Hi guys. Today's update introduces a new fishing mechanic into the game. A highly requested feature since the introduction of water into the world, players are now able to craft fishing rods and float-fish in the ponds and lakes (it is not currently possible to fish in running rivers). The rod can be crafted from the default player crafting menu.



Once the fishing rod is crafted, players must craft fishing tackle. Fishing tackle requires a tree grub (a new item), which can be harvested from the large fat-trunked trees dotted around the map. Tree grubs can be eaten by themselves in desperate situations, but provide very little nutrition.



There are currently two types of fish that can be caught in the lakes and ponds; Salmon and (a generically named) small fish. Salmon can be eaten raw, or can be filleted to produce fillets of meat, and fish-oil (which can be used in medicinal crafting).

Small fish can also be eaten raw, or cooked whole (providing better nutritional value). Being small, they take much less time to cook than other proteins. Instead of being used for meat, players can choose to instead harvest them for oil.

I intend for the variety of fish (and their purpose) to expand over time as things continue to progress.


Medical items now require Medicinal Tonic to craft. The tonic can be crafted using fish oil and medicinal herbs.


Meats have always used up way too much inventory space. I had kept them as single items due to complications with handling the various cooked states and perish timers.

Here are the new rules:

• Meats can be stacked providing they are at the same cooked state.
  
• Only single pieces can be cooked at a time (per cooking slot).
  
• Perish timers are maintained for each individual piece even when stacked.

I’ve also removed the individual rotten states for each food type, and have simplified it into a single (stackable) “rotten meat” item. This should lead to cleaner inventory management. A greater purpose for this item will be added at a later date (currently you can only recycle it).


For a long time, players have been able to store small dead animals without risk of them perishing. This exploit devalued efforts to keep food fresh and presented issues with storage space. This has now been patched. Rotted animals can still be butchered but yield less resources (and no meat).


Various models for base items had some fairly janky UV mapping, so I spent a bit of time cleaning these up. It’s a subtle change, but one that has been bugging me for a while, and i feel looks much cleaner now. Examples:


Many players reported frustration of accidentally clicking “eat all” when extracting tomato seeds etc. I’ve now put limits on all consumable items to avoid this:


Many players have reported that it takes too much wood to make repairs after hunter attacks. I’ve increased the amount of hit-points per repair. However each standard repair now takes 1 nail. This should help balance the dwindling need for nails during the later game.


Thanks to the help of a few community members, I was able to trace down certain conditions that would prevent specific hunter teams from attacking player bases. It was based on the combined locations of the bases, and intersecting bodies of water. The issue is now patched, so if you weren’t experiencing attacks before this patch then you may want to keep and eye out for incoming attacks. This issue was affecting normal and revenge attacks.

• A splint now takes two sticks to craft.
  
• Fixed bug that was allowing small dead animals held in player inventories to become alive again after reloading a save.
  
• Increased hit-points of floodlights and and solar panels. This will make them more resilient to base attacks.
  
  
• Fixed bug that was preventing the bleeding icon from showing for hosts of co-op games.
  
• Fixed bullet/water impact fx to play correctly in deep water:
  
  
• Fixed issue whereby transparent buildable mesh would become invisible when viewed in front of water.
  
• Updated bow so that you can now hold down “aim” while the player is equipping the weapon, then it will transition into the aim state without having to re-click key.
  
• Fixed bug that prevented the profiles launching if there were special characters in the profile name or password.
  
• It now takes less time to cook rabbit and chicken.
  
• Added rocks and other visual tweaks to rivers/waterfall.

Please note that the new fishing system is intended to be iterated and improved on, so I welcome feedback once players have given it a try. I’m excited about the new possibilities this opens up for future updates. Thanks for everyone’s support and patience as the game continues to evolve. I’ll be on the forums as always, so please let me know your thoughts on the new changes.

Have a great week!
ColdGames

Hi guys. Today's update introduces a new fishing mechanic into the game. A highly requested feature since the introduction of water into the world, players are now able to craft fishing rods and float-fish in the ponds and lakes (it is not currently possible to fish in running rivers). The rod can be crafted from the default player crafting menu.



