Nov 30, 2020

The Isle - Punchpacket

Filipe | FTessaro - Lead Programmer

It’s been a busy month as we’re hard at work finishing up this next update.
I’ve been working this month mostly on bug fixes and improvements in general. Some of the improvements required changes to how various abilities worked to detect the ragdolls, such as eating and pickup. The addition of pieces of meat and schools of fish adds further complexity to the code, resulting in additional bugs of course.

We’ve made significant improvements to the Utahraptor pounce, some technical issues remain, relating to the engine which causes a weird rotation problem. I hope to fix it ASAP, but it won't delay the update, as we’re able to easily deploy the fix in a hotfix update.

Ragdolls have received more attention, especially when picking them up or dropping them around, including bodies in water, weird behaviors are still expected sometimes, just because ragdoll physics are really hard to "control". Expect to see additional improvements in the future.

AmbZones were updated to account for the new day cycle system, which is not the final system, all that will be improved down the road.

Another important thing we’ve been working on is server performance, which we’ve improved to allow for more stability, more players and decrease the chance of jittering or teleportations.

Client performance has also seen some improvements, but with the addition of the basic day/night cycle we are not going to see a substantial improvement just yet. Keep in mind that the day/night cycle wasn't in our plans for Update 2, so we will continue working on improving it´s functionality and performance. The strange over time fps decay seems to be fixed, which I think will be a major improvement for the client experience overall.

Bleeding has been a very popular topic in QA meetings and discussion, not only related to its functionality, but also how much and how it affects the game. Bleeding uses a mathematical system that simulates individual wounds, each wound has its own time of bleeding and blood "damage", that is stackable. If your blood pool reaches 0 you simply die. That is when wallow comes to help you, to avoid dying from bleeding after a long battle, you can wallow to clog your wounds temporarily, allowing you to survive while your body closes the wounds. BUT, if during the time mud is clogging your wounds you are attacked again, all your wounds open and start to bleed again, so be careful!
UI indicators were also added, but overall the functionality itself is still WIP, so bleeding can still change depending on the balance requirements.

Besides all that I also have been working on adding some more security to the game code, mostly related to admin and dev commands. We will be improving the game security a lot more over time.

Amarok - Programmer

Well, every month seems more crazy then the last it’s been a busy few weeks preparing for Update #2 fixing bugs and working on some last minute additions. I really felt the environment needed some attention so we worked on adding the new Day/Night cycle early and it's been well received by QA and I'm sure a lot of you have seen the screenshots although still a WIP it really improves the overall feel of the game.

I also worked on improving the situation with keybinds, All of you gamepad players can now rejoice as support has been added for those along with being able to set any keybinds that were previously missing.

AI has also seen some needed attention with improved movement and behavior for the Dryo. We have also increased the spawn rate and amount of AI whilst also resolving the issue with AI seemingly not respawning.

Lots of additional functionality to the admin panel. Since we now have time you can control. Along with the overall brightness and night time lighting. There is also an added option to teleport to a specific named location within the current playable area. (names subject to change)

Foliage Interaction and Foliage Fade is back , although not fully implemented yet the fade is in as an interim solution and will be improved over time. Foliage Interaction is also in but not fully implemented and will be further improved over time.

I have also been busy looking at IK(Inverse Kinematics) and coming up with a proper solution that we can scale to our current and future roster. You will hear more about this in the near future and should see it added to the roadmap in Ongoing Content soon.

Fishing has taken up some of my time as we start to move into Update #3 territory. The schools and elite fish are mostly complete as far as functionality goes. It’s over to QA to break it which I'm sure they will!

That about wraps it up for me. I just wanted to add that I’ve been here for almost 6 months now and it’s been a pretty wild ride. I see the real potential of the game now and I'm looking forward to the incredible future The Isle has in store.

dmIV - Programmer

I continued work on the hypsi spit ability. We ended up going with the trace based solution for more reliability. I also added an aiming system that indicates whether you will blind your target. It zooms in your camera as well to give you a better angle and it can be cancelled with the R button as well. Recently the range has been greatly extended to allow hitting predators while staying outside their attack range.

I changed the charge ability to be more forgiving. Previously ending it caused you to come to a complete stop to prevent spamming. That has been replaced with a cooldown, so you can cancel the charge and keep running. I also modified what happens when you charge into something heavier than yourself. If your target is not much heavier than you then they get staggered and you have an opportunity to land a bite. Hitting heavier targets will end up with you getting staggered instead and even take damage when running into much bigger dinosaurs. Pick your fights carefully!

I made several changes in the background regarding how we store certain data, this will give us an easier time in the future as we have a growing number of dinosaurs. It doesn’t mean anything to the players, but from a programming perspective these changes help a lot.

There were some periods of time when I didn’t have any tasks related to Update 2 so I had the opportunity to swing back to the ptera and the deino. Both of them had to be updated code-wise to work with systems that have changed over the last 8 months. I got them up and running and jumped straight into working on the pteranodon’s issues that have been bothering me ever since. After finally scratching that itch I moved over to the deino swimming. That one is much more complete mechanically, but getting the animations right is a lot more difficult. For aquatic movement we can’t have sudden snaps that are fine on land. I feel that I made good progress, although there is still work to do. In a way it’s kind of like art, where you feel very satisfied with what you made and then others tell you that it still needs a lot of improvement. After spending a lot of time with something you see it in a different light and then look at it the next day and you see it completely differently.

Wedge - Sound Designer

Wedge here, new Sound Designer for The Isle. It’s been an exciting and enjoyable first month working with everyone on the team and seeing what they are all working on. My time has mostly consisted of creating supplementary sounds for the new playables, the most interesting of which being the unique attacks for each, Hypsilophodon’s spit, Carnotaurus’ charge and Stegosaurus’ tail attack. Other vocal sounds added for these three include wallow, snore, pain, eat, bite, pinned, pounced and so on. The process has been an interesting one; adhering to Dinosauriac’s existing sound identities for each creature whilst contributing new subtly different and appropriate vocal sounds.

