- Construct 3 updated to r429.


- Minor new character / char. info interface tweaks.


-[Survival] Action key (default C) can also be used to put a mouse-dragged item inside a container (backpack or quiver), useful for people playing with trackpad instead of a mouse.


- Once completing actions like butchering a carcass and few others, the character will automatically pick up items previously carried with the right hand (and dropped to perform the action), just like for gathering/eating/drinking actions.


- Minor engine optimizations.


- Fixed a rare game freeze on save and autosave (at dawn).
- Fixed options tab button not highlighted when accessing the options menu.
- Fixed options texts not flashing on mouseover the first time options menu is accessed.
-[Survival] Fixed invisible left arm caused by toggling combat stance while mouse-dragging an item.

...... There are now 8 manual save slots, instead of 1!
...... Saved games are named by default with the world name, but can be renamed as preference.
...... Saved games can be deleted by right-clicking on them.
...... Interface expanded to accomodate the new save/load panel.





- [Survival] Added cave ambience sounds (echoed water drops, depending on rain and humidity).
- [Survival] External ambience sounds (birds, cicadas, crickets) will reduce their volume when inside a cave or shelter (just like wind and rain).
- [Survival] Melee damage calculation reworked: character strength and muscle mass have now a much higher impact on melee damage, making strong characters quite more powerful compared to weaker ones.
- [Survival] Cut Hair and Crack Coconut actions are now tied to the Butchering skill + minor rebalancing to their progress speed.
- [Survival] When jumping higher than an animal's reach, chasing animals (except adult T-Rex) will still try to hit the player, missing and suffering a brief delay - this makes jumping much more useful for dodging attacks.
- Fixed a rare game freeze when saving (should apply to old saves too, but not 100% sure)


Those are just the main changes, for a complete list check the FULL CHANGELOG!


Daniel

Old saves and settings are automatically deleted due to the different way the engine handles the new version. If you have a current save you don't want to lose, don't update now, but finish your game first (revert to v0.97.2 from Proprieties->Beta).

Saves from the Beta (0.98pb1) will not be deleted, and you can keep playing them in the beta if you want (but i'll eventually remove the beta at some point, and you'll want to update anyway!). To re-enable the previous beta, insert the key code "dinosystembeta"


It's two parts, probably the game's biggest changelog so far!

If you tried the Beta for v0.98, here are the changes from Beta2 -> Final 0.98 (from DinoSystem Discord).




As is tradition, I'm dropping a major update right at the end of the year!
2024 has been a life-changing year: in October, my father passed away after a long illness. A few days before he passed, he asked me about the game - he expressed his appreciation for my commitment to it, and, since he was blind, he wanted to hear about the changes I had made and my vision for its future.

We live on a small island in southern Italy and he needed 24/7 care. I had no opportunity to travel or go out much, so working on DinoSystem was my main distraction. Still, knowing he was able to understand and appreciate my work offered a bittersweet closure to this ordeal.

My father was not a strong man, but he was full of creativity and passion, and I’m grateful I inherited some of that. Here’s a song (in italian Capri, Far Away) he composed long ago, when he lived in Germany and missed his beloved island, Capri.

On a brighter note, I’m now fully committed to bringing DinoSystem to v1.0. I’m back working full-time on it, so expect more frequent updates in 2025. I’ll write a detailed roadmap in January!


That being said, let's have a brief look at the Behemoth here (aka v0.98.0)...


- Added new music by Samuel Oddamo:
...... Added several non-continuous tracks for dawn, sunset, day and night.
...... Added a new music track playing during island generation and save loading.
...... Added a new music track playing during character creation and info screen.
...... Added a new music track playing during the Asteroid event.
...... Main/game menu music replaced with new tracks.
...... Added new settings for music.




- [Survival] Creation/info player screen now has two modes - Basic and Advanced:
...... Basic shows only body features and few info.
...... Advanced shows also skills and advanced info.
...... The first time you play, it is shown as Basic, but will remember your choice if you switch to Advanced.




- Added a new options tab - VIDEO:
...... Moved all video and graphics settings to the new video tab.
...... New video tab is transparent and UI elements are spaced out, allowing to see changes to the game visuals on-the-fly.
...... Added new settings (in the video tab) for Contrast, Brightness and Saturation.
...... GFX Quality setting (in the video tab) split in 3 settings: Shadows, Effects and Water.




- [Survival] Added Mini-Game setting and mechanics for Fishing and Light Fire actions:
...... Added a new setting for "Mini-Games"; when enabled, Fishing and Light Fire are actual mini-games, otherwise they're fully automated.
...... For Fishing, mini-game requires the player to successfully catch a passing fish: chance for a fish to spawn depends on fish population in that spot, while mini-game difficulty depends on Melee/Fishing skill, as well as other factors.
...... For Light Fire, mini-game requires the player to click the attack button at specific intervals, when the arrows overlap the red bars: arrows speed and red bars size depend on Firemaking skill, as well as other factors.





