I’ve been working on various tasks related to nesting. Hatching works differently for different nests. If the eggs are exposed then you will be able to see your dinosaur hatch from the egg directly, but for other nests the eggs are covered with debris so you will only see the dinosaur climb out from the pile.

I also set up the feeding system for hatchlings. They will not be able to eat directly with the exception of the Deinosuchus, instead they will have to beg for food by holding E. At this time the parents can approach them and press E to regurgitate some of their food to provide the babies with food, water and nutrients.

We want reproduction to require at least some minimal effort from both parents so the number and quality of the eggs will be affected by their diets. You will be able to have an offspring if you have at least one nutrient, but a better diet will let you have more. Your eggs can now also become rotten if you don’t manage the nest temperature properly.


Lately I’ve been working on some additional backend for our build/deploy environment and integrating some critical SDKs so we no longer rely on third party frameworks. I have also been slowly getting back into AI development as the Carno has begun testing alongside the new workflow that has been designed for how we develop and release AI. We are expecting some big things to happen in the AI space as more has gone into their interactions and behavior.




Stout and very grouchy, here we have the isles Diabloceratops.

Some loose mixes of wild bovine and wildebeest served as inspiration for these guys. The idea was they’d travel the island bullying others off of vegetation and almost always in herds. Though it shouldn’t be able to run down most other dinosaurs, it’s still going to need to be able to stand its ground against a variety of predators. You’ll very well want to watch out for those horns.


This month I got to work on the assets for the nesting system. We’ve had nest assets before but the newer and more dynamic system required a rethink of the feature set for how nests were designed and implemented. One of the new features is a series of morph targets that will animate as the nest is built up. These morphs took special consideration so that they played well with the topology and textures of the model but also the animation associated with the nest building.

In addition we have a new kind of nest, the debris nest, which requires its own materials and workflow. You can see some examples of these down below, I am quite pleased with the result and look forward to seeing them functioning in the game!







This month has been all about the dockyard, and so we are here a few steps closer to gaining more details and buildings to it.

I’ve managed to crack some issues with the Triplanar now being able to project seamlessly almost across the buildings, alongside the interior damage textures. Besides that we have 2 smaller, and one normal hangar ready to ship and be in the game.






Alongside that, I’ve constructed a StepWalkway kit that can be both used both for the interior and the exterior. It's a very versatile kit, having mostly all dimensions and sizes, alongside the damage variants.



Thirdly, the Monorail has begun its humble start, this is heavily WIP and only the main segment is “done”:



Lastly, a lot of minor fixes to the Dockyard tower, which now features a see through texture, so you can see if something awaits you before you go down, and the first type of variant for buildings for the interior. :D




This month I wrapped up working on the Pterodactylus vocal sounds, as well as the eating vocalizations for the Ceratosaurus heard in Seiza’s trail cam video. I also spent time working on creating all hatchling begging vocalizations for the current roster, working with KissenKitten on reiterating to get an interesting take on these sounds and animations for each animal and focusing on synching together the two components of this mechanic as closely as possible.

On the back end of this month I’ve started designing ambience to fit with changes in the weather, with a focus on achieving a strong survival horror aesthetic to the atmosphere – the current ambiences in EVRIMA work well for clear and sunny weather and will still be used in that circumstance, but these new ambiences will override as the default soundscape. Jumping off from this ambient work I’ve started conceptualizing some exciting unique sound sequences bringing something very different to the ambient audio cycle of The Isle.


As some of you may already know, QA has been undergoing a massive restructuring as of late. The main reason for this is that we have now reached a point where the amount of content to test while we develop the game has scaled so much that a small team of volunteer testers is simply not enough to cover every mechanic that needs to be checked before each update. This problem would only become worse with each new feature added, potentially causing older mechanics to break and slip through the cracks.

To rectify this issue, I have decided that alongside running QA, I would bring in a large group of community volunteers (eventually 200+), composed of current and former QA, content creators, and skilled fighters to form a new Stress Testing team. The idea behind this team is to act as a safety net between the QA team and the public branch, to catch any particularly nasty bugs that don’t rear their heads until they reach an abundance of players, such as the group name tag issue we had to deal with recently. Due to the amount of people joining, we will also be able to host full server playtests, which wasn’t possible with the QA team prior.

This team will also be involved in playtesting any new mechanics coming to the game first and giving feedback on character balancing. If the idea of this team interests you, why not consider applying? https://forms.gle/42pHQHVhsL2s2e4Y9

Besides that, the QA team has been hard at work continuing with testing the upcoming Skin Customizer and Nesting Systems:

A 3D Background has been created by our Level Designer Jace to give a better idea of how your skins will look in our environments. This background can be toggled.



Players are also able to toggle the gliding animation for any species that can fly.


We’ve also been testing the refined selection of colors on the new secondary patterns, ensuring that they look just as good as they do on their primary patterns. Here are a few examples, let us know what you think!










It’s been a good month for animation over here, no pun intended but we’ve been getting our ducks in a row creating the 200+ animations needed for Beipiaosaurus. In terms of workload it’s a bit like making another Deinosuchus.

We’ve also been getting Gallimimus prepared for it’s eventual return, but don’t worry, you’re not likely to be spam kicked to death ever again unless you decide to try to AFK grow and a Galli finds your hiding bush. It’s now got a full suite of directional attack animations like the other EVRIMA animals and will have some other quirks to make it far less likely to be seen as a troll Dinosaur like it was in Legacy.

We’ve also been dealing with Hypsilophodon’s juvenile morph, a complicated project because of its eyebrows and tail feathers, which it does not have as a juvenile. There were a lot of morph and skeletal related bugs we had to deal with to get this thing working, I hope it’s well appreciated what dmIV had to go through to get that thing working.


As you’ve read above, things are going rather well and we’re moving ever closer towards release. I’m very proud of the work everyone has been doing and look forward to you all experiencing the fresh take on nesting and skins. However, while it’s usually my style to keep things light in these devblogs, circumstances would see that change for this post.

This month on April 2, 2022 at 7:26am we lost our friend and colleague Brandon “Foszor” Gandy to brain cancer. I’ll admit, there’s still a great deal of shock and grief we’re dealing with in varying degrees as a team and as individuals. Some of us knew him better than others but I would be remiss if I didn’t count myself among the profoundly affected. Brandon was kind, creative and funny. Definitely one of the goofiest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. With an exceptionally ridiculous sense of humor. He always had a joke in the chamber or something ambitious he wanted to do. I remember the two of us sitting in call together hammering out what would become the infamous burrowing system for the Psittacosaurus just as a personal challenge. We were both curious if we could make it work with what we had. I knocked out some animations and he prototyped the system in what felt like 30 mins. After showing it off to the team, it was too good to be for AI alone and that’s how the Dryosaurus got burrowing. Just like that. Such a talented individual. I know this entry isn’t likely what was expected but neither was how things ended up. We often talked about the things we wanted to accomplish with this project and what we were going to do in the future. But now we’ll have to continue this journey without him. Carrying along his memory with us. Brandon loved his family, his friends, this project and living life to the fullest. We miss him. I miss him. But we’ve all been made better for having known him.

Rest in peace Foszor. We’ll never forget you.

If you would like to support his family, you can do so at the following link
{LINK REMOVED}https://www.gofundme.com/f/cvwpu-foszor-fights-brain-cancer

I spent most of this month developing the Skin System, we tested a wide variety of different designs to find which one was best and then we started to add the swatches that each animal can access, for each customizable part of the body. We even tried an eyedrop color picker system, but in the end we decided it is best to have a chosen list of swatches that we can expand overtime. Below is an updated image of the main panel. Keep in mind it is work in progress and more colors, options or features can be added as we move forward in development:



Some QOL were added, such as being able to pause animations (Ptera also has an option to toggle Standing or Gliding animations). See growth previews in real time, rotate in any direction and a very useful button to randomise your skin. In addition to the random button, players are also able to lock each Section, such as Male Display, Markings, etc. That should not be modified by the random button. Not only that, players can also lock the individual colors of each Section, as shown below:



By right mouse button clicking at a color will paint it in black, locking it from the random generator, allowing to have more control of what colors the random generator should use. Then using the brightness and saturation sliders players can have more control of how the Dino will look like.