As well as new dinosaur vocal sounds I’ve been focusing on creating foley sounds for a range of elements, ranging from adding mud foley sounds to the wallow to feather rustles for the Hypsilophodon to additional breaths for medium and small creatures to name a few. The footstep sound for medium sized Dinosaurs have been tweaked, replacing a layer of the medium sized Dinosaur footstep sounds to add a bit of weight, driven by the systems already in place to control pitch and volume parameters based on the size of the creature. Mud footsteps have been replaced as well however I think the way mud sounds are approached will be a developing process. Knockdowns and slide surface material foley sounds are in the works with drag foley following after. Small and medium sounds have been created for knockdowns and medium for slides, ready to be implemented.

Getting acclimated to the sizing and growth audio systems has also kept me busy when getting sounds implemented, balancing cues to create a smooth transition from juvenile to adult and small to big dinosaur, with rigorous testing from QA keeping me on my toes and helping me pick it up quickly.

With lots more work to be done I’m looking forward to creating more sounds for what’s in store!

Gabriel Radić | VisualTech48 - 3D Environmental Artist

This month has been a bit hectic but I can finally be proud to have far more assets into the main branch and it's coming to the update soon!

So what has changed/is new? This month I’ve been heavily working on the modular system to get the *ACCESS GRANTED* Utility buildings done, and the *REDACTED* station, and get the whole system finally tested and ready for shipping.

The whole system has been redesigned both for the interior and the exterior of both of them, in regarding to what should’ve been the *REDACTED* a few months ago. We use less, but precise pieces to make the same building but still allowing a lot of flexibility to the whole kit.

This has been a huge challenge to implement and do the proper tile test so I can make sure that everything fits absolutely perfectly, and that it can be reused in future builds, but as well have a versatile amount of pieces so we can do a lot of cool and unique variants. It should be soon clear not only with the 3 new pieces coming to the game for the human environment but in the near future with the addition of the *REDACTED* camp/ huge station.

Alongside that I’ve been adding a bunch of new textures, some you may seen but a lot has been redesigned, like the trim texture, and a few new metal pieces, and a more crispier glass texture, and the all new set of a specialized non uniform texture for the garage, which we can reuse with multiple dimensions and sizes depending on our needs.

Not to mention I’ve implemented some really cool known technologies with normal maps to achieve some of the crispier decals and normal edges, like on the intersections of walls:

And finally, some of the props you’ve seen, you will soon find in-game if you manage to locate them. This and the amount of effort to make it all function and be implemented correctly has been really hard work, but a really pleasant work, as I’m more than thrilled for you, the community, to see it as soon as possible. They will deploy in a patch following the release of Update 2.

Here are some of the new stuff that is in,

Jack | Hypno - QA Lead

*GASPS FOR AIR* . Where do I even begin?! Firstly, I need to apologize for having not written one of these for a LONG time – it’s far overdue and I realize I can only use the dog ate my homework trick so many times…

Since my last update, truthfully, the majority of QA’s duties have not changed all that much. Those poor people expect sunshine and rainbows but they’re really in for nothing but pain and torment. It’s fine, they signed away their souls to us.

As before, we’ve been putting our various testing methods to full use for this update BUT our processes for approaching them have been streamlined. Previously, QA were given massive lists of potential issues to check, one by one. For example, “what happens if a player pounces another player that’s swimming?”, which we would then break down into various sub-queries to check, such as “what happens if a player pounces a (Tenonto, Hypsi, Stego, etc) while it’s swimming?". This process became incredibly tedious and in hindsight was not an effective use of QA’s time; imagine what would happen if we had 20 different playables? Yeah… Let’s not.

Instead, where possible, the queries to test for shared mechanics, such as grouping/wallowing/bleed etc, do not need to be tested by EVERY species at their various progress in growth, they’re instead just tested using one playable. You may believe this to be less thorough, and arguably it is, however the shared mechanics all use the same code regardless of species, so 9/10 times if it’s not an issue for one character, it’s not an issue for all of them.

“With all this extra time on your hands, what the hell have you been doing instead of the regular testing then?” I’m glad you asked! (Just pretend you did.) - Now that we have so much more freedom to test other areas of the game, playtesting within QA has been ramped up significantly. Playtesting is by far one of our more enjoyable processes, by which QA just plays the game, see how fun it is, and take note of any issues that do occur. The amount of issues alone we’ve discovered from simply playing the game rather than attempting really specific queries is staggering. I believe the quality in playability for this update will blow our previous updates out of the water and I only wish I had started this a lot sooner.
I believe that if it receives the QA grub of approval then I have no doubts that you’ll enjoy the experience that we’ve collectively delivered. (Seriously, these people will sit and test the gameplay balance for hours at a time; I’m like 72% convinced they’re robots.)

Talking about balance, QA have become much more involved in how we’re approaching balance for our game. Suggested topics for balance are brought to me by QA, which are then compiled into polls for them to vote on. When we have the results, we will review them in a meeting, looking at the majority votes and important points that they’ve brought up when discussing it before coming to a conclusion. Note: the conclusion isn’t always a majority vote; if there’s a particularly good idea submitted as to why a creature should be balanced the way it is then oftentimes the team can be convinced to go down that avenue. It is now up to you, the public, to determine how well of a job we’ve all done. By the time you’ve read this, the update should be out - if there is any feedback that you may have for the QA team on the game’s balance or mechanics then please do let them know because they are now actively monitoring those channels.

I just wanted to close my devblog to say how incredibly proud I am of the QA team. In the case that you were not aware, they are ALL volunteers and have given up their free time to make sure that the product you get is of the best quality. A huge thanks to them!

KissenKitten - Producer

Hey all! The majority of what we've been doing for the month of November has been getting the Hypsilophodon, Carnotaurus and Stegosaurus ready for you guys. We had to do a ton of polishing of their mechanic features, sounds, anims etc and we still have some to do after release. But we feel overall, things are in a good spot for you guys to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Please leave feedback and bug reports per usual so you can help catch the things we may not have. It helps a lot.