- [Survival] Added a new setting "Auto-Repeat", and reworked the auto-repeat feature with Shift:
...... The setting has 3 options - Disabled, Partial, Full:
............ Disabled - Drinking/Gathering actions will trigger once (as before); press (not hold!) Shift to repeat them ad-infinitum.
............ Partial - Drinking/Gathering actions will be automatically repeated until the desired resource is dropped/thirst is satiated; press Shift to repeat them ad-infinitum.
............ Full - Drinking/Gathering actions will be repeated ad-infinitum (until the desired resource is depleted, or stomach is full).




- [Survival] Added the option to remap mouse Controls, and to move with the mouse:
...... Movement, Attack and Aim/Scout actions can now be remapped and reassigned to any mouse button.
...... By default, Movement = unbinded, Attack = Left Mouse, Aiming = Right Mouse.
...... Added the ability to move holding a mouse button (disabled by default), and sprint by moving the cursor farther from the character.
...... Added new mouseover icons as hints for mouse action depending on object hovered and circumstances.




- Crafting/Building recipes unlocking system:
...... All recipes in the Craft/Build menu now start as unknown, and must be unlocked.
...... By hovering the mouse on any unknown recipe, a tooltip will give a vague hint about the item/structure and how to unlock it.
...... A recipe is unlocked by interacting with, crafting or gathering its primary component (e.g. Stone -> Stone Wall).
...... As soon as a recipe is unlocked, a purple side alert message will show up, and its button in the Craft/Build menu will be highlighted.




- Added Drying Rack and Meat/Fish drying mechanics:
...... Drying Rack needs 12 Sticks + 4 Strings, as well as 30+ Building skill (for 100% chance to be built).
...... Drying Rack recipe is discovered by interacting with a Stick.
...... Meat/Fish can be placed on a Drying Rack, and will slowly dry based on sun exposure (therefore make sure to build it in absence of any roof).
...... Depending on the weather and the Day Length option, drying a Meat/Fish can take up to 3 days.
...... Once dried, food gives no water and less vitamins/proteins, but will decay up to 6x slower!




- Sleep Bonus renamed to Sleep Debt, with expanded mechanics:
...... Sleep Debt level can be assessed by hovering the mouse over the Stamina bar.
...... As Stamina drops below 50%, when awake, Sleep Debt increase exponentially.
...... When sleeping, SD is gradually reduced.
...... Sleep Debt effects are:
............ Faster Stamina drop when awake.
............ Faster Stamina recovery when sleeping (effect increase capped at SD 24).
............ Chance of passing out at 0 Stamina.




- Improvements to Poisoning mechanics:
...... Poisoning damage happens only when the effect is added/increased, while its decay is more frequent, especially after eating a Healing Mush (which now has a bigger impact on poisoning reduction).
...... Vomiting from sickness is more frequent, but always associated with Poisoning decay (since you're emptying your stomach).
...... Sickness from severe Poisoning (>50%) can prompt skill decay too (for skills that are at -100% progression), depending on poison severity.




- Added the ability to dig up Didelphodon lairs, causing them to flee in panic or even killing some of them (at Digging skill > 100).




- [Survival] Coconut can now be cracked also with Sharpstone or Hatchet, but there's a small chance to shatter it.




- When felling a tree, the wood/resin will now dispose resembling an actual trunk, and they also drop leaves.




- [Survival] Added Fur and Fur Cape:
...... Fur is obtained exclusively from Didelphodon (instead of Hide), which drops one, sometimes.
...... Fur looks like Hide, but has a dark blue color.
...... Fur, just like Hide, must be cleaned, and when equipped as simple clothing gives more warmth then Hide.
...... Fur Cape is crafted from 3 Fur, as well as 20+ Crafting skill (for 100% chance to be crafted).
...... Fur Cape, when equipped as clothing, gives more warmth then Hide Cape.
...... Hide Cape warmth reduced slightly for balance.

- [Survival] Added String:
...... String is crafted from 3 Leaf, as well as 5+ Crafting skill (for 100% chance to be crafted).
...... String recipe is discovered by interacting with a Leaf.
...... String is now used in several existing recipes.
...... Some item sprites updated to reflect the presence of strings in their crafting.
...... To compensate for the extra work required in crafting, most tools decay rate from usage (chopping, carving, digging, etc) is reduced by 40-50%.






Those are just the main changes, for a complete list check the FULL CHANGELOG!


Daniel

Hello dino hunters!

After 2 weeks of testing and plenty of feedback gathered, I've finally released Beta 2 for the upcoming v0.98.0, if you're already playing with Beta 1 (v0.98.0pb1), it should automatically update to Beta 2 (it's savegame compatible!).

If not, to access the beta, go to your Steam Library -> DinoSystem (right click) -> Properties -> Betas -> Choose 0.98.0pb1 (it says pb1, but it's public beta 2).