Another nice feature added is the ability to Share skins with anyone. By clicking the “Export” button, a code will be generated for the current skin of that animal. Copy it by clicking the code and send it to your friends or anybody, they can just click the “Import” button, paste the code and boom! Save it and it is yours!



Players can also choose different Patterns for that animal and we can add and expand that as we please in the future. Besides the skin system, as always, I have been working on bug fixes and improvements to several mechanics of the game. Thanks and see you next time!


I continued my work on nesting this month. First of all there is a new temperature system, which plays a role in the incubation of the eggs. Temperature decreases gradually on its own and you have different ways to increase it. In the case of mound nests where the eggs are exposed you have to sit on the eggs to warm them up. Debris nests have good insulation and don’t require much maintenance, but if the temperature becomes too low you will have to add more debris to the nest to warm the eggs back up.



The temperature bar is broken up into four sections. In the ideal range (green) the eggs will incubate properly, while in the neutral range (white) nothing happens to them. If they are too cold (blue) or too hot (red) you will start losing incubation progress. Once your progress goes back to zero your eggs will rot. We left the door open to the temperature possibly being affected by the biome, weather and time of day, but that’s something for the future.

The next bigger task I tackled was hatching from eggs. For this I had to enable hatchlings first. Fortunately they were already set up for the most part, there’s just a few smaller changes and bugs left to fix for them. Then I had to adjust our spawn system to support spawning into a nest and then finally I added the actual hatching mechanic. We want to get the players into the game quickly, so after shaking around in the egg a few times you will see your dinosaur pop out and you can begin your adventure.


Just a short post from me this time! Besides the QA team’s constant bug testing on both the skin system and nesting, we’ve been looking at the new server queuing system that Amarok has been developing more recently. This system, as you would expect, allows players to queue up for servers that are at maximum capacity. Excitingly, it also allows for server administrators to skip the queue and even join a server if it’s full, avoiding any instance where they could not enter the server to attend their moderation duties. See the video below for how the queuing system looks in action:




This month I had a few things going on, working on building concepts and getting another set of nature sketches started, but the thing I’ve been most excited to work on this month is testing the skin system. The initial phase was spent zeroing in on what the team wanted the skin system to even look like, do we want swatches? Do we want sliders? How much range do we want to give players and what customization additions could we make in the future?

After some testing, what we’ve got now is a mix of swatches and sliders to allow for more precise color tweaking. Once the UI was brought to a point where it felt good to use, it was on to the fun but somewhat tedious part, color selection! Not only is each dinosaur going to have different colors available to it, each pattern layer will also have its own color selection as well. So that was a few days spent JUST narrowing selections down per category from what I would say was the maximum color range we could potentially use across the roster.

The goal with this idea was to allow as many color choices as we can while still holding players to a mostly natural variance between the same dinosaurs.


I’ve been working on sounds for a new AI creature that will be appearing across The Isle in the near future, Pterodactylus. This small scavenging creature’s significant function is to mob and annoy players, eat their food and give away their position. For this reason the main quality of the creature's vocals had to be irritating. To tackle this I am creating an array of distinct and unusual vocalizations, each one unique for the associated action. When a player is mobbed by a group they will hear a chorus of all the various sounds resulting in a cacophony of annoyance. Passive sounds like its idle are low ugly glucking sounds, when hopping around they will produce a playful warble, attacks will sound like an aggressive cackle as if mocking the player and its dying sound consists of a harsh grating screech, mixed with its signature gargle. Among other sounds It will also have a couple of calls which I’m experimenting with to create something unique.

The Pterodactylus, as an AI creature, is intended to be very vocal in order to give away a player location, however thinking about this brought the current situation of idle vocals for our current roster of playables to my attention and the impact they have on maintaining stealth whilst playing. Idle sounds have now been significantly reduced in volume when standing and resting, and totally removed from idle crouch animations; aiming to strike a balance between audio immersion and gameplay functionality.

I’ve also created a suite of egg cracking sounds that will accompany the hatching mechanic with a variety of intensities depending on the size of the egg. I’ve compiled these into two different subsets of sounds, the initial cracking as the egg shakes and the hatchling stresses the outer structure of the shell, and then a more intense and hollow sounding crack that occurs the moment the hatchling quickly bursts out.


Another month down and a heap of progress made. The production cycle for Update 5 has mostly been filled with prototyping and tweaking of systems. We hit the ground running with this update so we were able to run a fair amount of tests. We’ve trialed several different iterations of the skin system and nesting system and some other additions that are to come at a later date. With the progress we have made on the update being substantial, we are finally comfortable showing you more of what we’ve been up to and what these systems are going to provide. We’ll also be including a new and unexpected blast from the past, pterodactylus. Who you’re likely to love to hate or hate to love. This entry is going to be short and sweet as we've got all hands on deck to round out a few more finishing touches and tie up some loose ends. But we’ll be dropping some clips for you soon that span Update 5 features and future creatures coming into the game. We know the Skin and Nesting systems have been long awaited and we’re excited to get it into your hands.

Hey Islanders,

We've deployed a small hotfix to address a number of issues that were present in the previous version of EVRIMA. You may need to restart Steam if the update does not make itself immediately available for download.

• Readded stamina cost based on growth.
  
• Improved corpse ragdoll performance with a new implementation system for interactions.

• Fixed apply button disappearing after navigating the controls menu.
  
• Fixed wallow lockup if the admin entered spectator mode.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus juvenile Eat Loop Swim animation.
  
• Fixed a pickup crash caused by PhysicX.

• Characters that have picked something up occasionally cannot eat/drink until safe logging.
  
• Deinosuchus lunge replication issues.
  
• Group leadership does not transfer.
  
• Group leader can occasionally lose kick permissions.
  
• Level may take a long time to load/never load.
  
• Characters sometimes fail to save correctly.
  
• Players may be stuck looking at their corpse unable to respawn.

Hey Islanders,

We're releasing a small patch to address a number of issues that were present in the previous version of EVRIMA, as well as implementing a number of balance & map changes based on the data we gathered from our internal heatmaps. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more about our thought & development process for many of the changes/additions you'll see in the patchnotes, be sure to read our latest Development Blog which we've linked below.

Latest DevBlog: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/376210/view/3128317225041424482

• Setup unique Pachycephalosaurus juvenile locomotion. These animations are much faster than the previous set.
  
• Redistributed all edible plant locations; removed all instances of "All Land Biomes" as a plant location. Every plant now has specific areas (some are shared) that they can be located in. This should encourage herbivores to migrate more often and not be able to attain a perfect diet in the central grassland alone.
  
• Added a new large river to the central grassland of Spiro. This allows semi-aquatics to travel from the East/West sides of the island with ease.
  
• Added a new grassland to the North West of Spiro. Pumpkins and Radish Root are found here.
  
• Added North West as a spawn location.
  
• Added new spawn zone selection map to reflect the new updates.
  
• Added Music Manager. This will be continually worked on over the course of a few patches.
  
• Added new Stegosaurus sniff idle animations.
  
• Added anti-spam to admin commands.
  
• Added new chicken mesh and animations with material variations.
  
• Added new turtle mesh and animations.
  
• Added splash VFX and SFX when falling into water.
  
• Added check to avoid vomiting if trying to swallow gore, fruit or fish that would cause player to vomit. Does not apply to corpses.
  
• Added new frog animations.
  