Once the fishing rod is crafted, players must craft fishing tackle. Fishing tackle requires a tree grub (a new item), which can be harvested from the large fat-trunked trees dotted around the map. Tree grubs can be eaten by themselves in desperate situations, but provide very little nutrition.



There are currently two types of fish that can be caught in the lakes and ponds; Salmon and (a generically named) small fish. Salmon can be eaten raw, or can be filleted to produce fillets of meat, and fish-oil (which can be used in medicinal crafting).

Small fish can also be eaten raw, or cooked whole (providing better nutritional value). Being small, they take much less time to cook than other proteins. Instead of being used for meat, players can choose to instead harvest them for oil.

I intend for the variety of fish (and their purpose) to expand over time as things continue to progress.


Medical items now require Medicinal Tonic to craft. The tonic can be crafted using fish oil and medicinal herbs.


Meats have always used up way too much inventory space. I had kept them as single items due to complications with handling the various cooked states and perish timers.

Here are the new rules:

• Meats can be stacked providing they are at the same cooked state.
  
• Only single pieces can be cooked at a time (per cooking slot).
  
• Perish timers are maintained for each individual piece even when stacked.

I’ve also removed the individual rotten states for each food type, and have simplified it into a single (stackable) “rotten meat” item. This should lead to cleaner inventory management. A greater purpose for this item will be added at a later date (currently you can only recycle it).


For a long time, players have been able to store small dead animals without risk of them perishing. This exploit devalued efforts to keep food fresh and presented issues with storage space. This has now been patched. Rotted animals can still be butchered but yield less resources (and no meat).


Various models for base items had some fairly janky UV mapping, so I spent a bit of time cleaning these up. It’s a subtle change, but one that has been bugging me for a while, and i feel looks much cleaner now. Examples:


Many players reported frustration of accidentally clicking “eat all” when extracting tomato seeds etc. I’ve now put limits on all consumable items to avoid this:


Many players have reported that it takes too much wood to make repairs after hunter attacks. I’ve increased the amount of hit-points per repair. However each standard repair now takes 1 nail. This should help balance the dwindling need for nails during the later game.


Thanks to the help of a few community members, I was able to trace down certain conditions that would prevent specific hunter teams from attacking player bases. It was based on the combined locations of the bases, and intersecting bodies of water. The issue is now patched, so if you weren’t experiencing attacks before this patch then you may want to keep and eye out for incoming attacks. This issue was affecting normal and revenge attacks.

• A splint now takes two sticks to craft.
  
• Fixed bug that was allowing small dead animals held in player inventories to become alive again after reloading a save.
  
• Increased hit-points of floodlights and and solar panels. This will make them more resilient to base attacks.
  
  
• Fixed bug that was preventing the bleeding icon from showing for hosts of co-op games.
  
• Fixed bullet/water impact fx to play correctly in deep water:
  
  
• Fixed issue whereby transparent buildable mesh would become invisible when viewed in front of water.
  
• Updated bow so that you can now hold down “aim” while the player is equipping the weapon, then it will transition into the aim state without having to re-click key.
  
• Fixed bug that prevented the profiles launching if there were special characters in the profile name or password.
  
• It now takes less time to cook rabbit and chicken.
  
• Added rocks and other visual tweaks to rivers/waterfall.

Please note that the new fishing system is intended to be iterated and improved on, so I welcome feedback once players have given it a try. I’m excited about the new possibilities this opens up for future updates. Thanks for everyone’s support and patience as the game continues to evolve. I’ll be on the forums as always, so please let me know your thoughts on the new changes.

Have a great week!
ColdGames

Hi guys. Today’s update introduces a large expansion to the world and offers a much greater space for players to explore, build, hunt, fight and survive. I’ve been meaning to expand the world boundaries for a long time and decided to spend some dedicated time and focus on doing so.

My hope is this expansion and new varied terrain will offer greater immersion and freedom for players. More varied build locations and base design potential, and present a more interesting challenge to orientate and navigate the world.