Here's the full list of changes/additions since Beta 1:
[BETA] means it's a change internal to the beta

- [Survival] Creation/info player screen now has two modes - Basic and Advanced:
...... Basic shows only body features and few info.
...... Advanced shows also skills and advanced info.
...... The first time you play, it is shown as Basic, but will remember your choice if you switch to Advanced.

- [Survival] Improvements to Combat Stance:
...... Most actions that alter Combat Stance will revert it as soon as the action is completed.
...... When Combat Stance is disabled, weapons wielded will be grabbed with the right hand, and vice-versa.
...... When enabled, Combat Stance triggers a sound, and UI panels become red.

- Improvements to animal seed storing mechanics:
...... Changed how seeds are stored in animals: an animal has a chance to get the seed/spore of the plant/tree/mushroom it eats, which is released into the Dung as soon as it excretes.
...... When dead, animals storing a seed pass it to their carcass, which has a chance to pass it to carnivores eating it.
...... At game generation, animals/carcasses/dung have a chance to start with seeds stored.

- Rebalanced terrain fertility values "absorbed" by vegetation.
- Slightly reduced vegetation eaten by herbivores, to lessen their impact on the ecosystem and allow for bigger populations.
- [Survival] In the brief moments before character creation during island generation, loading tips are shown partially (to prevent the player from being unable to read them fully before character creation screen shows).
- Loading tips suggesting a control will show the actual key instead of the default one.
- [Survival] Crafting/carving/firemaking and such actions are no longer interrupted by performing an other action (like toggling Equip Mode or selecting an item), and tweaked other interruptions.
- Improved items collision with walls/boulders/mountains.
- [Survival] Fixed item collision with walls/boulders/mountains sometimes glitching if hitting the character.
- Fixed tree canopies not updating fast enough during Aim Mode or God Mode's camera movement.
- [Survival] Fixed a rare bug causing crafting buttons to not update correctly based on available components.
- Fixed +/- buttons continuing to be pressed while holding the mouse button far from them.
- Fixed Didelphodon occasionally rebuilding their nest on top of their previous one.
- Lightning hitting the sea will reduce fish population in that spot.
- Made several terrain and water mechanics tweaks to improve the long-term ecology simulation.
- Added total fish count next to Pteranodons.
- [Survival] Dropping the weapon from an animal attack now shows a warning message.
- All damage texts now have "-" before the value, for consistency.
- Leaf rotation speed from wind increased.
- Tree canopies (fake) SSAO improved slightly.
- Improved some cursor icons.
- [Survival] Improved Stick/Torch placement when sheathed on character's back.
- [Survival] Player Actions key is now used to trigger target action (if the mouse is on a target), otherwise it shows the player actions (as before).
- [Survival] Pteranodon is no longer mouseover-able in Survival (to prevent accidental conflicts with a current action).
- Ponds shape/bed slightly improved.
- Slightly reduced chance of female T-Rex deciding to fight a male approaching for mating.
- Island creation will generate more small ponds during Autumn and Summer.
-[BETA] Island creation will generate more lush terrain in all seasons, especially Autumn and Summer.
-[BETA] It's no longer possible to sprint while pulling, if moving with the mouse controls.
-[BETA] Added glow effect to firemaking minigame yellow bars.
-[BETA] "Light Fire" mouseover hint in firemaking minigame renamed to "Strike".
-[BETA] Fixed Fur Cape recipe requiring Hide in some circumstances.
-[BETA] Tutorials are no longer re-enabled at Reset settings.
-[BETA] Fixed a bug causing Fishing action to freeze the character if skill Zoology is 30+.
-[BETA] Menu music now starts with a delay
-[BETA] Show Chance setting is once again ON by default (reverted Beta1 change).
-[BETA] Default mouse control scheme reverted to pre-0.98 (LMB: Attack, RMB: Aim) with the option to enable mouse movement.
-[BETA] Fishing skill is used along with Zoology to assess fish population (the one that's higher does the skill check).
-[BETA] If MMB or RMB are assigned to Attack/Movement, is the mouse is on water, for inspect the key will be used, and the mouseover hint will suggest it.
-[BETA] Meat/Fish drying progress rate increase by 10%.
-[BETA] Fixed Light Fire UI getting stuck if disabling the Mini-games setting while performing the action.
-[BETA] Added two new music tracks for rainy and windy.
-[BETA] Minor interface fixes.


Here's the full changelog for 0.98.0



Happy testing!

Dan

Hello survivors,

Your feedback is essential as I develop DinoSystem! I’ve set up some polls on our Discord channel to gather your input on important development decisions during the current public beta.

If you haven’t already, join us on Discord to share your thoughts, vote in the polls, and help shape the future of the game. Your participation really matters!

Thank you for your support and involvement!

Dan

Hello there, cave dwellers!

New major version 0.98 is ready, there are few areas where it needs testing, so I've decided to release it in open beta for a couple of weeks, before proceeding with the full fledged release and announcement.