As it pertains to the concept team, I have seen a few questions about when/if we're going to show more concept redesigns of the old roster creatures in need of them and unfortunately it will be a little while longer before you see more of those. The concept team has been shifted to elder work for the EVRIMA creatures in preparation for the perk, diet and dimorphism systems respectively as they will all have an impact on elder acquisition. As the designs are approved and models completed, we will roll out some images for you guys on the Public Roadmap under the Elder card in Ongoing Content. Please be aware that while their models may be complete, there is an entire suite of tech, animations, sound, textures etc that will need to accompany their release. So as I mentioned in the previous devblog, you will not see any of them in-game until all of their needs are met. We will likely start debuting some of the images over the next week or so.

The animation department has had their dance card full the entire month of November with the Carno Charge adding approximately 16 animations per creature. OOF! When we develop new mechanics that have never existed in The Isle before, we have a few rounds of R&D (research and development) between the animation and programming departments where we try things out in multiple ways to find that sweet spot. The sweet spot consisting of what works the best for multiplayer, can be programmed optimally, is aesthetically pleasing visually and is the most fun to use. In an effort to achieve all of the aforementioned, it sometimes leads to some hefty overhead with animations and occasionally some mind-numbing programming wizardry. I'm sure when the animation department "wants to try something new" the programmers break out in a cold sweat. But they're always up to the task and always find the most ingenious ways to make it happen which lends so heavily to the feel and style of this game. Each department is a powerhouse individually but their achievements alone pale in comparison to their work together. Teamwork makes the dream work folks! (equal parts corny and true)

Moving forward, we're going to be hitting the ground running on Update 3, Fishing & Fishers. A lot of the content contained within, we've already shown development for so we're not starting from ground zero with our next update. We still have a lot of content to add to it that you have not seen yet though. Believe me when I say, the team is every bit as excited to get into aquatic and avian gameplay as the rest of you. Be on the lookout for its development. We are very excited to deliver on Update 3 in as big a way as possible so prepare to look for danger from above and below when you go in search of fishies.

Closing Remarks

And that wraps it up for the seventh DevBlog! As usual I hope that you enjoyed the insight into our development process and by the time you’ve read this, Update #2 should already be in your hands. We’re all extremely eager to hear your thoughts & feedback. If you encounter any issues whilst playing please be sure to submit a bug report, it goes a long way in helping us create the game we’ve all been dreaming of. - Punchpacket

Nov 30, 2020

EVRIMA Patch 0.6.15.18

The Isle - Punchpacket

Hey Islanders,

It's the day you've all been waiting for, Update #2 has now been released! Make sure that you restart your Steam clients if the update is not visible, as well as ensure that you've set your Steam beta branch to EVRIMA.

I'd like to make you all aware that whilst the secret listed on our Public Roadmap is entirely feature complete, its in-game placement unfortunately missed our internal cut-off date for new additions, therefore it'll be delivered as part of a hotfix that we'll deploying sometime after Update #2's initial release. Also the server queue system will not be available in the initial release whilst we resolve a number of issues discovered by our diligent QA team.

Most importantly however, we're all extremely eager to hear your thoughts & feedback. If you encounter an issue whilst playing please be sure to submit a bug report, it goes a long way in helping us create the game we've all been dreaming of.

Changelog 0.6.15.18

Additions

Added the Carnotaurus class as a playable.
Added the Hypsilophodon class as a playable. Note: This class currently spawns as an adult and its juvenile will make an appearance in a later update.
Added the Stegosaurus class as a playable.
Added Carnotaurus Charge ability (Charge by tapping RMB while sprinting at max speed. Creatures small enough can be instantly killed by it or knocked down, while larger creatures will be staggered.)
Added Hypsilophodon Spit ability (Spit by holding RMB and release to fire.)
Added Hypsilophodon High-jump ability (High-jump holding Space).
Added Stegosaurus Tail impale ability (Tail impale using RMB. Aim the direction of the impale attack with your camera.)
Added the Bleeding System. Wallow to temporarily clot your wounds and stop your blood pool from running out. If your blood pool runs out, your character will die.
Added the initial pass of the Day/Night Cycle. Nightvision and further functionality to come with Update #6, Night Terrors.
Added Additional Admin Functionality. Player bans, Statistic changing (hunger, thirst, bleed, growth), Server logging, Spectator camera, Day/night cycle manipulation, Mail system and various Spiro teleports using community-made names.
Added Flesh Chunks. Press G on a corpse larger than your character to pull out a flesh chunk to eat later or give to another player.
Added Crowd Control (CC) mechanics. Knock smaller opponents over, or stagger larger ones.
Added visual indication of the Vomit debuff. Statistics will now appear to be locked off.
Added additional information to server selection. View your current character on a server and its current statistics. More server filtering options (list alphabetically, by player count, by ping, etc). Added a "connect" button.
Added the initial pass for foliage interaction. Push grass as you move through it.
Added female skins. Select female on the character select menu, as seen in legacy. This is purely cosmetic at the moment but will play a much bigger role with nesting and sexual dimorphism.
Added new ambient sounds to the map.

Enhancements

Improved client and server performance.
Reduced playable map size to encourage more player interaction.
Adjusted the grouping system. Friendly call with 2 to accept a group invite, threaten with 3 to reject them.
Improved grouping system UI. Added online group member and group leader indicators. Made group invites timeout if ignored for too long.
Adjusted chat so that channels separate messages. Global shows all chat, including group and local, while group only shows group and local only shows local.
Improved ragdolls across the board. There should be less replication issues for them when killing players, carrying bodies, etc.
Added support for gamepad controllers and rebinding.
Increased AI spawn rate.
Improved Dryosaurus AI.
Made chat UI auto disappear if not used for a while.
Merged the admin scoreboard and admin panel. Access both using TAB by default.
Added some missing sounds for small herbivores grazing. Chomp chomp.
Vocals fade out if cancelled early via any means.
Replaced old mud sounds

Balance

Increased the scent range of the Tenontosaurus.
Increased the severity of Locked Damage.
Adjusted Pack Scent values for all of the Dinosaurs.
Set Carnotaurus group limit to 3.
Reduced group limit for Dryosaurus from 15 to 10.
Set Hypsilophodon group limit to 10.
Set Stegosaurus group limit to 4.
Reduced group limit for Tenontosaurus from 8 to 6.
Adjusted damage values for Pounce.
Added Bleed to all of the Utahraptor's attacks and to the Claw/Kick attacks for Tenontosaurus.
Adjusted Tenontosaurus Claw attack speed.
Adjusted damage values for Tenontosaurus Tail Slam and Rear Kick.
Added CC to Tenontosaurus Rear Kick & Tail Slam.
Revamped the controls menu in settings.
Allowed multiple pouncers if the target creature is large enough.
Decreased delay time between Tenontosaurus attacks significantly.
Made fall damage weight based. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Increased acceleration for walking/trotting across the board. If an animal wants to move, it moves. Sprint acceleration depends on species size.