You’ll find a new river winding down the slopes of the expanded area, running down into a new big lake. Rivers and waterfalls will open up new possibilities for gathering and game-play mechanics for future updates. Many players have requested fishing, and I totally agree this would be awesome. I have some ideas of how the mechanic could work and will be putting more thought into it.

There are also new stretches of open beach and small inlets for players to explore:


The addition of the new lake area has also opened up some areas of deep water. I’m keen to expand on this, and give players meaningful incentives to dive and explore the depths. I personally love when games allow you to explore deep underwater. Please stay tuned for more on this.


New trees (increased performance)
I’ve gone ahead and replaced many of the old pine trees throughout the entire map. The old trees were very high-poly and put a lot of demand on hardware with their high alpha calculations for shadows and light shafts. They were also fairly small, making it hard to create a sense of density to forest areas. They were also somewhat dull with a very muted color palette.

The new trees are much lower poly-count (1/3 of the previous trees). They have a more dense foliage spread, meaning certain familiar areas may feel very different. I’m also using a fairly high saturation pallet for the materials, meaning the greens are way more vibrant. This should make the world feel more colorful.

The increased foliage density from the new trees may have an impact on resource gathering and predator/hunter encounters. It will be less easy to spot items and enemies in the world. I’ll be keeping an eye on how this affects balance (may need some tweaks). I welcome your thoughts and opinions on this.

I’ve decreased the fog density at higher altitudes, giving players better visibility. I’ve also decreased the depth of field over distance to account for the larger vistas.


Few other minor tweaks:

• Reduced hunter movement speed while sprinting.
  
• Added distance-based low-pass filtering for all footsteps.
  
• I replaced the (annoyingly) loud Unreal logo when booting the game for a quiet one (many players had mentioned this was hard on the ears).
  
• Added correct weapon impact sounds for many base items (campfire, lights, beds, switches, etc).
  
• Fixed issue where hosts of co-op games could not see water-based bullet impacts.

World expansion is something that will continue as the project continues to progress. However with this new expansion now merged to the main build, I’m excited to start focusing on new gameplay features and mechanics for the next update. I have a long list of ideas I’ve been eager to work on.

I hope everyone has an awesome holiday with their families and friends. Thanks so much for all the continued support for the project. I’m really looking forward to continue evolving the game into 2018. See you on the forums!

CG

Hi guys. Today’s update introduces a large expansion to the world and offers a much greater space for players to explore, build, hunt, fight and survive. I’ve been meaning to expand the world boundaries for a long time and decided to spend some dedicated time and focus on doing so.

My hope is this expansion and new varied terrain will offer greater immersion and freedom for players. More varied build locations and base design potential, and present a more interesting challenge to orientate and navigate the world.


You’ll find a new river winding down the slopes of the expanded area, running down into a new big lake. Rivers and waterfalls will open up new possibilities for gathering and game-play mechanics for future updates. Many players have requested fishing, and I totally agree this would be awesome. I have some ideas of how the mechanic could work and will be putting more thought into it.

There are also new stretches of open beach and small inlets for players to explore:


The addition of the new lake area has also opened up some areas of deep water. I’m keen to expand on this, and give players meaningful incentives to dive and explore the depths. I personally love when games allow you to explore deep underwater. Please stay tuned for more on this.


New trees (increased performance)
I’ve gone ahead and replaced many of the old pine trees throughout the entire map. The old trees were very high-poly and put a lot of demand on hardware with their high alpha calculations for shadows and light shafts. They were also fairly small, making it hard to create a sense of density to forest areas. They were also somewhat dull with a very muted color palette.

The new trees are much lower poly-count (1/3 of the previous trees). They have a more dense foliage spread, meaning certain familiar areas may feel very different. I’m also using a fairly high saturation pallet for the materials, meaning the greens are way more vibrant. This should make the world feel more colorful.

The increased foliage density from the new trees may have an impact on resource gathering and predator/hunter encounters. It will be less easy to spot items and enemies in the world. I’ll be keeping an eye on how this affects balance (may need some tweaks). I welcome your thoughts and opinions on this.