To access the beta, go to your Steam Library -> DinoSystem (right click) -> Properties -> Betas -> Choose 0.98.0pb1 (public beta 1).

Testing is needed especially for the new mouse controls: mouse buttons are now assignable to main actions like moving/attacking/aiming. I'd like to know which mouse control scheme you find more suitable to be the default one (for now it is Moving: LMB, Attacking: MMB, Aiming: RMB). Button 4 and 5 are also assignable, which would be even better since there are no hardcoded actions for them (like for LMB/MMB/RMB which are also used to drag objects, inspect, use items).
Also, I'd like to test the new drying mechanic, you'll find more info directly ingame or in the full changelog.
Lastly, there are likely bugs to squish, so keep an eye also for those! I'll constantly fix, tweak and improve this build during the public beta, based on your feedback.

Here's a brief summary of the additions:

- Mini-games for Fishing and Firemaking
- Buildable Drying Rack and drying mechanics
- Discovery-based crafting/building recipes
- Fur, Fur Cape, String, and reworked most recipes
- Dig up Didelphodon lairs
- Sleep Debt mechanics
- New mouse controls and mouseover icons
- New music tracks and music settings
- Several new settings options
- Interface improvements
- Numerous improvements and bug fixes
- Full changelog

- Construct 3 updated to r376.


-[Survival] Added a visual feedback particle effect when a skill increases.


-[Survival] Heartbeat sound volume slightly reduced, and frequency increased.


- Main Menu link icons have a fancy effect while disappearing/appearing when accessing/exiting the Load Game screen.
-[Survival] While fishing, mouse-hover on sea also shows LMB/key for attempting to fish.
- Some UI elements (top-left notification, top-right game info) are now responsive to window size/proportions.


- Body Muscle decay rate from Soreness over 25% increased to 4x (from 3x).
- Body Muscle decay rate is reduced ~30% more by Body Fat and Proteins.
- It's now possible to butcher a carcass with bare-hands is frozen over 50%, but below 100%.
- Strength requirement for pulling Carcass/Skeleton tweaked to be lower for smaller animals, and about the same for bigger ones.
- Character head turns a bit more gradually.


- Small improvements to animal bleeding logic.


-[Survival] Fixed Butchering, Cleaning Branch/Fish and Expand Lakebed actions speed not being affected by changes in v0.97.1 (which increased their speed).
-[Survival] Fixed Butchering not advancing using a Sharpstone when the carcass is frozen.
-[Survival] Fixed alert message "your high Fullness is slowing this action down" showing when the Fullness is actually low or 0.

This is a relatively small update to address some major issues, as well as delivering a few changes.

Here's the changelog, with the important stuff highlighted in bold:



- Several minor improvements to blood/vomit decals.
- [Survival] Improved actions animation fluidity when the character is tired.


- Thatch sound from wind will now promptly stop when the Thatch is destroyed, instead of finishing.


- Removed references to animal biological sex in the animal inspect panel-> action (like "guarding her/his" nest) to prevent the player from discovering the sex without having the required Zoology skill.
- [Survival] While Fishing, mouse-hover text automatically shows fish population.
- [Survival] Improved Fishing hints text and logic.
- [Survival] Fishing hint is disabled as soon as the player manages to catch a fish.
- [Survival] Removed "not edible" from the Pine Cone gathering tooltip.
- [Survival] Added a new hint during light fire action (is disabled when a fire is lit).
- Added a UI notification when taking an island snapshot with F11.
- Added fire maximum energy (if contained) in mouse-hover when inspected.
- Minor UI improvements.


- Additional rework of bleeding mechanic:
...... Bleeding now triggers every 3 seconds instead of 10.
...... Bleeding damage now partially scales with maximum Health (instead of be fixed 1).
...... Chance of bleeding to drop is now proportionally higher, since the timer is faster.

- Most actions speed is now faster (+60% in Normal & +20% in Realistic+, meaning in Normal actions 33% faster than Realistic+).
- Auto-zoom speed and magnitude tweaked for some actions to be more gradual.
- Added a subtle auto-zoom also for sprinting, stumbling and vomiting.
- Muscle Soreness decay rate from inactivity/sleep increased by ~33%.
- Body Muscle decay rate from high Soreness reduced (at 100% Soreness) from 8x to 3x.
- Light fire progress/chance calculation accumulates more reliably over time, although at a slower rate (this means success is easier to achieve if you keep trying).
- Aim mode is now possible during "eat", "drink", "dry up" and other actions, along with "trying to sleep" (but sleep chance will not increase during aim mode).
- Pine nuts protein content nearly doubled.


- Weather sliders lock function is now permanent, instead of resetting when switching to Survival mode or when hiding the UI.


- Additional rework of bleeding mechanics (same of the player).
- Much smaller animals won't flee from being "trapped!" under their parent.


- Seasonal, noctural and weather temperature calculation revisited to get much more realistic values.
-[Survival] Perceived temperature impact from wetness and wind exposure tweaked to prevent reaching negative temp in summer (and otther similiar inconsistencies).