Bug fixes

Fixed "A FRenderResource" crash.
Fixed players walking underwater.
Fixed all issues in the last public build relating to the grouping system.
Fixed AI not respawning.
Fixed game hints not being hidden when hiding HUD with F10.
Fixed some players not being able to hear other players calls if facing away from them.
Fixed being able to apply an infinite amount of mud to your character via spamming wallowing.
Fixed players occasionally becoming stuck upside down after a pounce is complete. Both pouncer and pouncee.
Fixed some of the control options not changing. (Part of the revamp mentioned above.)
Fixed the remaining crevices on Spiro.
Fixed small corpses sometimes becoming stuck in a player's mouth when carrying them.
Fixed crouching while sprinting draining stamina.
Fixed corpses sometimes being delayed before they're dropped from a player's mouth.
Fixed jittery Utahraptor movement if the player looked directly down and spammed the movement keys.
Fixed missing eating sounds from the Tenontosaurus.
Fixed game hints displaying over the character menu.
Fixed ragdolls breaking if a small corpse was picked up then the player immediately pressed the eat key.
Fixed chat not being able to be scrolled... Again.
Fixed Utahraptor not playing the swallow animation if it was standing/swimming in water.
Fixed vocals from continuing to play just after your character had been killed.
Fixed Tenontosaurus being able to jump and tail slam at the same time by exploiting the rest mechanic.
Fixed Utahraptors teleporting around if they pounced at each other at the same time.
Fixed players being able to swim in mid-air if they teleported to another player while swimming.
Fixed being able to pounce through some assets, such as trees.
Fixed being able to pickup multiple corpses at the same time.
Fixed locked damage resetting if the player safe logged.
Fixed logging in water sometimes preventing the player from being pounced.
Fixed pouncing preventing fall damage from occurring if used before landing in water from a high place.
Fixed pouncing a resting player sometimes causing their character to face sideways.
Fixed vomiting in water causing a temporary input lockup.
Fixed running down a hill while carrying a small corpse causing jittery movement.
Fixed full body animations playing while turning in place. (The legs weren't moving because the character was stood in place but they were still turning.)
Fixed grazing automatically initiating a trot, despite the player being in walk mode prior to them grazing.
Fixed characters not loading if the player held the spacebar while spawning.
Fixed admin announcements preventing other admins from teleporting.
Fixed various vocal sounds emitting from behind the player's character, rather than from their mouth.
Fixed crouching preventing bodies being automatically grabbed when killing a much small player.
Fixed throwing up while swallowing a small corpse allowing the player to push ragdolls by just moving through them.
Fixed teleporting a safelogging player not teleporting them but instead just waking them up.
Fixed spamming E while swallowing a body causing it to create an invisible duplicate.
Fixed Dryosaurus jittering when quick standing from resting.
Fixed chat input lockup if the player clicked outside of the text box, rather than pressing enter.
Fixed drink hint appearing while swimming.
Fixed being able to slide through players when stopping movement abruptly.
Fixed teleporting height so that admins are no longer taking damage when teleporting.
Fixed roughly 200+ unique bugs related to the new mechanics and playables. (For the sake of our sanity we can't list them all here. Hats off to the QA team for these!)

Known Issues
The following is a list of our high priority issues. Most of the bugs listed here are going to be addressed in a hotfix patch. Report additional bugs here: https://forms.gle/ufXDnxNfhRhZ7CCi8

Swallowing meat chunks will frequently cause them to float in mid-air.
Kicking players from groups is currently not possible.
The Favourite/Discord buttons are visible on the server list menu but they do not yet function.
Various sound issues pertaining to the growth of a creature (some sounds are for juveniles but also play for the adults, for example.)
Map tiles still cause stutters when crossing them.
Players can pick up a corpse at the same time as another player.
Swallowing a corpse results in the ragdoll stretching until it disappears. It's just a visual issue and should not prevent you from gaining hunger.
If you enter the admin spectator mode while sprinting, your camera can become misaligned with your character. Avoid for now by standing still when entering spectator camera.
Various issues pertaining to bucking off pouncers and the balance for the mechanic.
Attempting to eat from a body that's being dragged can temporarily lock input for the player. Press E/LMB to unlock yourself.

Oct 30, 2020

DevBlog #6 & Roadmap Additions

The Isle - Punchpacket

KissenKitten - Producer

For this month, the Hypsilophodon and the Carnotaurus took center stage. The QA team has been hard at work helping us nail down the best way to deliver on the hypsi’s spit mechanic. We’ve tried it a few different ways and have a clear heading of how we want it to be applied to the other inhabitants of the island. Which can be more difficult to nail down than you may expect. In addition to that, the carno has come charging into EVRIMA. I know by now most of you have seen some of its new animations here and there. The carno’s special ability charge has been the priority for the latter portion of the month and per playtests, is feeling pretty good so far. We’ll be doing more rounds of testing and iterating on that per usual and anxiously await getting it into your hands.

Aside from the new additions to the island, you’ll also notice some other roadmap changes. One of the biggest decisions was to pull AI from individual updates. As you may know, we wanted EVRIMA's inhabitants to be smaller in stature (comparatively). With larger, apex animals being AI. However, with all the trouble complex AI has been giving us, we had to make some tough choices. Our original intent with AI was to allow server owners with low playercounts to still be able to have an immersive experience whether they had the player numbers on their side or not. In addition to having some large threats roaming around that you may not be able to get the best of. But unfortunately, AI needs more time in the oven. We considered our options and ultimately decided to let you all have the stegosaurus as a playable due to it already being completely animated for it’s AI introduction. Which would allow us to get you the update much sooner and also get another playable in your hands. The other options would have been to significantly delay the update while we pulled AI up to standard or to significantly delay the update while we replaced the stego with a different playable that would have needed to be animated from scratch. Both only served to cause delays. So we instead opted to get you all another playable and keep the update schedule on track. In addition, we’ve made a bunch of new changes to the roadmap with some valuable input from QA that we feel will help streamline production a little bit more while also steadily providing new playables in a scope that keeps each update feeling unique and adding new mechanics at each interval that corresponds with a playable that can utilize those new features.