I’ve decreased the fog density at higher altitudes, giving players better visibility. I’ve also decreased the depth of field over distance to account for the larger vistas.


Few other minor tweaks:

• Reduced hunter movement speed while sprinting.
  
• Added distance-based low-pass filtering for all footsteps.
  
• I replaced the (annoyingly) loud Unreal logo when booting the game for a quiet one (many players had mentioned this was hard on the ears).
  
• Added correct weapon impact sounds for many base items (campfire, lights, beds, switches, etc).
  
• Fixed issue where hosts of co-op games could not see water-based bullet impacts.

World expansion is something that will continue as the project continues to progress. However with this new expansion now merged to the main build, I’m excited to start focusing on new gameplay features and mechanics for the next update. I have a long list of ideas I’ve been eager to work on.

I hope everyone has an awesome holiday with their families and friends. Thanks so much for all the continued support for the project. I’m really looking forward to continue evolving the game into 2018. See you on the forums!

CG

Up until now, hunter bases would remain statically placed once they set-up camp. This could lead to some frustrating scenarios of players not being able to push the hunters out of their area.

Today’s update allows player to completely destroy hunter bases, forcing them to abandon their post and start building from scratch at another location in the world.

This change will hopefully allow players to truly influence the world and the situations they find themselves in.

To destroy a hunter base, players can now craft the BCU Cracker at the workbench.

This device can be placed on any BCU. Once placed it will auto-activate and result in huge damage to the base (and ultimately destroy the BCU). Once hunter BCU’s are destroyed, they will abandon the base and need to find a new building location to start from scratch.

Hint: Destroying a hunter base does produce some additional loot, but it can also attract rogues so keep your guard!

Note: Remains of abandoned hunter bases will slowly decay over-time.

Up until now, there was little incentive to hunt down rogue hunters. However the BCU Cracker requires Gears (a new item type), that is primarily found on dead rogues.

The hope is this will provide more interesting and varied later-game goals. Rather than avoiding rogue squads, players will have meaningful reasons to engage in combat (when they choose to do so).


Players can now craft grenade-tipped arrows at the workbench. They can be extremely handy for base defence when dealing with groups of hunters, and also do significant damage to base structures.


Hunters are also now trained to use grenade-tipped arrows. They will favour using them when they feel they are unable to get well placed shots with standard grenades. Please let me know if this feels off-balance!

Due to the heavy power/mass requirements of the BCU cracker, there are now some additional means to generate power.

Reared animals now produce higher quantities of fat, which can be rendered down into biofuel to power the base.


Another new means of generating supplemental power, medicinal plant seeds can now be grown and harvested. Once harvested they can be crafted-down into biofuel.



I’ve added an option to join co-op games via IP. I know that port forwarding has been an issue for many players, so I hope this offers more options for those wishing to host (LAN or VPN).

I know a lot of work is needed to make the hosting/joining process easier. This is high on my list and will continue to be worked on. Thanks for your patience while I continue to work on this.

I’ve added a basic chat client for co-op games. This can be opened by hitting ‘return’ while in game (which can be rebound in the controls menu).


During co-op games (and singleplayer), it can be frustrating (and unfair) when an animal levels-up after killing a player when on low health, leading to it becoming more powerful and having fully replenished health. Now when an animal levels-up, it only regains 30% of its health.


Previously it was difficult to identify when base items were damaged. This often led to critical items being destroyed during attacks (sometimes entire storage chests full of gear). I’ve added damage skins for nearly all base items so players are more aware of when items need repair.

• The bow now costs slightly less cordage to craft.
  
  
• Bed spawns now only cost 350 power (rather than 400).
  
  
• Slightly reduced power usage of fridge (from 0.25 per sec to 0.20).
  
• Power generator now uses ⅔ the fuel, but generates power at ⅔ the rate (so needs to be run for longer durations).
  
  
• Ash stack count increased from 200 to 250.
  
  
• Nails stack count doubled from 100 to 200.
  
  
• Fixed bug where premium arrows would show as normal arrows for hosts of co-op games.
  
• Added models for premium and grenade-tipped arrows to third-person perspective.
  