- In the manual page about Muscle Soreness it's now explained that Toughness skill increases Soreness decay rate.


- Fixed a random game freeze happening occasionally during autosave (at dawn) or normal save.
- Fixed T-Rex and Troodons parents NOT regurgitating food to their offspring as supposed to.
- Fixed F10 not taking a game screenshot.
- Fixed Landmarks texts being hard to read (regression v0.97.0).
-[Survival] Fixed a serious bug preventing seasonal temperature and humidity to fluctuate as supposed to in Survival mode, causing climate to be static over long game sessions, and producing heat in winter, snow in summer, etc (regression v0.97.0).
- Fixed animals Health compromised in games created before v0.97.0 and updated to it, which caused adult animals to reduce their Health to 15 (even T-Rexes lol).
- Fixed fire in Fire Pit not being actually contained and going over Fire Pit threshold, causing unexpected arson (regression v0.97.0).
-[Survival] Fixed temperature bar mouse-hover factors not being consistant with their supposed sum (perceived temp) + Removed the humidity factor (incorporeated in "air").
-[Survival] Fixed Fishing chance refreshing faster when the character is also faster in other actions.
-[Survival] Fixed Thatch blueprint not being coherent with its built counterpart (showing optimal placement where it is actually not supported).
-[Survival] Fixed some minor inconsistencies with building blueprints.
-[Survival] Fixed wielded weapon/held item positioning on top of character hand after closing the player info screen.
-[Survival] Fixed auto-zoom resetting zoom if entering aim mode while auto-repeating an action.
-[Survival] Fixed fire sound stopping in aim-mode when aiming far away.
-[Survival] Fixed mouse-hover on Fullness showing the solid/liquid percentage incorrectly.
- Fixed "heat mirage" effect being extreme when playing with low resolution.
- Fixed few minor issues.


Daniel

New year, new DinoSystem update! 2023 presented many challenges and opportunities: one of my family member is very ill, we take care of him, but it's very draining both physically and mentally. I've been ill myself (less serious, luckly), and stopped working out, I'm planning to start again sometime in the future.
On a brighter note, I'm a full time gamedev now, leaving behind my historical gym trainer career: DinoSystem (and potential new projects of mine) is still not my main source of income, but I can now work in a field I truly enjoy, as well as being able to work from home (and take care of my father).
Now, about this update, I did anticipate it would include the meat/fish drying mechanic and a new narrative system, but they didn't make into it and will be added in a future version. There are few additions that could make up for this inconvenience, though, so let's check the changelog!



-[Survival] Quitting on Rogue-lite difficulty now produces a new save slot called "Exit Save", instead of overwriting "My Save".
- Autosaves are taken when dawn happens, instead of few moments later.


- High/low fog effect is now much more common.
- Added a subtle distorsion effect to low fog (only on GFX Quality = High).
- Several ambient effects, as well as leaves/clouds direction from wind, are updated much more often (every 0.1 sec instead of 1 sec).
- "Screen Sharpen" effect (renamed to "Normal Map", see below) tweaked to be more subtle.
- Tree canopies parallax relative to zoom level improved to produce better results at very low zoom.
- Sky and sky reflection parallax now scales correctly with current zoom level.
- Red Mushroom now has white dots, to make it more easily distinguishable from the brown one.
- Dynamic shadows intensity tweaked to be slightly more apparent in some instances.
- Haze effect from warm climate tweaked in intensity and improved in quality, and reduced the excessive flickering.
- Screen lightning stops when the game is paused.
- Minor improvements to the particle system.
-[Survival] Added a subtle trail to fired projectiles.



-[Survival] Character arms resolution improved.
-[Survival] Added a blur effect to tree canopies at very high zoom (only on GFX Quality = High).
-[Survival] Player droplets from wetness disappear asap after the "dry up" action.
-[Survival] Improved some character animations (and now scale better with the actual action speed).


- Improved wall/door damage and destruction sounds.
- Animal distant death sounds can be heard from farther away.
- Tweaked volume/pitch of tree falling sound, based on tree size.
- Added some button click sounds that were missing.
-[Survival] Tweaked volume/pitch of some player actions sounds.


- Improvements to the Settings interface:
...... Added a new tab to the general settings screen called "Screen", which groups settings related to screen effects/features.
...... Setting "Screen Mode" renamed to "Mode".
...... Setting "Video Quality" renamed to "GFX Quality".
...... Setting "Screen Sharpen" renamed to "Normal Map".
...... Setting "Master Volume" renamed to "Main Volume".
...... Made small tweaks to some settings tooltips.

-[Survival] Improvements to the Character creation/info screen:
...... Character creation screen now appears at the start of island generation, allowing the player to create their character during the loading time, instead of waiting.
...... Character creation/info screen layout rearranged, having most UI panels upward, and the tooltip on bottom.
...... Strength text panel is now isolated and changes color based on Strength level (red, yellow, green).
...... Character creation/info screen now appears fading, and the character zooming in.