• Re-added server name filter and improved it.
  
• Added message on disconnect.
  
• Added sensitivity slider to controls.
  
• Added option to invert camera look.
  
• New dirt, mud and grass vfx added.
  
• Added RCON (Documentation to be released at a later date works similar to Source RCON Kick, Ban, Save, Shutdown, Announce).

• Adjusted Dusk and Dawn times.
  
• Replaced the Southern Lake with a large mud pool as an attempt to spread out the playerbase, in accordance with the data gathered from our heatmaps.
  
• Replaced the river known as "Shallows" with a long dirt path.
  
• Deepened all rivers on Spiro to allow for Deinosuchus to ambush from almost all water sources.
  
• Updated camera system.
  
• Made Deinosuchus FOV adapt with growth (90 for adult, 100 for juvenile)
  
• Made meat red on herbivore compass.
  
• Setup chicken attack and adjusted move speeds.
  
• Set turtle to only wander around beach locations.
  
• Added new movement for Sea Turtle and added new check for same class behaviors.
  
• Updated damage for Charge vs Ram impact.
  
• Made Lunging, or being lunged not restore or decay stamina overtime.
  
• Updated Herbivores and Plant locations hint.
  
• Removed old palm tree static meshes from Spiro.
  
• Turned off exterior lights in Ranger Station.
  
• Removed timer from applying settings.
  
• Changed turtle swim speeds and fixed ambient fleeing other ambients.
  
• Allowed Hypsilophodon to be able to charge jump while holding something.
  
• Fixed some issues with resetting keybinds.
  
• Increased Pumpkin and Radish spawn amount. Decreased potato spawn amount.
  
• Disabled scenting underwater.
  
• Allow pickup to activate while moving, but ability still forces a movement stop.
  
• Disabled pachy tail physics when sprinting forward.
  
• Increased hint UI priority of head fracture.
  
• Disabled bucking while flying.
  
• Adjusted mud wallow to be more visible.
  
• Improved Lunge visually for the actor being lunged.
  
• Avoid playing pounced recoil anim if resting or sleeping.
  
• Re-enabled kicking of group members by owner.
  
• Ban checks are now completed before the player joins to prevent an exploit.
  
• Official servers now give a 5 minute warning and countdown from 10 before a restart and will world save.

Diets

• All creatures spawn with 15% of all three nutrients.

Diets will now impact the following:

Buffs

• Locked Health regen increased by 15%.
  
• Bleed regen increased by 15%.
  
• Fracture regen increased by 15%.

Debuffs

• Bleed resistance decreased by 25% (only goes down).
  
• Blunt resistance decreased by 25% (only goes down).
  
• Locked Health regen decreased by 25%.
  
• Bleed regen decreased by 25%.
  
• Negative Diet AttackPower debuff reduced from -50% to -25%.
  
• Negative Diet scent range debuff removed.
  
• Fracture regen decreased by 25%.

Fractures

• Minimum blunt damage threshold increased. Future proofing for species being added to the game later on.
  
• Head fracture damage modifier decreased. This was overtuned.
  
• Updated body fracture stamina cost modifier to 2x

Locked Health

• Locked HP will not begin regenerating until you have regained all non-locked HP.

Wallowing

• Wallow buff persists after taking damage.

Vomiting

• Now reduces current nutrients/hunger/thirst by 75% of their current amount.

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. Fills up on less food.

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.

Mobility

• Turn in place rate slightly increased. (Turns better).
  
• Sprint Acceleration increased. (Hits top speed faster).

Alternate Primary Attack: 360 Bite

• Updated carno alt bite stamina cost to 5%
  
• Turn rate increased to match turn in place rate.

Secondary Attack: Charge

• Charge turn radius improved slightly.
  
• Charge still deals damage even when no cc is caused.

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.

Secondary Attack: Ram

• Special exception for tap ram on Carnotaurus removed.
  
• Ram self stagger threshold when tapped increased.
  
• Ram self stagger threshold when held increased.
  
• Turns slower while holding a ram attack.
  
• Ram still deals damage/fracture even when no cc is caused.

Diet

• Nutrient group changed from Three dots to Two lines.
  
• Rabbit replaced with Chicken.

Mass

• Starting mass reduced.
  
• Adult mass reduced.

Health

• Starting health reduced.
  
• Adult health reduced.

Blood Pool

• Starting blood pool reduced.
  
• Adult blood pool reduced.

Food Value

• Starting Food Value reduced.
  
• Adult Food Value reduced.

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced.

Secondary Attack: Rear Kick

• Bleed enabled.
  
• Damage increased.
  
• Increased animation speed.

Alternate Secondary Attack: Tail Slam

• Damage reduced.

Diet

• Chicken replaced with Rabbit.
  
• Deinosuchus replaced with Pteranodon.

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced.

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.

• Fixed Fish AI not fleeing appropriately.
  
• Fixed Alt Attacks causing input lock if used right before being pounced.
  
• Fixed fresh spawn Pachycephalosaurus causing Stagger on adult Carnotaurus.
  
• Fixed eating animation being activated when pickup animations are about to start.
  
• Fixed not able to jump while carrying something.
  
• Fixed Diet meter not reseting after vomiting.
  
• Fixed water trace collision issues.
  
• Fixed carried meat giving infinite food if eaten by others.
  
• Fixed scale issues when using Grow admin command.
  
• Fixed coconut not updating the mesh.
  
• Fixed being lunged while knocked down not working properly.
  
• Fixed scent while fast swimming.
  
• Fixed Tenontosaurus tail phyisics for secondary attacks while moving.
  
• Fixed ambient AI not respawning.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus and Utahraptor stagger times.
  
• Fixed characters being pushed up too much after hitting the bottom of water when sinking.
  
• Fixed different mesh from root plant and its piece.
  
• Fixed client getting stuck after releasing a carried fish underwater.
  
• Fixed eating animation clientside sometimes not playing after digging roots.
  
• Fixed eventual input locks with Ram and Pounce caused by latency.
  
• Fixed Pachycephalosaurus slide when landing.
  
• Fixed Pachycephalosaurus land animation.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon alt attack not consuming stamina.
  
• Fixed drag location for Deinosuchus, mostly during lunge.
  
• Fixed a swallowing issue.
  
• Fixed weird behavior when juvenile Utahraptor pounces an adult Pteranodon.
  
• Fixed issue with fall damage when ramming.
  
• Fixed some collisions on logs not affecting physics actors.
  
• Fixed sprinting stamina cost when carrying for Carnotaurus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus and Tenontosaurus.
  
• Fixed fall damage not applying when being lunged.
  
• Fixed auto fall Coconuts, Oranges and Mangos over time.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus vocals not cancelling when diving.
  
• Fixed an issue with Ram when hitting fruits.
  
• Fixed sunchoke and potato roots diet type.
  
• Fixed bush asset cancelling pounce.
  
• Fixed stamina regen while bucking.
  
• Fixed birds not flying from trees after broadcasting.
  
• Fixed open coconut hint for herbivores that don't eat coconut.
  
• Fixed juvenile camera issues when too close to objects.
  
• Fixed audio stopping if volume was set to 0 in audio settings.
  
• Fixed Rabbit cancelling burrow if being attacked.
  
• Fixed eating/swallowing not working immediately after skimming.
  
• Fixed stamina cost for alt attacks and swimming attack if body fractured.
  
• Fixed stamina cost when body fractured for Stegosaurus tail attack, Tenotosaurus kick and tail slam.
  
• Fixed Pachycephalosaurus headbutt downwards stamina cost being the same as hold instead of tap.
  
• Fixed issue of faction selection not appearing sometimes after death.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus being able to drop meat or corpses under the landscape.
  
• Fixed lunged target sometimes being dropped under landscape.
  
• Fixed headbutt causing ragdoll issues if the target died immediately from it.
  