• Slightly reduced the volume of the generator running.
  
• Increased detail of Wellhead texturing.
  
• Fixed bug that was causing single-player profile day-counts to be reset.

As always, thanks so much to everyone that has been supporting the project, and welcoming and helping out new players. I excited to continue moving forward with new features. I know there is a ton of work needed, and the road ahead is long, so thank you for your continued patience moving forward!

I’ll be on the forums so please do share and issues and feedback on the new changes. Have an awesome weekend!

CG

Up until now, hunter bases would remain statically placed once they set-up camp. This could lead to some frustrating scenarios of players not being able to push the hunters out of their area.

Today’s update allows player to completely destroy hunter bases, forcing them to abandon their post and start building from scratch at another location in the world.

This change will hopefully allow players to truly influence the world and the situations they find themselves in.

To destroy a hunter base, players can now craft the BCU Cracker at the workbench.

This device can be placed on any BCU. Once placed it will auto-activate and result in huge damage to the base (and ultimately destroy the BCU). Once hunter BCU’s are destroyed, they will abandon the base and need to find a new building location to start from scratch.

Hint: Destroying a hunter base does produce some additional loot, but it can also attract rogues so keep your guard!

Note: Remains of abandoned hunter bases will slowly decay over-time.

Up until now, there was little incentive to hunt down rogue hunters. However the BCU Cracker requires Gears (a new item type), that is primarily found on dead rogues.

The hope is this will provide more interesting and varied later-game goals. Rather than avoiding rogue squads, players will have meaningful reasons to engage in combat (when they choose to do so).


Players can now craft grenade-tipped arrows at the workbench. They can be extremely handy for base defence when dealing with groups of hunters, and also do significant damage to base structures.


Hunters are also now trained to use grenade-tipped arrows. They will favour using them when they feel they are unable to get well placed shots with standard grenades. Please let me know if this feels off-balance!

Due to the heavy power/mass requirements of the BCU cracker, there are now some additional means to generate power.

Reared animals now produce higher quantities of fat, which can be rendered down into biofuel to power the base.


Another new means of generating supplemental power, medicinal plant seeds can now be grown and harvested. Once harvested they can be crafted-down into biofuel.



I’ve added an option to join co-op games via IP. I know that port forwarding has been an issue for many players, so I hope this offers more options for those wishing to host (LAN or VPN).

I know a lot of work is needed to make the hosting/joining process easier. This is high on my list and will continue to be worked on. Thanks for your patience while I continue to work on this.

I’ve added a basic chat client for co-op games. This can be opened by hitting ‘return’ while in game (which can be rebound in the controls menu).


During co-op games (and singleplayer), it can be frustrating (and unfair) when an animal levels-up after killing a player when on low health, leading to it becoming more powerful and having fully replenished health. Now when an animal levels-up, it only regains 30% of its health.


Previously it was difficult to identify when base items were damaged. This often led to critical items being destroyed during attacks (sometimes entire storage chests full of gear). I’ve added damage skins for nearly all base items so players are more aware of when items need repair.

• The bow now costs slightly less cordage to craft.
  
  
• Bed spawns now only cost 350 power (rather than 400).
  
  
• Slightly reduced power usage of fridge (from 0.25 per sec to 0.20).
  
• Power generator now uses ⅔ the fuel, but generates power at ⅔ the rate (so needs to be run for longer durations).
  
  
• Ash stack count increased from 200 to 250.
  
  
• Nails stack count doubled from 100 to 200.
  
  
• Fixed bug where premium arrows would show as normal arrows for hosts of co-op games.
  
• Added models for premium and grenade-tipped arrows to third-person perspective.
  
• Slightly reduced the volume of the generator running.
  
• Increased detail of Wellhead texturing.
  
• Fixed bug that was causing single-player profile day-counts to be reset.

As always, thanks so much to everyone that has been supporting the project, and welcoming and helping out new players. I excited to continue moving forward with new features. I know there is a ton of work needed, and the road ahead is long, so thank you for your continued patience moving forward!

I’ll be on the forums so please do share and issues and feedback on the new changes. Have an awesome weekend!