-[Survival] Side alert text notifications (showing when a stat/skill changes) are more precise and don't trigger several times in a row.
-[Survival] Structure blueprint rotation speed sligthly reduced (during build mode).
-[Survival] Added some variations to the "you're scaring fish away" message.
-[Survival] Mousehover on Stomach icon now shows "Fullness:" instead of "Total:", for clarity.
-[Survival] Stomach icon is even smaller from emptiness.
-[Survival] Damage text shown when failing to repair a tool is now violet.
-[Survival] Improved UI logic about attack recoiling.
-[Survival] Poisoning and Health damage screen effects last for longer before disappearing.
-[Survival] Sun/warmth screen effect is more visible and responsive.
-[Survival] Temperature and Health UI bars now update in a gradual fashion.
-[God] In the God UI, "beds" renamed to "lakebed".
- Landmarks map mode is much darker during night, preventing it from being exploited to increase visibility.
- Several UI screens (like character creation/info screen, loading screen) now fade when appearing/disappearing.
- Island snapshot requires less milliseconds to be taken, making it less intrusive.
- "Pine Cone" renamed to just "Cone", for simplicity.
- Added a couple new loading hints.
- Added a subtle shadow to some UI texts.
- Improvements to settings interface layout.
- Minor improvements to UI panels color.
- Inspect cursor icon made smaller.
- Removed Plug In Digital and Playful Oasis logos from main menu.


- Added a new "Auto-Zoom" setting, allowing to enable/disable the newerly added auto-zoom feature, which automatically alters the zoom level during some actions like Aim Mode (check the SURVIVAL list for more info).
- Added a new "Droplets" setting, allowing to show/hide the screen droplets accumulating from rain exposure, water, sweating (the feature was previously enabled at GFX Quality = Medium +).


- Added the ability to eat pine nuts from Pine Cones:
...... You can quickly check if a Cone has pine nuts by performing the "Check" action, all Cones have a small chance to have from 1 to 5 pine nuts.
...... As you eat the pine nuts from it, the Cone becomes cracked and can no longer be planted, nor spawns a tree when it degrades, but can still be used as fuel.
...... Pine nuts are very densely packed in calories and some proteins, also source of B vitamin, but no water; this is all multiplied by their number in the Cone you're eating.
...... Eating pine nuts from spoiled Cones will not cause any sickness to the character.



- Added the Auto-Zoom feature:
...... Auto-Zoom automatically alters the zoom level during some actions like Aim Mode, moving the camera farther away from the character, or like Crafting/Butchering/Sleeping/etc, moving the camera closer to the character.
...... Added a new "Auto-Zoom" setting, allowing to enable/disable the auto-zoom feature.



- Breath system tweaked and rebalanced:
...... Maximum Breath is now directly influenced (reduced) by Body Muscle/Fat: the heavier you are, the less breath you get.
...... Breath consumption from moving and jumping is no longer increased by body weight (as the latter now reduces max Breath), but is directly amplified by Fullness, especially if over 100%.
...... Breath mechanics tweaked to improve balance for both Normal and Realistic+ difficulties.

- While repairing an item, the chance to damage it now triggers only if failing the action, not during it, and reduced maximum damage from -5 to -3.
...... When failing to repair, chance to damage the item is 50% and is reduced with Crafting over lv.100 (down to 10% at lv.110).

- Bleeding reworked: Health loss is now always -1, but as Bleeding severity increase, the chance for the blood loss event to trigger is higher (this both for the player and animals).
- As the character is about to die (< 1 Health) a black screen starts showing, until the screen becomes fully black on death.
- Fullness is no longer calculated by stacking solid and liquid stomach content, but in a different way that allows to still eat if the stomach is nearly full of liquid, and drink if it's nearly full of solid.
- It's still possible to eat or drink with Fullness over 100% and below 110%.
- Effect of Metabolism on max Kcal/Hydration inverted: faster metabolism now increases max kcal/hydration.
- Body Muscle impact on Muscle Soreness decay reduced to 40%.
- Base Gathering chance increased by 25% for resources obtained from mushroom, stone, tree and fern.
- Chance to "waste" a resource when gathering from a fern/tree rebalanced (generally reduced, especially for fruits).
- Chance to receive damage/bleeding from some actions (es. Butchering) is now reduced even further by the associated skill (from 33% to 16% at 100 lvl skill).
- Chance to to fail crafting/building due to poor skill increased, but chance to subsequently destroy components reduced.
- Skill contribution to nearly ALL actions speed increased by 25%, this is particularly impactful for First Aid and Butchering.
- Chance to pass out at 0 Stamina decreased even further during movement and actions.
- Low Stamina alerts and blinking screen effect frequency reduced while doing actions keeping the character "awake".
- Low Stamina starts to cause slow movement penalties when below 40% (was 50%).
- Lighting fire action success chance revisited to receive less penalty from air humidity, and slightly increased base value.
- Carcass freeze penalty to butchering actions speed increased (this was actually a bug, as the value was intended to be as it is now).
- Improved melee attack precision (sometimes it did not land the attack despite the weapon hitting the target - might still happen, but less frequently).
- Improved the way the character adjusts their position before starting an action requiring a Shovel.
- Digging actions skill increase rate slightly rebalanced.
- Endurance skill increase calaculation reworked to allow the skill to raise also from moderate Breath drain (taking into account difficulty), and tooltip updated.
- It's no longer possible to plant a tree too close to another planted tree spot.
- Improved how items held by the character are dropped when it is hit by a Triceratops/Ankylosaur.