Artistically, the concept team has rounded out the bulk of the legacy concept changes and will be shifting into work that supports a major addition to the game. Elders. I know the burning question on everyone’s minds has been, “which creatures will have an elder variant” and I can confirm that all of the playables will have an elder. Considering our massive roster though, you will not see a singular elder update as that would be a staggering amount of models to produce all at once and we doubt you’d want to wait that long to get your elder on. So, the elders, as we complete them, will appear on the roadmap alongside whichever update corresponds to its completion. Working on elders will be an ongoing part of production until each creature has one. So there will not be an elder specific update. We will simply be dropping them as they’re ready. Naturally though, they will be elders that correspond to the current playables in EVRIMA.

Outside of that, there are some new additions to the team and more to come over the coming months. Our team is expanding and with that growth, we will be able to do a little bit more, a little bit faster and a little bit better with each fresh set of hands, eyes and minds. Stay safe and be kind.

Filipe - Lead Programmer

It’s been a busy month for the entire team as we are working hard on new dinosaurs and new mechanics. Not only the mechanics for those dinosaurs, but also the generic ones. I reworked some logic of the swimming system to be more reliable and efficient, our diligent QA team has begun testing it and have found several bugs, but it already feels better. Also worked on getting the Piece of Meat system working. This system is another part of the drag system, which allows removing pieces from a corpse that is too big to be picked up or dragged. This also includes water to help against “water denial”. A detail is that if you drop the meat in water it will be gone. Still on the pickup subject, we are adding a impale system to the game, it is part of the Gore as well that a Stego for example, can impale a “carriable” creature after killing it with his tail spikes. Below is a video to demonstrate it:

Some UI designs are being discussed internally, but for now I'm doing some small changes and updates based on player feedback. Some of those changes involve the HUD and Chat, for example, it is important to know when you are under effects of buffs, debuffs, diseases, etc. Pounce will be much easier to connect to the target in the future, besides improvement to the jump I'm also working on a way to pounce when you are very close to the target, without the need to “jump”, you are close enough to “grab” the target and climb it. But, for now, I'm working on making it more reliable and fixing various bugs.

Another thing I made was a request from server owners, to add a Server Log system, which gives information like: when a player connects or logout, which faction was it playing, when a player dies from what circumstances, admins commands being used, etc. This also can be used to easily track “cheaters” on the server.

Anyway, performance is still a “WIP” for both client and server, sometimes those performance enhancements can take some time, but just be sure we didn't forget. Stay safe everyone. See you!

dmIV - Programmer

Developing games for multiplayer is painful. A particularly annoying part is synchronizing movement across clients because you are only allowed to use a very minimal amount of data. In the past I added some magic to make better use of it but looking at all the upcoming mechanics there was a need to further decrease our limitations. I refactored one more part of the movement replication logic that now gives us more freedom when dealing with different movement modes. As a side effect at one point we had AI dinosaurs running around at ridiculously high speeds but they are back to normal now.

New dinosaurs are always fun to work with and I especially like the annoying little critters like the Hypsilophodon. First I worked on its spit ability that went through a few different iterations. At the time of writing we’re testing both a trace and a projectile based solution that blinds you if it hits you in the head. We are considering different things to see what works best for gameplay and balance.

Another interesting mechanic is a chargeable jump. Holding the space bar for an extended time allows you to jump higher to reach better spots or lose your pursuers. It consumes a significant portion of your stamina but that amount regenerates quickly after landing. This was added to prevent using it too frequently without making the Hypsi lose too much stamina. Charging the jump is visualized by the tail sticking up in the air, using an animation that I posed myself. No one is particularly amused by it, but I’m proud of my artistic addition to the game.

I also worked on the Carnotaurus charge ability and the knockdown mechanic. I’m mentioning those separately because the knockdown itself is reusable as well. You will see it on the Tenonto’s secondary attack and potentially new dinos’ abilities as well. The charge is still missing some of the functionality, but here’s a preview for what to expect:

Additionally I worked on the basics of the stego’s tail attack. I had to make some changes to our existing directional attack ability logic to support some of its unique characteristics, but most of it is using the framework that was already in place.

Other than the exciting stuff I also made some in-engine image generators that we can use to create silhouette images for the UI using the actual meshes and animations.

amar0k - Programmer

Hey! So some of you may have caught the recent streams where i have been working on UI elements and adding some additional functionality to the server browser such as Queueing to join a full server. Although this is not quite needed just yet … in the future it will be important. Along with that i have added the ability for server owners to add a discord link so potential players can join the discord first to learn the rules etc.

I have also added some additional information that is shown to you when you click a server in the browser. Such as Server uptime (This will be converted to the Day number when Day/Night cycle is added along with the Time Of Day) and your character stats on the server if you have 1. Example below.

You can also filter by favourites and your history, I have also added sorting buttons at the top of the browser so you can sort servers Alphabetically by Name, Count of Players or Ping.

I have also been working on adding more functionality to grouping such as the ability to Kick/Promote members and added an online indicator (Green face)

Obviously the UI is not final and will be changed.

I have also been working on a Player Ban system which is mostly complete now this allows server admins to manage bans entirely from outside the game but also in-game.

Another thing that I added is an API for server information that will be useful when modding is implemented. Details on this will be revealed at a later date.

I am also beginning to focus on AI again. I will be looking into improving AI for Utah, Tenoto and Dryo over the next few weeks. The main focus for me will be movement during combat and fleeing along with everyone's favourite AI fish.

Finally I have been working on fixing legacy and removing exploits that have been publicized lately. Currently we are waiting for a 3rd party to get back to us and it's just a matter of hurry up and wait before we can push any updates.