CG

Hi guys. Today’s update finally brings co-op multiplayer to the public build. Thanks for everyone’s patience while I worked through this one. MP has easily been the most requested feature since EA launch, so I’m excited to start getting some feedback and moving forward with the project.

For this first step, players are able to host their own games to play with friends (dedicated servers will eventually follow). Any host has 5 multiplayer profile slots (similar to singleplayer), allowing groups to shut down their server and resume any profile at a later date.

Note: In order for hosts to be seen in the game list, they may need to forward their Steam port (27015). For assistance with troubleshooting, please refer to the community forums, where many community members have been helping other players (thanks for all the help!).

Also, please be sure to set a password if you intend to play with only friends.

Currently the game design is focused around co-op. Building and upgrading a base together, while surviving, fending off hunter attacks, and attacking hunter bases. While it is possible to kill other players, PvP is not a focus at this point.

When a player establishes a base, they can add/remove players as base-members from the ‘Players’ tab in the BCU. A base-member is able to open doors, build, move items etc, whereas non base-members are limited.


Just as in singleplayer, players can choose to enable/disable hunters at any point. If disabled then re-enabled, they will need to build up from scratch.

In co-op the hunter presence and aggression is greater than that of singleplayer. This is an attempt to balance the difficulty, as players will be able to better defend themselves in groups. Please note that this balance is something I’ll be continuing to iterate on. I’ll be listening to feedback and making changes accordingly.

Focus on fortifying your base walls with armor plating, upgrading your weapons and wearable armor to better resist the pressure from hunter attacks.

• Higher resolution skies and sunsets/rises. I’ve reworked the day/night cycle to have higher detail, as well as draw-out the length of transitions during mornings and evenings.
  
  
• Grenades now only require 1 sinew to craft (3 was way too much).
  
  
• Fixed audio glitch causing heavy splashing sound when entering/exiting lakes.
  
• There are now 5 single player save profiles. So if you’ve been meaning to try out a new build, you have 2 new slots.
  
  
• Eating most foods now depletes hydration. There wasn’t enough emphasis on collecting water, as too many foods gave a supplement of water. This change is subtle, but should improve the overall balance (let me know).
  
  
• Reworked the woodburner model and particle fx. The woodburner model was previously extremely high poly and suffered material artifacting (and flames that clipped through the model). The new model addresses these issues and has 20% of the poly count (so much better performance).
  
  
• Fixed bug where a phantom glowstick lights would appear in the world.
  
• Hunters now move at a greater speed when closing in on a target player base.
  
• Increased despawn time on fired arrows.
  

Thanks so much for everyone’s patience and support since the last update. The multiplayer netcode has required much greater work than typical feature updates. As this is the first step into multiplayer, please expect some technical issues while I iron-out the kinks. I’ll be working hard to resolve player issues. Also, a big thanks to everyone who have been helping with connection troubleshooting on the forums.

With this milestone passing, I’m hugely excited to start moving forward with new features and expanding on the gameplay and mechanics. There are many things I’ve been eagerly waiting to start on.

As always, keep me informed with issues or feedback on the new changes (I’ll be on the forums), and have a great week!

CG

Hi guys. Today’s update finally brings co-op multiplayer to the public build. Thanks for everyone’s patience while I worked through this one. MP has easily been the most requested feature since EA launch, so I’m excited to start getting some feedback and moving forward with the project.

For this first step, players are able to host their own games to play with friends (dedicated servers will eventually follow). Any host has 5 multiplayer profile slots (similar to singleplayer), allowing groups to shut down their server and resume any profile at a later date.

Note: In order for hosts to be seen in the game list, they may need to forward their Steam port (27015). For assistance with troubleshooting, please refer to the community forums, where many community members have been helping other players (thanks for all the help!).

Also, please be sure to set a password if you intend to play with only friends.

Currently the game design is focused around co-op. Building and upgrading a base together, while surviving, fending off hunter attacks, and attacking hunter bases. While it is possible to kill other players, PvP is not a focus at this point.