• Fixed being able to use the admin character swap if in spectator mode.
  
• Fixed losing edible food when carrying and overlapping other intereactable sources.
  
• Fixed the knockdown getup being triggered twice sometimes.
  
• Fixed up/down keys and tab affecting UI navigation.
  
• Fixed some button and text issues on the Admin Panel.
  
• Fixed servers dissapearing when selecting a server in the list.
  
• Fixed issues with sorting by name, ping, players.
  
• Fixed some issues with the admin announcement text field on the admin panel.
  
• Fixed Compsognathus not spawning correctly sometimes.
  
• Fixed Hypsilophodon jump stamina cost with body fracture.
  
• Fixed charging not draining increased stamina with body fracture.
  
• Fixed juvenile Deinosuchus bite in water audio.
  
• Fixed footsteps audio being cut off.
  
• Fixed incorrect vocal audio when stamina drained.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus charge stamina drain.
  
• Fixed stamina cost not properly updating with growth.
  
• Fixed Tenotosaurus claw stamina cost not being affected by body fracture.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon running takeoff animation not playing with leg/body fracture.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon's running takeoff stamina decay with a body fracture.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon's stationary takeoff stamina decay with body fracture.
  
• Fixed scent blocking other abilities incorrectly.
  
• Fixed character scale affecting sinking speed.
  
• Fixed elite fish wrong mouth position server side when carried.
  
• Fixed allowing multiple controls to be set at the same time.
  
• Fixed teleport issue bringing a carried corpse with it.
  
• Fixed Mesh collision inconsistencies causing issues with corpse detection.
  
• Fixed pickup not firing if holding shift while stationary.
  
• Fixed fractures not reinitializing when load game.
  
• Fixed mud not being remove when swimming.
  
• Fixed Eating/Swallow issues if Swallow is activated before finish picking up.
  
• Fixed Dino FOV when growing affecting other clients.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus fractured body animations.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon running takeoff stamina drain.
  
• Fixed some Effects and Sounds when dead.
  
• Fixed pounce canceling rest on release.
  
• Fixed pouncer affecting overlap adjustment.
  
• Fixed bleeding not loading values correctly.
  
• Fixed Tenontosaurus low End animation causing slide when eating stops.
  
• Fixed ceiba tree collision.
  
• Fixed damage problems when staggered from ram.
  
• Fixed MainMenu being intereactive if settings panel is open.
  
• Fixed rabbit in burrow getting rammed causing its corpse to fall under the level.
  
• Fixed windowed mode not showing decoration bar.
  
• Fixed enable/disable group invite toggle.
  
• Fixed Goat AI responses.
  
• Removed duplicate controls and fixed keybind reset.
  
• Fixed RadishFlower not having root piece.
  
• Fixed Easy Anti Cheat sometimes not initializing properly.
  
• Fixed Easy Anti Cheat sometimes not kick/banning player on violation.
  
• Fixed fruits resetting position client side on relog.

Hey everyone, this month I spent the majority of my time on two things. Firstly, a small patch contains an enormous amount of bug fixes. Many of those bugs caused issues to various basic interaction mechanics such as eating, drinking, as well as inconsistencies in certain abilities. Then I’ve also been working on the Skin System which is slated to debut as part of Update #5, which is going great, but we’re still testing and deciding ways to grant players the most amount of customization options without causing unexpected results.

Lastly I’ve also dedicated some time to a Music Manager system, which should be integrated as part of the soon-to-be deployed as part of the small patch. Keep in mind that it will still be changed in the near future, so the system itself will improve and have different outcomes as we move forward in development.


I’ve spent much of the month working on Update #5’s nesting mechanic. There will be at least two types in the update. Mound nests are easier to construct, but require more maintenance once you are incubating the eggs. Debris nests are constructed from materials you will have to find, but they keep the eggs warm for you. I feel like that ended up being a fun little mini game. I had various other tasks related to them like saving or setting up a UI indicator too.

Naturally we always have bugs to fix and balance changes to make, you’ll learn more about that in Hypno’s post somewhere further down the blog. I also ended up making some significant changes to the charge mechanic in the background. You should be able to hit your targets more reliably from now on.


Around the end of last month I had been working with some of QA to streamline our bug testing processes, more specifically how we approach our “adhoc” testing. For those unfamiliar with this process, it is the act of testing something without much planning to see if any defects have appeared with each build. Before the changes, we were doing more work than what is necessary, which resulted in the process taking longer than it should have. This issue has since been resolved as we now have an “intended behavior” section that each tester can simply mark whether the behavior ingame matches what we have on the sheet. Adhoc testing is now a much simpler process and has allowed us to cover a lot more ground on bugs, so hopefully the change should reflect in the quality of the upcoming patch.



The above is just a glimpse into the many sheets that we cover in QA, specifically how meat chunks can be interacted with. To cover from the left-most column to the right, we start with a query (e.g. what happens if I “Try to grab more than one meat chunk”?). We compare the results of the query ingame to the intended behavior on the sheet. If it’s working as intended, we mark the query green, if it has a defect then the query is marked red. We open a report on our internal issue tracker, link it to the sheet and then update the “Last Version Checked”. This process has to be repeated for every mechanic, for every species in the game and kept up-to-date as much as possible, due to changes/bug fixes causing unforeseen circumstances - even things that you would typically think are unrelated can break each other! Just because a mechanic works in one build doesn’t mean it will work as intended in the next.

Moving on from QA’s processes, I’ve been spending the rest of this month ensuring that the upcoming patch to EVRIMA will improve the gameplay experience while we pursue Update 5. Firstly, the balance changes:

• All plant locations have been redistributed and we’ve removed all instances of "All Land Biomes" as a plant location. Every plant now has specific areas (some are shared) that they can be located in. This should encourage herbivores to migrate more often and not be able to attain a perfect diet in the central grassland alone.
  
  
• Diet will now affect more statistics. Heals bleed, locked health, fractures and more much faster/slower with a good/bad diet.
  
  
• Food intake for almost all species has been increased. This means you can fill up on less food, which was especially an issue for characters such as the Carnotaurus, which would gain barely any hunger from eating its preferred diet.
  
  
• Carnotaurus mobility slightly improved when moving slower. Hits top speed faster. Vastly improved reliability for its charge attack, as mentioned in dmIV’s post.
  
  
• Pachycephalosaurus cannot turn as quickly whilst holding a ram attack but its juvenile moves much more quickly now.
  
  
• Tenontosaurus’ kick attack has been brought more in line with its tail slam. It applies bleed to opponents and hits faster.
  
  
• And much more that you’ll see in the patch notes!

Secondly, I’ve been working more closely with Jace on some essential map changes to further encourage players to move around more, using the data we gathered from Amarok’s heatmaps:



Commonly referred to as “Oasis” in the community has proven to be an issue throughout the public quality assurance testing and in evrima. This area seems to be a huge draw for players of all species due to it having almost every resource surrounding it. It was decided the best course of action was to remove the water and turn it entirely into a mud pool, ensuring players are distributed across the entirety of the map.



A new river has been added to the central grassland. This is the “buff” for Deinosuchus that I teased in the public Discord last week. It has allowed semi-aquatics to traverse with ease from the East/West sides of the map and opened up a lot of new space for them to ambush from.



Another area that we found problematic. Experienced players will know the community name for this river as “Shallows” due to its significant lack of deep water. It was decided that, due to it not having much space to ambush from and a new river being added, that it no longer had a purpose as a river. Almost all of it is now a dirt path that terrestrials should consider using to avoid being spotted in the grasslands when crossing the island.



A large portion of the North West of the map was completely made of jungle and not much else. According to our heatmaps, this area was barely visited by players. We’ve cleared a lot of the jungle out and moved some of the herbivore food out there to, once again, encourage players to distribute across the island more.