- Smaller carnivores will no longer consume meat directly from a carcass, but as they bite it, a Meat is spawned and then eaten.



- Smaller animals will no longer collide with much bigger ones (as they can crawl below them), and will therefore also pursue food located below a bigger animal.
- Herbivores, when eating from a plant, consume 2x more of its energy.
- Animal health loss rate from starvation/dehydration increased by 50%.
- Slightly improved predators -> prey selection logic, making them a bit more proactive.
- Didelphodon health reduced to 40% (it's finally one-shottable!).
- Bleeding reworked: Health loss is now always -1, but as Bleeding severity increase, the chance for blood loss event to trigger is higher (this both for the player and animals).
- Slightly reduced chance of T-Rexes fighting before mating.


- Seed propagation and mechanics improved: for each seed only one plant is born, and a fruit (not planted, but decaying naturally) now produces a plant in the exact same spot it was located, instead of multiple ones in a random nearby location.
- Vegetation energy loss from producing fruits/seeds reduced substantially.
- Tree minimum Trunk threshold is now 10 (instead of 50) making younger trees much faster to chop down.
- Vegetation color variation due to energy/age is now a bit more evident, and changes in a gradual fashion.
- Burned trees are a bit darker and now show/leave a carbonized (darker) trunk.
- Trees occasional Leaf drop rate reduced greatly.
-[Survival] Reduced distance before which tree canopies are hidden when close to the player.


-[Survival] Building skill contribution to condition of built structures reduced a bit.


- Leaf speed from wind tweaked to be more variable depending on leaf wetness.
- Item luminosity at mouse hover/drop/X key tweaked to be much stronger with darkness, and more subtle in daytime, and also take into account light from fires.


- Island generation logic improved:
...... Island generation produces better vegetation patterns/population, according to season.
...... Island generation produces better pond/lake number and size, according to season.
...... Island generation produces more initial animals.

- Improved collision box (and shadow shape) for mountains and boulders.
- Burned terrain decay rate is 20% slower.


- Fire propagation logic improved to allow fires to spread more naturally following the wind.


- Color calculation for some instances (especially vegetation) optimized to use less GPU.
- Mouse hover texts logic reworked and optimized to use way less CPU.
- Several optimizations to sounds/effects logic, allowing many of them to play/show only when needed.
- Optimized how vegetation moves with wind, in order to use less CPU.


- Fixed ambient light not correctly updating with GFX Quality = Low.
- Fixed some subtle texture glitches when a sprite is downscaled a lot (es: due to low zoom level).
- Fixed a nasty bug that caused game-breaking glitches if accessing the Manual from the main menu, and than start a new game.
- Fixed a bug causing ferns to be tagged as "red" without being visually red, and vice-versa in some instances.
- Fixed snow terrain sometimes forming on top of sand, then adjusting its Z position after a few minutes.
- Fixed the "save window size" button not restoring the correct game window size, but making it bigger.
- Fixed some minor issues with the save button.
- Fixed animals spamming "trapped!" text and not always reacting as supposed to when surrounded by obstacles.
- Fixed young Didelphodons sometimes exiting their lair (and often getting lost) for no reason.
- Fixed a rare instance where animals would get permenently stuck while eating or drinking.
- Fixed a bug causing animals to get sometimes stuck/trapped near the coast while migrating.
- Fixed Pteranodons not showing damage text when struck by lightning, as supposed to.
- FIxed shadows from fire becoming permanent in some rare circumstances.
- Fixed smoke effect and Leaf not updating to wind direction for a few instants after being created.
- Fixed context menu appearing at right click on some UI elements (God slide bars).
- Fixed game UI panels being draggable during exit menu/settings/manual.
- Fixed +/- buttons sounds glitching in some circumstances.
- Fixed window size not being remembered correctly when quitting and resuming the game.
- Fixed Ferns not updating their color as soon as they grow from young to adult.
-[God] Fixed mousehover text on flying Leaf showing "missing cursor text".
-[Survival] Fixed permanent and glitchy fire particles caused by dropping a lit torch onto a Fire Pit.
-[Survival] Fixed items not always keeping the intended Z order when used in some player actions.
-[Survival] Fixed Egg unearthing action not being performed with a Shovel as intended (and suggested in the action tooltip).
-[Survival] Fixed snoring sound playing also when the associate setting is disabled, and still playing in the menus at high volume.
-[Survival] Fixed character occasionally freezeing while Digging if the Shovel used gets destroyed.
-[Survival] Fixed Butchering using the wrong weapon (on back) if starting the action while holding a non-weapon item with the left hand.
-[Survival] Fixed a bug causing the attack animation to freeze when attacking with a Stone/Sharpstone and breaking it.
-[Survival] Fixed a bug causing all previously planted seeds to be totally overridden by any new seed planted, causing them to chance species.
-[Survival] Fixed a bug causing planted tree mousehover text to show a message different from the one shown at planting action (optimal terrain -> bad terrain).
-[Survival] Fixed aiming reticule not being transparent as soon as aim mode is started (in order to signal that ranged attacks are disallowed, being it on top of the player).
-[Survival] Fixed pressing ESC during character creation causing the game to become unresponsive.
-[Survival] Fixed island snapshots not showing God info panels during Survival Mode.
-[Survival] Fixed some action alert messages not triggering the appropriate sounds.
-[Survival] Fixed "missing cursor text" showing on mousehover over sun exposure icon.


