gaps and give this animal some vocal character accompanying its more understated movements.


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
With the upgrade to UE5, QA have had their hands full mostly with bug reporting, since a lot of issues arose during that transition. We had to go back to some of our older processes such as regression and adhoc testing in order to locate as many of these issues as possible and escalate them to the programmers. A lot of the issues were seemingly random, for example the corpse physics started to become very “floaty” simply from upgrading. Over the course of this upgrade and the past 3 months, our voluntary QA team has reported close to one thousand unique reports! Do be sure to show them some appreciation if you interact with them, they’ve more than earned it.

Troodon testing is really starting to come along now. As some of you already know, its venom pounce ability was causing the client to crash a few weeks ago, caused by the group vocals that Filipe mentioned in his post. I’m happy to say that the crash is and has been fixed for a couple of weeks now. That being said, we did run into some other particularly annoying issues with it… See below:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Unfortunately, at this time this issue is not yet fixed. Luckily, this is one of the few issues left for troodon before it’s ready to be stress-tested.

With most of the issues for troodon fixed now, playtesting and balancing is underway in QA and I am very excited to see how you guys perform with it. The troodon is very much a horde playstyle – it is too small to be able to comfortably take on the likes of an omniraptor alone, so it must group up in order to be its most effective (though it’s perfect for killing juveniles!)

The application of the venom pounce is similar to an omniraptor but it takes it a step further: you must work with your group and time your pounce correctly in order to envenomate your target - if you attack too soon after another troodon, it will reset the venom state and you will have to start from the process from the beginning. The design of having to better work with your group has led to some interesting encounters already and we have quickly discovered that it could be the deciding factor for if your group survives the attack or not. Better get practicing! 😉

Fortunately, the troodon being as small and fast as it is means that any encounter is easy to survive – simply run the other way and don’t look back.


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
Needless to say based on the entries above and below, this month has been quite a stir for the team. The majority of this month for me has been meetings, formulating documentation and finalizing systems which have been mentioned in various ways within this devblog by other members of the team. I get to keep this one short and sweet due to the director's commentary but I’ve cooked up an animation or two for you to feast upon as penance.


[h2]Director’s Commentary –[/h2]

Hello islanders,

As many of you have already guessed, one of our first orders of business upon returning in 2023 was investigating the possibility of moving The Isle to UE5. Upon initial viewing it became clear very quickly that the ‘if’ we upgraded to UE5 was simply ‘when,’ so the process fully began earlier this month.

Though everyone in the editor has been working diligently to ensure a smooth transition to UE5, there have been some small technical hurdles we’ve had to overcome. I am acutely aware of this extra time it has taken and the restlessness is understandable. For your patience, 6.5 has been more than slightly altered from what was on the roadmap. The troodon will not be the only animal stepping forward in the update and more details will follow along shortly in Phase Three tomorrow.

(Note: Speaking of, we are attempting another route with Phase Three content. It will no longer be restricted to a weekly Wednesday, but all posts will contain context and detail attached, much like a single developer’s contribution to the devblog. This may finally put an end to the “pun and done” image drops.)

The assets seen on Gateway have been moved over to Nanite and the map itself has been converted from world composition to world partition. In the coming days it will be rolled out to stress testers to start benchmarking performance but I suspect the public will see the map in Update 7.

This leads me to the roadmap itself. Update 6.5 has been drastically swelled and Gateway doesn’t even exist on the roadmap whatsoever. It’s safe to say that it’s more than outdated and a checklist approach is not one we wish to continue with. A more traditional roadmap will roll out alongside 6.5 that will reflect the additional content that has been in the works.

Diabloceratops had its first round of prototype animations created for its unique mechanic, sparring (along with dusting off some of the more outdated animations). As it is in its infancy, I’m not able to say exactly how it will work, but we do have a very promising heading as a posture based mechanic. The objective here is to have some fun ways for ceratopsians to engage with one another in a non-lethal manner, but still have this feature capable of being a very lethal response when necessary whether to predators or an opponent. I am hoping this will answer the overwhelming desire most diabloceratops players have expressed to fight one another without having to kill one another… unless they really wanted to.



There’s a lot more I could go into purely because I rarely contribute to the blogs now, but I’ve jawed enough. You’ll see more of my contributions in Phase Three soon.

As always,

No pings. No reactions.

Don

[h2]amar0k - Programmer[/h2]
With the release of U6 and the break over we have been in the process of migrating the game from Unreal Engine 4.27 to Unreal Engine 5. This has brought some exciting new features to work with like Nanite. As we convert more art assets to be compatible with this system, we can create more detailed and realistic environments without as much compromise to performance. I have also been working on implementing world partition with the map team to improve performance and optimize the rendering of the game's environments. This system divides the game world into smaller sections allowing us to only render the parts of the world that are currently visible to the player. The process has not been completed, so results may vary.

Overall, the migration to Unreal Engine 5 has been a challenging but exciting experience, and I am looking forward to seeing the final results in the future.