As always, please leave us feedback in our public Discord so that we can continue to address any issues and make the gameplay experience as fun as possible. Thanks for reading!


This month I’ve mostly been focused on vocal designs in various forms. I started off with completing the courtship vocals for our current roster, some of which you have already heard. My attention is now focused onto the next vocal calls that will be making their way into the game. Firstly I have been cleaning, mixing as well as minor tweaks and additions where possible to the already existing vocal sets of Legacy creatures, bringing the fidelity up as much as possible whilst maintaining the sonic identity already established. Once complete I will be moving on to creating new supplementary sounds for these creatures to expand on their identity.

Secondly I have been designing the unique set of vocal calls that the Beipiaosaurus will emit when underwater. This allowed for some experimentation and deviation from the standard calls, introducing some new sources alongside ones already used and also having a bit more freedom to play with the processing used based on function and the otherworldly aesthetic that is inherent in underwater vocalizations.

Additionally I addressed the issue of footstep audio dropping out and have begun some preliminary planning and testing for a complete overhaul on the vocal attenuations starting from the ground up. I will be continuing this over the coming months with the hope that it will make its way into update 5 and bring an improved experience to what the vocal calls bring to both gameplay and ambient immersion.


This month has been focused on making variants, and new buildings which would fill up the Dockyard main infrastructure, regarding Storage. More remains to be made, but it's going ahead with full blast, especially the larger storage facilities.

Main concept of a single storage building has been converted to 4 ingame variants, based on size and what they store, and we might make for each type of these building, into variants of how the interior is sorted out.






Keep in mind these are WIP images, lightning and exterior is not final. The process consists of a lot of technical difficulties that I’ve encountered, but have been all sorted out. It is just time consuming, and I’m taking a lot of time as well to make it as optimized as we can, as with the new advanced shader system (that makes exterior of buildings look unique, not only with damage, but color id and a leak/dirt system), we needed a way to heavily optimize them.
Eg. Massive Storage facility:



This came along with a heavy design of a system that would support it and it will surely advance even more with future buildings as we go. The first issue was tackling the shaders themselves, and making sure we can bake out a building and from a distance that no noticeable change would be seen visually, but would be performant wise.

And I have achieved that, as seen in the following images, from x materials (usually ranging from 4-8), we have at almost very close proximity, to get to 1, and that the vertex and triangle count is cut more than half.




Besides that I’ve been working heavily on adding crucial key structures that are simply made out of metal or variants that fill the dockyard. This month the Helipad has come to fruition:




And lastly every building that has been added and has gone to the finilization stage, has been tackled to a performant, yet good distance configuration for all of the meshes that are inside the mentioned buildings.




That is it for me this month, cheers!




It's time for the mid tier fisher of the isle.

With some of the gameplay ideas the team’s been working on, we took inspiration from jaguars and bears for this version of Baryonyx. Setting it up as a more ‘stand your ground’ type of creature ready to give attackers a swat they’ll remember. Fishing for the most part with some alternative sneak-attack hunting when the opportunity arises. It’s at home both in and out of the water, so you’ll wish to tread carefully by the riverside.


That’s February down and we are making our way through Update 5. We’ve “laid” (teehee)sufficient groundwork on nesting, courting and the skin system. For courting you’ll be finding someone you can trust (hopefully) to go on the familial adventure of rearing young with you. Work together to find a safe space to construct your nest and begin laying eggs. Nesting will come with differing engagements based on the type of nest your species builds. There’s more than one way to build a nest and a few different types of nests to build as well as differing egg types, all based on species. Care for and defend your nest until your eggs are ready to hatch then invite your friends to experience just how good of a parent you are or aren’t. Their precious lives are squarely in your claws/hooves, so make wise decisions. Or don’t, and be bad at parenting, it’s your journey. We’ll be sharing some clips of how nesting works in the coming weeks so you can have a more well-rounded idea of how it functions

The skin system is also moving along quite nicely with pleasant results thus far. As we’ve mentioned previously, we are dedicated to allowing you the flexibility to express your creativity and create amazing combinations without sacrificing the visual fidelity of the game. Expect to be able to show off your individuality in a greater way than Legacy provided but still within the margins of acceptability. We are pleased with how things are shaping up so far and with a few rounds of trying to make the most hideous combinations imaginable, we’ll settle on what is a customization win for the game.

We’ll be showing off some of the work mentioned above as it becomes ready and include some sneak peeks at some ongoing content we’ve worked on in tandem so stay tuned.

Upon returning from vacation I was immediately stricken with a sickness, certainly a fun time. At least I managed to rest during our Christmas Break, so now I’m fully reinvigorated and raring to go! Anyway, it’ll be a fairly short entry this month as I’ve been primarily working on fixing an assortment of bugs and modifying various existing mechanics in preparation for Updates 5 and 6, such as pickup/carrying. It’s vital that I make these changes now rather than later, otherwise we’d likely run into complications that would extend development time. We’ve also started development on the Skin System which is slated to debut as part of Update #5, but some additional meetings are necessary so that we may nail down its final intricacies.


Hey everyone, back in full-swing after the much needed Christmas Break. I’ve spent the last few weeks looking at our EasyAntiCheat integration and resolving a number of issues that had arisen with its initial implementation. It’s important to note that we have a zero-tolerance policy for all forms of cheating/hacking as we deem it imperative to ensure that our players can engage with one another in a safe & secure environment.

Swinging over to a lighter topic, I’ve also been delving more into the behaviours for our ambient AI animals with some new animations and more appropriate movement for their respective species. And lastly I’ve begun reworking and testing some of the Dinosaur AI and can’t wait to share it with you all!


After getting back from the holidays I got started on the courting mechanic, which is part of the upcoming nesting system. In a way it’s similar to how players currently utilize the friendly vocalization to form groups, except you have to repeat the process several times to build up your affinity towards each other. Once that’s done two dinosaurs will form a pair and can begin nesting. I made a nest building prototype a long time ago, but since then we decided to come up with a more in-depth system so I’m currently working on that, which we’ll share more information about as it develops.

Lastly, I also added a system that generates unique identifiers for each dinosaur. It doesn’t mean much from a gameplay standpoint yet, but it will be necessary for us to have a functional ancestry system.


After the release of the Update 4 trailer "Subsistence.", I spent the vacation reading your feedback on the shots, which always helps me improve on future projects.

Speaking of future projects: of course I've already started thinking about the next update trailer. I've begun with the planning phase again, with lots of brainstorming, research, reviewing possible soundtracks, and writing down preliminary scene ideas so I can start writing the storyboard. I'm really looking forward to the upcoming update and the accompanying trailer and can't wait to start the applicatory phase.

Over the past few weeks I've also been creating some additional WIP clips. You probably noticed that the last animation concept clips were filmed using the engine. This gives you a more natural look at the WIP animations. In this way I also created internal WIP clips on future content that can help the team develop mechanics and animation.


This month's work was all about the docks, and its peripherals, containing, but not limited to buildings and items. First order after the vacation was pretty much getting back on track and with a bit change of direction we have decided to add far more metal into our constructions. Both for style and to act as reinforced parts of the buildings, making them look bulkier in the process.

This means we got a new trim which consists only of metals, which will be further used for any metal parts of the docks and detailing. A great example of this is the Dockyard Watchtower, featured here:




The Trim:


And as previously said, new bulkier buildings, which now have more metallic reinforcements and different shapes, to make them feel more unique. Keep in mind this is work in progress and is not done, so the special shader which features the damage and the special color coding is not yet baked onto these buildings.




The next order of business is pretty much making a lot of buildings for the Docks, and making sure we have multi story buildings as well, both small and big but keeping scale in size.

See you next month!