Gabriel - VisualTech48 - 3D Environmental artist

This months been a bit crazy with the *REDACTED* especially with the a lot of variants to the modular kit, which needed more refinement and a lot more models to support the new *REDACTED* which features a lot of cool and modular inclined shapes, huge constructions like the mentioned garage, a large helipad, and the glorious *REDACTED* HQ of a sorts.

Far from that, the whole progress so far all is going according to plan, alongside a few small models (props), and a few big ones (dressings), which will be semi animated, for the *REDACTED* to interact with, and possible use in the near future.

This alongside the new Trim Mesh Decals, and a lot of new implemented textures which will be soon used in more detail, and the whole new fencing kit, which you’ve might've seen in its previous glory have been updated to be fully and properly implemented in the game, alongside a lot of variants from new, to damaged, will slowly and hopefully be bringing new life into the *REDACTED* life, and game overall.

Of course I’m not leaving you with nothing so here are a few images of the currents month work:

Jacob Baardse - 3D artist

Continuing to work on the series of redesigns and touch ups, we decided to upgrade the old Giganotosaurus, a dinosaur that certainly needs to look good. Compared to recent works, there isn’t a ton of juicy workflow stuff to go over here so this wasn’t nearly as technically involved as the Theri. It’s a pretty straightforward sculpt and retopology, but who doesn’t like a big toothy carnivore?

Hopefully the new design lives up to the prestige, but I’ll let the renders speak for themselves!

Closing Remarks

That wraps it up for this DevBlog folks! It's certainly been a busy month and we look forward to seeing you all next time. Be sure to check out the additions to the Public Roadmap using the Trello link below!

Roadmap: https://trello.com/b/G5tsb4XI/public-roadmap

Sep 29, 2020

Devblog #5: Production Insights

The Isle - Punchpacket

Filipe - Lead Programmer

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

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

dmIV - Programmer

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

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

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

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

VisualTech48 - Environment Modeler

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

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

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

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

Tapwing - Concept Artist

Minmi nature sketches-

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

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

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

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

Jake Baardse - 3D Artist

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

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

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

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

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

KissenKitten - Producer

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

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

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

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

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

Sep 26, 2020

EVRIMA Patch 0.5.12.08

The Isle - Punchpacket

Changelog 0.5.12.08

Additions

Added Faction list after joining a server and when respawning.
Added new Utahraptor bite attack ALT + LMB.
Added the Dryosaurus class as a playable.
Added Dryosaurus Special Ability (Dodge using RMB).
Added Dryosaurus AI. Runs from players bigger than itself, will fight back against juvenile creatures. Still WIP - see our roadmap for the current progress.
Added grouping system (Use 2 call to group with other players. The groups are persistent and each species has a different limit to the amount of players in one group - please let us know feedback on them!)
Added group members damage reduction (10%).
Added group chat for the new system.
Added moving graze mechanic.
Added fall damage.
Added river PP volume
Added 5 second cooldown to close settings when applying changes (to prevent players exploiting the few seconds that foliage is invisible.)
Added loading screens in various places.
Added prediction to AI targeting.
Added a hint for eating, drinking and interacting.
Added a solution for Listener Location be set to Camera when overlapping water bodies.
Added "Hide Full" and "Hide Empty" server filter options.
Added a small camera shake when damaged.
Added more spawn points to Spiro.
Added ????? ????? (Transmission Received: Exploration Recommended).

Enhancements

Server and client performance improvements. (WIP)
Improvements to footprint scent performance.
Improvements to pack scent performance.
Updated max zoom distance.
Reduced decal render distance.
Made rest ability cancel safe logout properly.
Corrections to environment resources.
Refined AI movement around players to be more stable.
Pounce improvements and initial new mechanics. (WIP)
Made scars more visible.
Improved ragdolls when carried.
Improved corpse dragging (WIP)
Made Utahraptor alt bite damage multiple targets.
Made post process volumes deactivate when leaving water.
Made falling deal damage to the pouncer.
Adjusted water sound for the ocean.
Made sprint stay enabled if shift is tapped for a short time, to disable press again or come to a stop.
Made puke decal visible above footprints.
Corrections to character materials.
Adjusted pounce to avoid going too high.
Made grazing only give food to 20% max hunger.
Mouth blood decal saves when relogging.

Balance

Adjusted all dinosaur speeds to be slower.
Lowered Tenontosaurus juvenile max health.
Added stamina cost to new Utahraptor alt bite (4%).
Made Tenontosaurus claw deal damage while turning.
Updated hunger and thirst decays so that players can't reach adult without eating or drinking.

Bug fixes

Fixed chat showing the incorrect mode if typing in another channel.
Fixed water PP persisiting after respawn.
Fixed Tenontosaurus claw attack being blocked from turning.
Fixed footprint scent cloud instances not disappearing if the footprint actor is destroyed by fading out.
Fixed footprint scent cloud deforming away from origin.
Fixed issue with activating scent while footprints are fading out.
Fixed aerial collision not working.
Fixed saves not being loaded sometimes.
Fixed not repossessing unsafely logged out characters.
Fixed scented footprint decals disappearing after the highlight effect fades.
Fixed eating causing an input lockup while corpse dragging.
Fixed extra animation after drinking.
Fixed piece of meat from eating not replicating.
Fixed swallow animation not working sometimes.
Fixed player entry duplication when pressing tab/end many times.
Fixed eating plants not ending correctly.
Fixed an issue where the title menu wouldn't appear for the client.
Fixed river scent particles coming from the wrong place.
Fixed several UI elements.
Fixed being able to eat corpses that were dragged away.
Fixed collision of some plants.
Fixed abilities being activated with admin panel opened.
Fixed server name filter not showing any servers sometimes.
Fixed player search on player list being misaligned on widescreen monitors.
Fixed "Scanning All Frequencies" disappearing if refresh was clicked while it was present.
Fixed admin panel not auto updating when a player was kicked.
Fixed players becoming stuck in the "V-tree of doom".
Fixed issue where holding Shift in mid-air would cause stamina to drain.
Fixed dragged corpses sometimes disappearing.

It is important to note that the bugs encountered by QA whilst testing the new mechanics have not been listed here. These issues mostly pertained to the new grouping system, AI, Performance, fall damage and the Dryosaurus playable.