When a player establishes a base, they can add/remove players as base-members from the ‘Players’ tab in the BCU. A base-member is able to open doors, build, move items etc, whereas non base-members are limited.


Just as in singleplayer, players can choose to enable/disable hunters at any point. If disabled then re-enabled, they will need to build up from scratch.

In co-op the hunter presence and aggression is greater than that of singleplayer. This is an attempt to balance the difficulty, as players will be able to better defend themselves in groups. Please note that this balance is something I’ll be continuing to iterate on. I’ll be listening to feedback and making changes accordingly.

Focus on fortifying your base walls with armor plating, upgrading your weapons and wearable armor to better resist the pressure from hunter attacks.

• Higher resolution skies and sunsets/rises. I’ve reworked the day/night cycle to have higher detail, as well as draw-out the length of transitions during mornings and evenings.
  
  
• Grenades now only require 1 sinew to craft (3 was way too much).
  
  
• Fixed audio glitch causing heavy splashing sound when entering/exiting lakes.
  
• There are now 5 single player save profiles. So if you’ve been meaning to try out a new build, you have 2 new slots.
  
  
• Eating most foods now depletes hydration. There wasn’t enough emphasis on collecting water, as too many foods gave a supplement of water. This change is subtle, but should improve the overall balance (let me know).
  
  
• Reworked the woodburner model and particle fx. The woodburner model was previously extremely high poly and suffered material artifacting (and flames that clipped through the model). The new model addresses these issues and has 20% of the poly count (so much better performance).
  
  
• Fixed bug where a phantom glowstick lights would appear in the world.
  
• Hunters now move at a greater speed when closing in on a target player base.
  
• Increased despawn time on fired arrows.
  

Thanks so much for everyone’s patience and support since the last update. The multiplayer netcode has required much greater work than typical feature updates. As this is the first step into multiplayer, please expect some technical issues while I iron-out the kinks. I’ll be working hard to resolve player issues. Also, a big thanks to everyone who have been helping with connection troubleshooting on the forums.

With this milestone passing, I’m hugely excited to start moving forward with new features and expanding on the gameplay and mechanics. There are many things I’ve been eagerly waiting to start on.

As always, keep me informed with issues or feedback on the new changes (I’ll be on the forums), and have a great week!

CG

A new predator now occupies the high-grounds of the world. The cougar is rare and presents a greater threat than the other wildlife, being faster and with heightened senses. Players should avoid encounters unless well prepared.

To help balance the early-game, Cougar’s will not enter the world until the player has established a base (placed their BCU). Unless in hardcore mode, where they will be present from day 1.

As with all other predators, Cougars will engage hunters when necessary, and vice versa (so use it to your advantage where possible).

Some tweaks and nerfing may be required, so I’m keen to hear feedback from players. I plan to further build upon the Cougar’s behavior patterns and stats moving forward.

Butchering Cougars will yield Sinew (yield size is based on animal level). This is used in many existing crafting recipes. It is also used for crafting Rope, which is now used on many of the advanced weapon, armor and base upgrades. The intention is that these are later-game items; harder to obtain, yet not crucial for early-game (so a new player is not expected to hunt Cougar on their first day).

It’s now possible to craft Metal Ingots in the Workbench using Copper and Iron. The aim here is to simplify the higher tier crafting recipes, while allowing a means to process raw materials down into higher value items.

There has been a sizable restructuring to the craft recipe system (across the board). There may well be some imbalance in item requirements, so I welcome feedback and intend to iterate on these changes.

Logs will now auto-drop into the player’s inventory while harvesting. I understand that some player may disagree with this choice, but I feel it can be too frustrating when dealing with thick foliage.

To balance this change, planks now require 3 logs to craft. This should not impact the grind by much, as players will spend far less time searching for dropped logs.

• Tightened the spread on the shotgun. This change is subtle, but should make a difference during mid-range combat.
  
  
• Fixed bug where starter Canteen’s would sometimes not fill the water meter on plantbeds and animal housing.
  
• Fixed bug where dying while in shallow water would cause the player kit to not drop.
  
• Added sound and particle effect for hand-catching chickens.
  