I’ve been at work drafting nest concepts for a couple of newer animals. For the Hypsilophodon we wanted to try something more arboreal and inspired by weaver birds and hamerkops. I’ve been playing with a number of different shapes made out of mud and/or a medley of fibers. The Pteranodons nests are simpler for the most part, outside of cliff-side nest ideas I’ve also explored nests you might see on a sea stack. More information on that as we begin to solidify a direction.


It’s great to be back! Our vacation was very much needed after such a hectic year for everybody. Including you as well I would imagine. Since we’ve been back, we’ve had a lot of meetings in preparation for the rest of the year and still more meetings to come. But alongside that, production on Update 5 has officially begun as many of you may have seen via the ongoing courting animations. The majority of art creation right now is centered around courting, nests, eggs, hatchlings and skins as we prototype the look and interactions we want to lean towards or away from for this update. Definitely expect a more robust nesting experience than you have previously experienced. With this month being shorter for us, this post shall also be but we do come bearing updates to the Public Roadmap! So check that out to know the direction we’re heading in. Chat more in February!

You can check out the Public Roadmap via the link below!
https://trello.com/b/G5tsb4XI/public-roadmap

Hey everyone, as always it’s been another busy month filled to the brim with bug-fixes and rounding out the final additions for Update #4. You may recall that in the previous DevBlog I wrote extensively about a special system titled “Lag Compensation” which for those who hadn’t read the previous blog, is a system designed to combat issues relating to latency/lag, aka the time certain things take to go from the client to server and/or from server to client. As for where it is in terms of development, the system is now technically complete and has progressed to an internal “stress test” phase where we can appropriately evaluate how it functions and ensure that we’re delivering a system that improves the gameplay experience for all.

All of the remaining dietary plants that were scheduled for Update #4 have now been completed and have made their way into the game, however you should keep in mind that we’ll be continually adding to and expanding upon the Diet System throughout development as it’s an important cornerstone mechanic that applies to both current and future playable creatures. Speaking of the Diet System, based upon feedback I’ve made a number of adjustments to the diets for Deinosuchus & Pteranodon, two creatures that were having a rather difficult time according to the data.

Besides all that, as you’re all well-aware we’ve also been quite busy with the initial implementation of our human characters. They’ve been set up with an assortment of necessary basic features. We're all excited to see you take your first steps and truly get to experience the sheer scale and power of the fearsome creatures you’ll be wanting to evade. Happy Holidays Islanders!


I’ve spent the majority of this month setting up the basic implementation of the human character and tackling the assortment of issues that spring up as a result. Fortunately most of the movement systems that we built into the game were intentionally set up with the future implementation of humans in mind, so I only had to make some minor adjustments to get them running smoothly. In addition I also set up their animation system and the flashlight mechanic that I’m sure will result in some truly terrifying encounters as you’re stumbling about in the darkness, locked in first person with only that torch as your only solace.

On the topic of Update #4 and the Diet System, I also spent a decent chunk of time implementing an important overhaul to the way we displayed certain dietary information to the player. Previously you would navigate to a scented food source based upon the color of a generic icon, which quickly resulted in two very serious issues, most notably it left users with colorblindness at an enormous disadvantage as it was very difficult for them to distinguish which food source they should be moving towards, and other players would often find themselves moving a lengthy distance towards a nutrient type that they had already filled. To solve this we came up with three unique icons to make sure that each nutrient was visually distinct at a mere glance of your compass, while your non-preferred meals are all displayed as a generic leaf/meat icon depending on whether you’re a herbivore or carnivore.

Last of all, I’ve been working through an assortment of bugs to fix for the update that is now in your hands.


This month I’ve had the majority of my focus on assisting in the development of the human character. The most crucial task being the creation of a flashlight, so that you weren’t going to be stumbling around blind at night.





I’ve also been busy with my usual tasks of knitting additional props to flesh out structure interiors and optimizing the performance impact of the buildings themselves, which is now based on MeshBaking already complex building materials, significantly reducing their materials from 6+ per building, to just one very simplified mesh.






This month I have started designing the sounds for the courtship animation, specifically for the Utahraptor, Pteranodon and Tenontosaurus. The Utah’s vocals have a deep throbbing and purring quality, the male sounds more flamboyant, whilst the females purring is very low frequency and subdued in comparison. The Pteranodon’s courting sounds consist of a variety of sounds ranging from percussive beak clapping to low grumbly cooing. The Tenontosaurus is still in progress adapting to changes in the animation to convey the right character. I’ve also begun working on the sounds for the Troodon pinned animation, matching the aesthetic of its calls whilst trying to convey the pain and panic it would be experiencing during this animation.





Compsognathus. The tiny hunters and scavengers of the island. Referencing small birds and lizards alike, these little guys are social and advantageous, from flesh to eggs, if you leave food unattended, these little guys might just pop out to surprise you.


The last month I’ve continued work on the edible plant assets, we are winding down to the last of the needed plants and the more complicated ones have been saved for last. I’ve finished the Dulse, Fiddlehead, Fireweed and Papaya plants. Nothing too different about the workflow for any of these, just lots of texture planning and painting. I’ll drop some pictures of the final assets in-engine here



Only 5 more plants to go, then I’ll be moving onto new and exciting stuff!


Update 4 has been released! Hop on and let us know what you think. It has been a long time coming and will be setting the stage for other adjoining features and mechanics in the future. We look forward to expounding upon the framework that the diet system has provided so we can craft some really niche interactions. We have also heard your concerns about juvie gameplay feeling lackluster, boring and at times, difficult . As such, we are working towards making the time you spend as a juvenile a more well-rounded journey. So you can enjoy the rise to adulthood rather than blazing through it.

When we return in 2022, we will be hitting the ground running with Update 5. Tackling the hotly requested nesting and skin systems. Nesting being one of the aforementioned systems that will have a direct connection to diets for instance. Nightvision will also be getting improvements with Update 5.5 so you can really feel the world shift when night falls. The perfect segue into Update 6 which will bring with it a terrifying and visceral tone the likes that have not been seen at any point in previous years. Buckle up because it’s going to get pretty terrifying if we have it our way.

This blog entry brings to a close another year of development. A year rife with ups, downs, failures and successes. Bringing us that one step closer to completion. We’ve got a lot of content in the works, particularly for next year. We will be publicly expanding the roadmap during the first quarter of 2022 which we trust will provide a clear understanding of what to expect for the rest of the calendar year and just from the game as a whole. So expect 2022 to bring a lot of intriguing changes to how the game is played and experienced. We really appreciate all the love, support and criticism alike as it serves to keep us motivated, challenged and vigilant. A special thanks to our veteran players for sticking it out with this tiny team of passionate people for this long and a big welcome to our newer players. We cannot thank you all enough. We are ever committed to raising the bar for this underserved genre and are happy to have you along for the ride. As always, be kind to yourself and to others. See you next year!

Happy Holidays!!!

Hey Islanders,

It's time to stretch your legs, clamber out from beneath those bushes and explore a whole new environment filled with a wide array of exotic foliage and fauna. Compete for these new resources and gorge yourself on them to maximize your strength and secure a swift passage to adulthood with the all-new Diet System. Paired with the arrival of the island's latest inhabitant, Pachycephalosaurus, comes the new locational Fracture System. It's now more important than ever to pick your fights wisely, lest you find yourself at the mercy of an assortment of crippling injuries.



If you've been playing on the Quality Assurance branch make sure to switch back to the main EVRIMA branch by right clicking The Isle in your Steam library > left click properties > betas > in the dropdown menu select "EVRIMA public branch".

You may also need to restart Steam if the update does not make itself immediately available.

• Added Diet System. Every species in the game now has a specific diet that, if not adhered to, will result in a longer growth time and other debuffs. Your character's preferred diet and more can be found on your character menu (Default key: Tab)
  
• Added Ambient AI animals.
  
• Added Pachycephalosaurus as a playable class.
  