Daniel

I'm back releasing monthly updates! This is a smaller update to implement some final enhancements to the terrain textures improved in v0.96. There are also some tooltip tweaks, character muscle rebalancing, ecology rebalancing and fixes.
Unless new bugs come out, next release will be v0.97 major update, which will feature the meat/fish drying mechanics, a new narrative system (with tutorial reimplementation) and many tweaks!

And there's the changelog for v0.96.5...


- All terrain textures quality and style improved (without increasing resolution), adding bump mapping.
- Terrain saturation and brightness reduced to be somewhat less vibrant, especially with high sunlight.
- Bloom screen effect (from sunlight) as well as blur (from humidity) reduced in intensity to be less intrusive.
- General ambient vibrance and luminosity from time of day, sunlight and weather slightly rebalanced.
- Character, animals, carcasses and vegetation contrast slightly increased.
- Increased contrast also for some items (dung, healing mush, berry, coconut).
- Egg cracks are a bit more visually obvious, because details matter.
-[Survival] Improved character leg animation when stopping movement.




-[Survival] Action chance/advancement percentage (shown in parentheses) has now a dynamic color based on the percentage related to the action performed.
-[Survival] Player temp mousehover factors color tweaked to be slightly more coherent with the temperature shown.
-[Survival] Eat action tooltips for food items are now more specific about vitamins present in that food.
-[Survival] Light Fire action hints are now actual alerts (not just hints), and their conditions allow them to show up more often.
-[Survival] "Thatch is damaged!" warning alert will not trigger while the player sleeps or rests.
-[Survival] Increased the duration of most warnings/hints alerts.
-[Survival] Breath bar color tweaked a bit.
- Minor improvements to several tooltips and UI texts.



- Body Muscle increase formula now scales with Hydration - To compensate, maximum Muscle increase is 25% higher if conditions are optimal.
- Muscle Soreness reduction from diet is now also tied to Hydration - More reason to keep yourself fully hydrated!
- Muscle Soreness (over 25%) impact on actions speed tweaked to be less severe (capping at 100% Soreness, instead of 75%).
- Fullness (over 100%) impact on actions speed tweaked to be less severe (capping at 133% Fullness, instead of 125%), and now scales with Max Fullness.
- Stamina now starts to negatively impact actions speed when below 50% (instead of 25%).
- Chance to fail crafting/building actions due to not meeting skill requirements strongly reduced.
- Cooking foods will now reduce some of their vitamins (especially B).
- Mushrooms now also give some D vitamin, and rebalanced vitamins from other foods.

- Herbivores can now also eat RED ferns if they're starving.

- Rain chance after the asteroid event is 0, and gradually increases during the impact winter, preventing the island from becoming lush and fertile during it.

-[Survival] Structures initial condition (after being built) now always start from a minimum of 100/200, if the required Building skill level is met - This prevents the player from constantly needing to repair buildings that they just created.

- General improvements in map generation and long term ecology simulation.
- Energy given to terrain by rain is amplified with high seasonal temperature, making brief and intense summer rains more impactful to the island fertility.

- Color calculation for some instances (terrain, ferns, pteranodons, birds) optimized to use less GPU.

-[Survival] Fixed Path not giving a 10% moving speed bonus to the player as supposed and advertised to.
-[Survival] Fixed Light Fire action hint alerts not always showing up when supposed to, leaving the player wondering why they failed to light it.
-[Survival] Fixed a minor bug that caused the snoring sound to play very loud for an instant after unpausing the game.
- Fixed collision box of most terrain "patches", which caused inconsistencies in the map generation, ecology simulation and other areas.
- Fixed a bug preventing animals from glowing when hit and killed by a lightning bolt, as supposed to.
- Fixed debug/game info text not being show in island snapshots, as supposed to.



Dan