Known Issues

List of our high priority issues. Report additional bugs here: https://forms.gle/ufXDnxNfhRhZ7CCi8

Server bans still a WIP.
If server FPS drops too low, players will drop suddenly while swimming.
AI will sometimes swim facing the wrong direction.
AI can sometimes spawn above trees. They do not have fall damage as a countermeasure for now.

Aug 28, 2020

Devblog #4: Back on the Road!

The Isle - Punchpacket

Filipe - Lead Programmer

It has been a while since our last devblog, but that doesn't mean we were any less busy. In the last week we’ve been occupied with bug fixes and performance improvements. Servers in general were having CPU performance hits to process all the game logic and replications, creating lag that isn't related to bandwidth, but simply the time the server takes to process what is needed. Besides that, clients were encountering several performance problems, which the most common is an over time one, that some people refer to as “Memory Leak”, but in fact, it was a combination of problems in the rendering process and collisions.

For both the Server and Client we managed to make improvements such as increased server stability and processing, significantly reducing the “lag”, client rendering improvements and much more stable over time performance. During this time we also managed to introduce some new mechanics, which the other programmers are going to talk about, as well as additional dinosaurs that are coming soon and faster.

We’re aware that we still have some issues to resolve, especially related to UI and pounce for example. Some of the problems with pounce were related to actors teleporting, which we’ve managed to reduce with the performance improvements, but pounce is a work in progress mechanic and will be changed heavily in future updates. Remember we will continue to optimise performance throughout the development process to allow for even more players and mechanics. For those asking about those new things, check out our realtime roadmap!

dmIV - Programmer

After releasing the safe log mechanic I continued with tying it to a sleeping state. It’s an extension to the rest ability we already had in place, so adding it was relatively simple. The original fade out I made was pretty basic and we wanted to improve it. The team looked at several different visuals and we went with a UI-based approach. I feel satisfied about how the whole thing looks.

Not a month can go by without improvements to the scent mechanic. This time I made footprints be managed separately from other scentable objects. This allowed for increasing the scent range significantly, while reducing it for just footprints. Thus you can smell food and water from much further away without footprint detection reducing the performance. I also finally got around to optimizing the way footprint effects appear. Originally there was a noticeable FPS drop when the effects fade in and out, now that’s a thing of the past. Newly scented footprints will still fade in gradually. Each character has a number of footprints they can leave, so when that number is reached we remove the oldest footprints. I made that fade out smoothly as well. We had various other issues with footprint scent as well that I finally got around to fixing, so it’s a huge relief to finally put those behind me.

I also implemented a pack scent mechanic, that you might have already seen in game in the form of orange clouds. It’s our way of combating large or mixed packs. When too many dinosaurs gather in an area they become detectable from far away. Different species have different pack ranges and dinosaur counts, with young dinos contributing less to the pack size. The system can be configured separately for dinosaurs of different species, so a mixed pack can show up with much less members than same-species groups.

I worked on the programming side of making water post processing functional. The ocean and swamps were fairly straightforward and came together in a short time, but rivers were more challenging. They needed a different implementation both in terms of just making the effects work and programming logic to support it. We are close to the finish, though, so expect pretty rivers in the near future!

We know you were disappointed about AI not making it to the last patch, so we worked hard on improving performance to support it. Most of the network usage comes from movement. Faster characters also need to use more data to avoid jittering/teleportation. I made the server dynamically change the individual characters’ update rates depending on their velocity. This results in significantly reduced bandwidth being spent on slow/idle characters and that bandwidth can be spent on something more important.

We also had huge FPS drops when a large crowd of dinosaurs gathered tightly. I looked into why that was happening and fixed it. All the changes we made add up to provide you a smooth gameplay experience.

Amar0k - Programmer

Heyo, I feel like these dev blogs are every week not every month... Time flies. Not a lot to talk about this time around. Although it's been a busy month fixing issues with AI and looking heavily into performance for server and client, Lots of really good improvements are being pushed into QA at the moment. AI was delayed due to some issues with performance and optimization. I won't bore you with the details but when AI is not rendered by any character it goes into a sort of sleep mode which was having unexpected results however all of which seem to be resolved. I'm hoping by the time this goes out AI is either with you or coming very soon.

I have also been busy working on grouping over the last few days so you can enjoy playing with friends in a team again. Original concept was to use a multi-wheel however we felt adding it for a single feature didn’t feel right. So the initial implementation is 2-calling(Friendly Call) near other players and they will receive a group invitation they can accept or decline. You have to be next to each other and you can block further requests to avoid spam. I know a lot of people have been requesting this so hopefully it gets through QA in a timely manner.

I know some people have been asking why I haven't been streaming. I think most of that is pretty self explanatory. I do plan to start again in the coming weeks though. So hopefully I can help keep everyone up to date on what’s being worked on. We have a nice new realtime roadmap where you can also check out what's to come!

VisualTech48 - Environment Modeller

Hope you all are doing well, had a pleasant chat recently with the community, and as I said something might come up of mine this patch, it most likely will.

This month I’ve been focusing on props and the Modular system for the Utility /Ranger buildings, and doing a lot of prop work, starting with the possible “big prop” you’ll be seeing soon, a radio tower. Pushing mostly prop by prop to be properly done and to look pretty great, like the AC Unit you might have seen while doing the high poly, and the Vent System which we streamed not so while ago.

The Modular system as well is going on its course, with an addition of some textures we might bet soon to testing it out how it stacks and if all of the modules are properly working for a construction of semi small/middle sized buildings which would be found in the wilderness. But all models parts of the kit except the windows are done.

Along with this there has been a lot of work on my texture game, as in, there are a lot of tweaks and additions for the new Utility/Ranger outpost, and I’ll be doing a new trim for the kit as it’s very specific.

Thirdly, I’m slowly importing my stuff in game which, as I said, means that we are 1 step closer to getting something in, most likely starting with the Radio Tower. This along with the Utility/Ranger buildings would bring another cool dimension of mystery for both the humans (at some point) and dinos so I can’t wait to put this stuff into the game.

dinosauriac - Sound Design

With a new playable dinosaur coming in the near future, the past couple of weeks have been a lot of mixing and experimentation to find the voice for Oviraptor. An excitable little thing, their speech is mostly made of short bird-like chirps and trills, which they produce in melodic sequences. Animation and I decided to give it a musical personality to set it apart from a lot of the other dinosaurs in-game...