• Added Fracture system.
  
• Added passive scent for Carnivores. Walking near footprints/blood will automatically cause them to be highlighted. Can be toggled with F8.
  
• Added scent tracking for Carnivores. Press Q on a set of footprints to "lock on" to them. Follow the direction that they are facing to track other players. This will be expanded upon further in future updates.
  
• Added Compsognathus scavenger AI.
  
• Added latching ability to Pteranodon, activate by holding RMB while flying into a vertical surface slowly.
  
• Added a couple of islands and some more coastal related areas to Spiro.
  
• Added anti-cheat.
  
• Added mud wallows to Spiro.
  
• Added ragdoll effect to all knockdowns.
  
• Added scent icons to the compass. Removed scent particles.
  
• Added Streamer mode to game settings to hide server name and coordinates.
  
• Added a camera offset to the Right or Left of the character using, by default, input V.
  
• Released Linux dedicated servers.
  
• Removed Dinosaur AI until it has been further improved.

• Added death sounds for all characters.
  
• Added tail physics with trail controllers.
  
• Added new Utahraptor broadcast call.
  
• Added new mud textures.
  
• Added wide Ceiba Tree variants with impostors and new branch textures.
  
• Added more ocean ambient audio.
  
• Added vocal sounds to Stegosaurus sit and stand animations.
  
• Added Carnotaurus sit vocal and reduced volume of stand vocal.
  
• Added swamp fauna one shots.
  
• Added foliage interaction plugin and fixed massive performance issues.
  
• Added a galaxy to the night sky.
  
• Added custom flooring to the radio tower.
  
• Added subtle wind/foliage rustle loops to swamp, jungle and plains biomes.
  
• Added random triggered stick snap sound to forest walk, trot and sprint sound cues with custom attenuation.
  
• Added a delay in changing direction when running fast.
  
• Added some new sounds to Dryosaurus.
  
• Added new falling impact sounds.
  
• Added some new Tenontosaurus supplementary vocal sounds, improved sounds on animations.
  
• Added location to deaths logs.
  
• Added more rock LOD materials.
  
• Added large detailing to the Ocean material.
  
• Added DLSS plugin.
  
• Added DLSS option to settings.
  
• Added Character panel to the escape menu.
  
• Added new sound system for rivers and beach.
  
• Added ocean shore blending to small rocks.
  
• Added new trim decals.
  
• Added specific repeating bird loop intermittently in jungle morning, day and evening.
  
• Added system to toggle sound based on what is being eaten. Soft, solid, leaves, etc.
  
• Added herbivore bite/chew sounds to grab and swallow animations.
  
• Added time of day in the character profile (24h mode).
  
• Added hint when you shouldn't swallow something.
  
• Added a 3s timer to toggling spectator mode.
  
• Added a value that changes Intensity value for pain sounds.
  
• Added better fish movement and more responsive fleeing.
  
• Added more movement to fish when stuck against side of rivers.
  
• Added specific vocals for each animal.
  
• Adjusted Pounce when colliding and playing a knockdown animation.

• Made pickup work in 2 ways: Tap to remove a piece of meat from any body size. Hold to drag that body, if able, otherwise also remove a piece.
  
• Adjusted pounce to have priority over other abilities.
  
• Changed pounce to work even if the target is in water.
  
• Made Deinosuchus juveniles see further in water than adults.
  
• Work on underwater ocean ambient sounds and ocean/beach ambient sounds.
  
• General water material improvements.
  
• Across the board foliage color tweaks.
  
• Updated website and bug report links.
  
• Swamp and jungle ambient audio stuff and some changes to vocal attenuations and general audio mix.
  
• Small changes to increase fluid simulation effect.
  
• Improved ambience audio mix and night ambiences.
  
• Adjustments to Utahraptor vocals pitch.
  
• Improved swamp evening ambience and jungle night ambience audio.
  
• Made pounce not cause knockdown when hitting trees, logs, rocks, etc.
  
• Improvements to ragdoll performance..
  
• Adjustments to fall damage in certain situations like being lunged our pouncing.
  
• Made Stegosaurus secondary only deal damage if the target is on the same side as the swing.
  
• Improved juvenile Stegosaurus bite and attack vocal sounds.
  
• Adjusted volume balance of ambient, vocal and foley sound classes
  
• Reworked part of the Foliage interaction plugin, added cheaper system with proper replication regardless of distance.
  
• Remastered Ocean material.
  
• Adjusted fog particle emissive values.
  
• Tweaked grass types.
  
• Day/Night cycle tweaks.
  
• Replaced the old rivers with the painted rapids ones.
  
• Separated trill from Utahraptor broadcast call, adjusted core and power layer volumes.
  
• Reduced the pitch of the adult Deinosuchus broadcast.
  
• Changed some more Dino vocals to use small idle attenuation.
  
• Improved save performance.
  
• Added a new perimeter fence ending, without the fence on the top.
  
• Cut off parts of the island to the cliffside.
  
• Reduced trigger rate of Swamp long bird one shots.
  
• Several updates to pounce and its animations.
  
• Security improvements.
  
• Adjustments to pounce and lunge causing getup animation to trigger if target was resting.
  
• Updated Utahraptor trot animations with out of sync notifies.
  
• Water material performance improvements.
  
• Landscape color tweaks.
  
• Color corrected dinosaur colors.
  
• Recolored Rivers.
  
• Made 1 and 3 call power call change more obvious.
  
• Improved animation and movement smoothness.
  
• Adjusted shadow scalability settings.
  
• Improved how some calls sound at low stamina.
  
• Improved Deinosuchus 1 & 3 call power modulation.
  
• Changes to Materials, base fence test.
  
• Reduced volume of eating, drinking and wallowing sounds.
  
• Reduced ambient one shot attenuations range and reduced swamp and jungle wind loops volume.
  
• Reduced volume and trigger rate of stick snap sounds, made volume scale with size.
  
• Improved how wallowing and knockdowns sound.
  
• Increased delay times of ambzones on Spiro.
  
• Improved save reliability, made it try to load the backup if the main file is invalid.
  
• Small changes for replication rate.
  
• Adjusted Eating and Pickup to sync in distance with body nearby.
  
• Adjustments to ragdolls during and after pickup.
  
• Adjusted carry position for all species.
  
• Removed cooldown from buck abilities.
  
• Modified some Server Logs.
  
• Made sunlight level more realistic.
  
• Changed the wind mask clamping.
  
• Updated Spiro map with part of the new shallow river.
  
• Reduced volume of end splash sound in Carnotaurus' drink loop.
  
• Increased volume of wind in the swamp, plains and jungle ambient sound cues.
  
• Improved server browser with filters and faster requests.
  
• Balanced sprinting stomp sound levels for larger creatures.
  
• Reduced volume of Hypsilophodon knockdown impact.
  
• More ambient audio adjustments.
  
• Adjusted Swamp and Rivers system to not rise above normal level.
  
• Adjusted Ceiba tree and Forest bush LOD color.
  
• Polished up some landscape issues.
  
• Removed the jungle floating in the ocean on the northern shore.
  
• Adjusted swallow threshold.
  
• Made wind louder at night, balanced ambience loops.
  
• Small improvement to corpse performance.
  
• Swapped character and admin inputs by default.
  
• Brightened up day to night transition.
  
• Adjusted Stegosaurus impale position.
  
• Made it easier to see at night.
  
• Adjusted ambient one shots volume, random chance & delay times.
  
• Adjusted volume and envelope adjustments to ambient loops.
  
• Reduced attenuation height fall off for ambient loops.
  
• Added sit and stand foley sound for tiny small and medium sized dino effects.
  
• Increased AI vector finding radius for fleeing and wandering.
  
• Made eating take priority over drinking and grazing.
  
• Increased volume of mud foley sound.
  