• Improved player death-ragdoll (no more extended fingers etc).
  
• Increased texture resolution of animals, players and hunters at close/medium range.
  
• Smoothed animal movement over angular terrain.
  
• Fixed bug that was allowing animal attacks to be interrupted/reset during a fight. This may impact balance/difficulty (let me know if things are off).
  
• Added low-pass filtering to predator idle sounds at distance.
  
• Added new death camera. Also removed several hud elements during death scene, allowing the player to better assess what happened.

As always, thank you SO much to everyone that has been supporting the project. The feedback (forum comments, uploaded gameplay, etc) has become so essential while working on the game. It really highlights for me how incredibly impactful an early-access community can be for a project, for which I’m so grateful.

Please let me know any issues/thoughts on the update (I’ll be on the forums). Have a great weekend!

• Added ability to optionally disable auto log pickups (it's enabled by default). The option can be found under Options->Gameplay.
  
• Added chance of sinew spawning in locked crates.
  
• Dead chickens no longer squawk when picked up.
  
• Updated ambient environment sounds.
  
• Updated cougar falling animation (minor).

A new predator now occupies the high-grounds of the world. The cougar is rare and presents a greater threat than the other wildlife, being faster and with heightened senses. Players should avoid encounters unless well prepared.

To help balance the early-game, Cougar’s will not enter the world until the player has established a base (placed their BCU). Unless in hardcore mode, where they will be present from day 1.

As with all other predators, Cougars will engage hunters when necessary, and vice versa (so use it to your advantage where possible).

Some tweaks and nerfing may be required, so I’m keen to hear feedback from players. I plan to further build upon the Cougar’s behavior patterns and stats moving forward.

Butchering Cougars will yield Sinew (yield size is based on animal level). This is used in many existing crafting recipes. It is also used for crafting Rope, which is now used on many of the advanced weapon, armor and base upgrades. The intention is that these are later-game items; harder to obtain, yet not crucial for early-game (so a new player is not expected to hunt Cougar on their first day).

It’s now possible to craft Metal Ingots in the Workbench using Copper and Iron. The aim here is to simplify the higher tier crafting recipes, while allowing a means to process raw materials down into higher value items.

There has been a sizable restructuring to the craft recipe system (across the board). There may well be some imbalance in item requirements, so I welcome feedback and intend to iterate on these changes.

Logs will now auto-drop into the player’s inventory while harvesting. I understand that some player may disagree with this choice, but I feel it can be too frustrating when dealing with thick foliage.

To balance this change, planks now require 3 logs to craft. This should not impact the grind by much, as players will spend far less time searching for dropped logs.

• Tightened the spread on the shotgun. This change is subtle, but should make a difference during mid-range combat.
  
  
• Fixed bug where starter Canteen’s would sometimes not fill the water meter on plantbeds and animal housing.
  
• Fixed bug where dying while in shallow water would cause the player kit to not drop.
  
• Added sound and particle effect for hand-catching chickens.
  
• Improved player death-ragdoll (no more extended fingers etc).
  
• Increased texture resolution of animals, players and hunters at close/medium range.
  
• Smoothed animal movement over angular terrain.
  
• Fixed bug that was allowing animal attacks to be interrupted/reset during a fight. This may impact balance/difficulty (let me know if things are off).
  
• Added low-pass filtering to predator idle sounds at distance.
  
• Added new death camera. Also removed several hud elements during death scene, allowing the player to better assess what happened.

As always, thank you SO much to everyone that has been supporting the project. The feedback (forum comments, uploaded gameplay, etc) has become so essential while working on the game. It really highlights for me how incredibly impactful an early-access community can be for a project, for which I’m so grateful.

Please let me know any issues/thoughts on the update (I’ll be on the forums). Have a great weekend!

• Added ability to optionally disable auto log pickups (it's enabled by default). The option can be found under Options->Gameplay.
  
• Added chance of sinew spawning in locked crates.
  
• Dead chickens no longer squawk when picked up.
  
• Updated ambient environment sounds.
  
• Updated cougar falling animation (minor).