Some of you will have no doubt seen that some old friends are returning to the game if you've looked at our roadmap, so I have also started touching up the Carno, Dryo and Stego vocal sets in preparation for their reintroduction. Their entire range of calls were remade last year, and are now higher quality with greater variation. Now comes the final task of implementing them into the game along with their new animations.

One thing I've been working to make sure of during "Evrima" is that everything is set up in such a way that it would be relatively easy for others to make their own dinosaur vocal sets further down the line. There are soundcue templates and attenuation presets I've created for the different "weight classes" of creatures, for the sake of consistency among the game's species and to reduce iteration time when making new content. These are more rough guidelines than strict rules, something Utahraptor-sized or below is usually considered "Small" whilst the average hadrosaur such as Maisaura would fall into the "Medium" bracket.

Since there are creatures in this game that go from the size of a mouse to the size of a house, we've had to work out a lot of fairly complicated transitions to have dinosaurs swap out Small effects sets as they grow big enough to require Medium and Large effects over time (e.g. Tyrannosaurus juveniles have completely different requirements than their adult forms). This is still being perfected, but most areas from vocalizations to footsteps are accounted for and easy enough to make variations of when using the core presets as a starting point.

Tapwing - Concept Artist

At the time I was nose deep in a number of sketches and cleanups, it was a welcome opportunity to tackle a painting again. Art for a wallpaper was called for and I was given free reign on what the subject could be (though still limited to our revealed creatures at the time). At first I wasn’t sure which dinosaur to feature, but after some thought, an old unfinished painting crept into mind. Something that was inspired a while ago by videos of Jaguars hunting crocodiles and originally featured an old fan-made strain of mine.

Well I saw no reason why the half made painting couldn’t be repurposed. The fan-strain was replaced by a Utahraptor and the originally full grown Deino was shrunk down to a juvenile. This still left the piece a bit awkward looking, particularly with the original composition being as close up to the two subjects as it was. Both either looked smaller or larger than they were supposed to, so the piece was going to need more context. To that end, we decided to blow it up and fill it out, fleshing out the forest, populating it with more Utah’s and adding the angry mother Deino for a proper size comparison.

We all knew the ankylosaurus was going to be a challenge. It’s an infamous tank of a dinosaur - sturdy and solid - the only problem was the silly thing had the mobility of a brick with legs. For the animal I’m sure it worked a treat, but for our game - with the map as large as we plan to make it and with the other animals as speedy as they are - Anky was going to need to evolve the ability to run a little. Fred led the charge with the designs, coming up with really nice concepts for armour plating and what would be the final concept for the face. I experimented with the tail and toyed with ways I could lightly break the ankylosaurus’s anatomy into doing things it probably couldn’t do. (Mostly running and being able to bend and twist it’s back some) One of the main references I used were rhinos. As they filled a few categories I was looking for, they had a wide ribcage, armoured looking skin and could run.

KissenKitten - Producer

Heyo everyone! This time around the team has been concentrating very hard on bug fixing and stability. But in addition to that ongoing process, I have shifted everyone’s focus to the roadmap. There you will find a comprehensive guide to what we’re working on (that we want you to know about) at any given moment. The dryo has at last gotten it’s special ability which we’re excited to send to testing. For the moment, it will not be burrowing as we’re going to revamp how that ability works in general. But as I stick to my word where I can, we will still allow the dryo to enter burrows and potentially refurbish them. Think warthog. We still may not allow you to create one from scratch. That is to be determined. With the addition of the dryo’s new special ability, creating burrows may overload it’s kit. Time and playtesting will tell. So we’ll look forward to your feedback on that as time goes on.

Stegosaurus has been rounded out and will be making its way to QA as AI for testing. I may want to add another attack for it but that will come later. With each update we’re trying to insert more and more life onto the island without creating a massive power imbalance amongst players. That being said, we’re gearing up to add new playables to the roster. The Hypsilophodon and the Carnotaurus. The hypsi is well on it’s way animation wise and since it’s a little guy, it’s a lot faster and easier to animate than the larger dinos. Smaller creature, smaller frame range to complete an action. WooHoo! I’m rounding out it’s vocal animations as of this blogpost and will then move into some more exciting animations. So be on the lookout in the Phase Two channel on discord for clips of it’s progress. We’re currently looking into dynamic solutions for it’s brow feathers etc in-engine so Bryan and I do not have to hand animate those things in max. Not the most difficult thing in the world if we have to do it by hand. But definitely more tedious. While we can do a dynamic simulation in max, I want it to have more complex motion than being a limp string in the wind. I want it to more dynamically react to the motion driven from the base. Similar to ribbon twirling. So during all of it’s vocals and actions, the creature is as expressive as can be. Cross your fingers.

The Carnotaurus is earlier in development than the hypsi as it is going to be reanimated from scratch for the most part. The carno, as well as a few of the other older dinosaurs have/had extraordinarily outdated rigs that do not allow for the kinds of actions we need our animals to perform in this new iteration of the game. So unfortunately for the nostalgic, we have to reanimate them. We may keep the same flavor of the older animations though. We’ll see. But fortunately, for the forward thinking, we’re going to be able to do a lot more with these animals than we ever could before. Things we wish we could have done years ago with the animations that we can finally do now. The carno will make it’s return in a big way. Careful this speedy hunter doesn’t sweep you off your feet!

I also have the concept team working on a few things that we’ll reveal to you all at a later date so stay tuned, be kind and be safe! Toodles!

Closing Remarks

That wraps up the August Devblog, we hope that you enjoyed the insight into our development process and look forward to all of your thoughts & feedback! Speaking of feedback… A few days ago we released our new and improved development roadmap, built using significant community input, if you haven’t already I’d suggest giving it a look, it’s another step forward in our mission to increase both transparency and community interaction.

Check it out here: https://trello.com/b/G5tsb4XI/public-roadmap
See you all next month for September’s Devblog! - Punchpacket