Aside from content migration, I have been working on the base dinosaur controller logic and have also improved the animal animations to include look poses and turn in place animations. The goal here is to smooth the animal movement to be less robotic and fix the movement strafing you currently see.


[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
I started the year by finishing some code reorganization I started before the break. It’s one of those things where you put your time into something that doesn’t change anything for the users, but it makes your life easier in the future. Then I moved on to some engine update related tasks, which is mostly just making changes in all kinds of places where something works differently now or broke for some reason.

Afterwards my main task was the Ceratosaurus. It has a fairly straightforward mechanic, you build up bacteria in your mouth when you eat, which you can apply to other players by biting them. After enough hits this will cause them to vomit. The mechanic is currently functional, but it will still need testing, balancing and visual effects.


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
For the start of the new year, I spent my time finishing getting Beipi set up with its last pieces of missing audio, finishing off a handful of sounds for its hatchling/juvenile stages. After going over and testing Beipi to make sure it is fully complete audio-wise, I have moved on to working my way through all the supplementary sounds for Cerato. I have already designed and implemented around half of the sounds needed for its adult stage, with a handful of others also in progress. The sounds completed include eating, drinking, primary and alt attack, mouth display, death, regular pain, thrash and vomit, It’s sonic aesthetic is big and brutish with an emphasis on low guttural texture, its attacks sound impactful and gnarly with a satisfying crunch as its teeth clamp together and it also has a low but explosive roar when displaying to threaten its competitors and bolster its bite.

I spent a little time with Filipe looking into the issue related to footstep attenuation, we have narrowed down the cause to limitations with the system which is overriding the set attenuation and truncating the range, however we have not been able to find a solution to fix this but it is something we are aware of and looking in to.

Finally, I’ve dipped my toes into UE5’s new audio engine to familiarize myself and see what can be capable with metasounds. I’ve begun to think about how it can be integrated into our existing audio pipeline that is reliant on UE4’s systems so we can avoid deprecation issues, albeit this will be much further down the line from now.


[h2]Bryan - Animator[/h2]
Most of 2023 has been about updating rigs and filling in the missing pieces on a few of our Legacy animals in preparation for their debut in Evrima. Ceratosaurus saw a lot of work in particular and while there are always tweaks to be made to the animations once you see them in-game, that beastie is pretty much complete, with Gallimimus soon to follow.

My current task is getting Diabloceratops ready as well. It’s one of the older rigs and needs a lot of work before I’ll be happy with it. I also took the liberty of updating the baby morph, look at that little chonker.




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


Small and unreasonably angry, it’s The Isle’s Avaceratops.

Actually, just about all our ceratopsians are full of attitude, but the wrath of this one might’ve altered (or rather added to) its diet to take advantage of the carnage. Like boars, they have little patience for the presence of other creatures and are bullies of anything remotely their size. Full of energy, they’ll run you out of town unless you can hit back or are exceptionally good at staying out of reach.

So keep an eye on your hatchlings, such fragile things are a prized target of the opportunistic ceratopsian.


[h2]Mykie - Animator[/h2]
This month I continued working on the Ceratosaurus and the Gallimimus, adding more animations to both sets. I worked on the knockdowns for Ceratosaurus, but my focus was mostly on Gallimimus as we were wrapping up on these creatures' animated features. I worked on a hatchling animation for this creature, and I hope to see all of our Gallimimus players entering the Isle in style.


[h2]KissenKitten - Animator[/h2]
New year, new things. Meetings, meetings and more meetings dominated the first week and will do so further but we’ve certainly hit the ground running. Programming and adjacent teams are hard at work migrating to Unreal Engine 5 and all the “fun” stuff that comes along with that process.

Troodon will be moving into combat testing and then be making its way to the hands of stress testers when given the greenlight. On the topic of playables, the Beipiaosaurus, Ceratosaurus and Gallimimus are either animation/mechanic complete or very near it. Upon testing, more polish and the go-ahead, they will follow suit and make their way to be stress tested as well. We know you have been anxiously awaiting new playables and are excited to get them in your hands. Having expanded the animation team should help that process along even more. The Diabloceratops is next in line after those and will be entering R&D phases to see how far we can push the limits of a unique sparring experience for playables with horns. So keep your fingers crossed and send those good vibes. Dilophosaurus and Herrerasaurus will come afterwards provided there are no production shifts. We will also begin spinning up two apexes so we can establish what an apex animal’s impact will truly be like in Evrima. Their capabilities will far exceed anything you have experienced in Legacy and so need to be extensively tailored. Please do not expect them to appear on official servers but rather community servers instead when they are complete and we’re ready to launch them.

In regards to Update 7, the design team is pooling and organizing the multi-tiered approach we intend to take for perks and elders. There will be a few different ways to acquire perks and the perks will vary based on how you acquired them. Some based on what you eat, others based on how you’ve grown and others based on what you’ve done. Elder being a key component to retaining some of those acquired perks for a new playthrough of that species. More to come on that as time and development progresses. That’s all for now, see ya soon!