Dec 4, 2020

The Isle - Punchpacket

Hey Islanders,

We've just deployed a hotfix to resolve a number of issues such as the dreaded chatbox fps decay and the floating meat chunks. We've also reverted Spiro back to it's former size, as well as numerous other bug fixes and enhancements. Be sure to let us know what you think, we're all eager to hear your feedback!

Changelog 0.6.20.29

Additions

Added a hint for swallowing corpses.
Added loading screen tip for clogging wounds via wallowing.
Added a fade-in when loading into the map.
Added default gamepad binding for resting.
Added small slide foley sounds for all surfaces.
Added optimizations to water trace.
Added Hypsilophodon stagger and knockdown animations.
Added Stegosaurus stagger animation.

Enhancements

By popular request, Spiro's playable area has been reverted back to its previous size. Teleport locations restored for admins.
Made blood pool UI stay visible if not full.
Turned down Carnotaurus vocals volume.
Turned up volume of dinosaur vocals sound class.
Tweaked Carnotaurus charge end vocal sound.
Improved Stegosaurus tail whip sound.
Removed pain notifies from Stegosaurus. Improved attack, pain and extreme pain vocals.
Carnotaurus calls modulation improvements.
Increased AI spawn rate on Spiro.
Bans now remove themselves if they have expired when the banned player attempts to join.
New bans now work even if there is an existing ban that has expired.
Improved Carnotaurus charge start juvenile sound attenuation and mix.
Changed medium swim idle sound.
Reduced the volume for the Carnotaurus pain sound.
Underwater sound mix fades out faster.
Mud knockdown sound tweaked.
Hypsilophodon spit volume increased.
Corrected pitches of medium swim sound cues.
Changed Pounce to allow sprint input during it, allowing you to sprint immediately after releasing your pounce.
Reduced the volume of some ambient zone birds and insects sounds.
Reduced global cooldown after biting.
Hypsilophodon breathing given smaller attenuation, Carnotaurus and Stegosaurus juvenile calls have pitch modulation.
Minor tweak to Stegosaurus juvenile calls.
Stegosaurus and Carnotaurus bite sounds fix. Stegosaurus adult calls are more noticeable pitch shift.
Hypsilophodon bite volume increased.
Adjusted Plant spawners and Ambzones on Spiro.
Increased readability for the Hypsilophodon bite animation.

Balance

Slowed down juvenile Carnotaurus sprint speed by 30%.
Tweaked turn rate for Carnotaurus to be a bit faster for juvies and slower for adults.
Made Tenonto secondary stagger characters around its weight (+-25%). This allows the Tenontosaurus to stagger Carnotaurus using its tail slam/kick attacks.

Bug fixes

Fixed meat chunks floating.
Fixed chat entries ticks causing massive FPS drop over time. You don't need to change from global anymore to save FPS.
Fixed issue with weight attribute not being updated properly when growing, causing several issues.
Fixed bleeding damage being more than it should be, which is especially noticeable at the juvenile stage.
Fixed damage/blind stopping pounce struggle animation.
Fixed Carnotaurus bleeding when charging into something twice your weight.
Fixed Carnotaurus pain sounds and Stegosaurus bucking sound.
Fixed Tenotosaurus tail slam vocal pitch.
Fixed Hypsilophodon sound attenuation. You shouldn't hear them anywhere on the map now.
Fixed being able to set growth on Hypsilophodon.
Fixed attenuation issue with Stegosaurus bite sound cue.
Fixed juveniles having difficulty getting out of certain rivers.
Fixed and setup Carnotaurus extreme pain sound.
Fixed input lock after eating a body that despawns due to its food value running out.
Fixed Hypsilophodon spit causing input lock if a player was hit when vocalizing.
Fixed spectator camera causing your character to become "misaligned" with the player's camera.
Fixed the eating action cancelling pickup by accident if the player quickly tapped the eat key.
Fixed server log showing wrong growth for the death log.
Fixed max stamina, max hunger and max thirst being set from save, allowing absurd edited values.
Fixed staggers not playing properly for some characters.
Fixed multiple players being able to drag a single corpse.
Fixed not being able to jump for a while after biting.
Fixed grabbing meat from floating bodies causing them to sink.
Fixed being able to attack while knocked down or staggered.
Fixed small bugs related to admin commands not registering.
Fixed Tenontosaurus claw attack dealing the same damage as its bite.
Fixed wallow not being interrupted properly at the end, causing a small input lockup.
Fixed Carnotaurus stagger time being too long, causing a small input lockup.

Nov 30, 2020

Isle DevBlog #7 Spittin' it out there.

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.