• Made smaller creatures use newer dirt slide sound.
  
• Minor ambient level adjustments.
  
• Adjusted the ragdolls and death animations for animals.
  
• Color corrected plant debris assets.
  
• Performance improvements to some AI tasks.
  
• Several visual improvements to pounce.
  
• Improved pounced animation blending.
  
• Added new meat bite and chew sounds and slight improvements to sounds on all carnivore eat, grab and swallow animations.
  
• Updated dirt dig sounds.
  
• Avoided thirst and hunger to decay when in spectator mode.
  
• Setup system to help against interactor overlapping when not needed.
  
• Increased lunge speed boost when swimming.
  
• Ensured all stagger animations have appropriate audio.
  
• Adjusted Pteranodon grab point.
  
• AI now decays and regens stamina, similarly to a player.
  
• Adjustments to artifacts with day time.
  
• Setup leaf rustle and twig snaps in Herbivore diet bite sounds.
  
• Improved Dryosaurus, Pteranodon, Stegosaurus and Deinosuchus pounceable areas.
  
• Reworked stagger to have movement, made Deinosuchus immune to being staggered.
  
• Changed animals replication values. Removed collision from AI capsule when in Stasis.
  
• Made floating corpses rise a little higher.
  
• Increased fish flee speed.
  
• Set fish possible swim height lower.
  
• Improved pounce visual stuttering.
  
• Adjusted footprint color in sand.
  
• Updated scent icons with fade in/out.
  
• Improved Stegosaurus impale.
  
• Adjusted sync of some fracture footstep notifies.
  
• Changed attenuation on Pteranodon and Stegosaurus head injury sound cues.
  
• Improved herbivore eat animation audio.
  
• Enabled Pteranodon additive landing animation while taking off in place.
  
• Resynched and balanced levels of herbivore diets foley sounds.
  
• Updated Utahraptor pinned animations.
  
• Made an anti-spam check for AdminPanel.
  
• Increased amount of mushrooms.
  
• Increased night brightness.

Bucking

• Stamina regeneration is now disabled while pouncing or being pounced.

Body dragging

• Sprint stamina decay while dragging increased slightly.

Eating

• Hunger intake values decreased across the board. It now takes longer to consume corpses to encourage contesting over food.

Locational Damage

• Every hind limb bone and the base of the spine now count towards the Leg locational hitzone to simulate "Hips."

Inertia

• Inertia values added to all animals. Smaller species are more agile than larger ones.

Wallow

• Duration of wallow buff increased.

Juvenile stamina

• Juvenile stamina decay rates scale with visual size. Smaller animals can run for longer.

Group Limit

• Max group limit decreased from 5 to 3.

Max Health

• Starting Health decreased.
  
• Max Health reduced slightly.

Blood Pool

• Starting Blood Pool reduced.
  
• Max Blood Pool reduced.

AttackPower

• Starting AttackPower reduced.

Agility

• Walk turn rate decreased.
  
• Trot turn rate decreased.
  
• Skid duration increased.
  
• Skid distance increased.
  
• Deceleration rate decreased.

Movement speeds

• Juvenile Sprint speed reduced.
  
• Adult Sprint speed reduced.

Stamina decay rates

• Sprinting decay rate increased.

Primary Attack: Bite

• Damage reduced.
  
• Animation rate scale decreased.

Alternate Primary Attack: 360 Bite

• Damage reduced.
  
• Stamina cost added.
  
• Animation rate scale increased.

Sprinting Secondary Attack: Charge

• Speed modifier increased.
  
• Knockdown damage increased.
  
• Stagger damage increased.
  
• Cooldown removed.
  
• Now factors in Locational damage. (Can strike legs, heads, etc.)

Max Health

• Starting Health reduced.
  
• Max Health increased.

Blood Pool

• Starting Blood Pool reduced.
  
• Max Blood Pool increased.

Thirst

• Thirst duration reduced.

AttackPower

• Starting AttackPower reduced.

Movement speed

• Adult sprint speed reduced.

Alternate Primary Attack: 360 Bite

• Variable Stamina cost added. Costs more to use on land than water.

Secondary Attack: Lunge

• Damage now scales with AttackPower.

Max Health

• Starting Health reduced.
  
• Max Health reduced.

Blood Pool

• Starting Blood Pool reduced.
  
• Max Blood Pool reduced.

AttackPower

• Starting AttackPower reduced.

Stamina decay rates

• Sprinting decay rate increased.

Movement speeds

• Sprint speed reduced.

Primary Attack: Peck

• Damage reduced.

Max Health

• Max Health reduced.

Blood Pool

• Max Blood Pool reduced.

Jump

• Jump Velocity increased.

Primary Attack: Peck

• Damage reduced.

Secondary Attack: Spit

• Hunger consumption reduced.
  
• Max range increased.

Charged Jump

• Stamina cost reduced.

Max Health

• Starting Health reduced.
  
• Max Health reduced.

Blood Pool

• Starting Blood Pool reduced.
  
• Max Blood Pool reduced.

AttackPower

• Starting AttackPower reduced.

Movement speeds

• Sprint speed reduced.

Primary Attack: Peck

• Damage reduced.

Alternate Primary Attack: 360 Peck

• Damage reduced.

Launch

• Standing Launch stamina cost decreased.

Max Health

• Starting Health reduced.
  
• Max Health increased.

Blood Pool

• Starting Blood Pool reduced.
  
• Max Blood Pool increased.

AttackPower

• Starting AttackPower reduced.

Stamina decay rates

• Sprinting decay rate increased.

Turning rate

• Turning rate increased.

Primary Attack: Bite

• Damage reduced.

Secondary Attack: Tail Jab

• Damage adjusted at all growth stages. Adult damage remains the same.

Growth Time

• Relative grow time increased.

Max Health

• Starting Health reduced.
  
• Max Health reduced.

Blood Pool

• Starting Blood Pool reduced.
  
• Max Blood Pool reduced.

Stamina Regen rates

• Trotting regen rate reduced.

AttackPower

• Starting AttackPower reduced.

Stamina decay rates

• Sprinting decay rate increased.
  
• Slow swim decay rate increased.

Agility

• Turn in place rate decreased.

Movement speeds

• Sprint speed reduced.
  
• Juvenile Slow swim speed increased.
  
• Juvenile Fast swim speed increased.
  
• Adult Slow swim speed increased.
  
• Adult Fast swim speed increased.

Primary Attack: Bite

• Damage reduced.

Alternate Primary Attack: 360 Claw

• Damage reduced.
  
• Stamina adjusted.

Secondary Attack: Rear Kick

• Damage reduced.
  
• Stamina cost increased.

Alternate Secondary Attack: Tail Slam

• Damage reduced.
  
• Stamina cost increased.
  
• Priority increased against other special abilities.

Growth Time

• Relative grow time increased.

Mass

• Adult Mass reduced.

Max Health

• Starting Health reduced.
  
• Max Health reduced.

Blood Pool

• Starting Blood Pool reduced.
  
• Max Blood Pool reduced.

Corpse food value

• Corpse food value reduced.

Hunger

• Hunger duration increased.

AttackPower

• Starting AttackPower reduced.

Movement speeds

• Sprint speed reduced.

Stamina regen rates

• Trotting regen rate increased.
  
• Walking regen rate increased.

Stamina decay rates

• Sprinting decay rate increased.

Primary Attack: Bite

• Damage reduced.

Alternate Primary Attack: 360 Bite

• Damage reduced.
  
• Can transition directly to sprinting after attacking.

Pounce

• Pounce miss animation rate scale increased.

Large Pounce

• Initial Damage reduced.
  
• Initial Stamina reduced.
  
• Damage per tick reduced.
  
• Stamina per tick increased.

Small Pounce

• Initial Damage reduced.
  
• Initial Stamina reduced.
  
• Damage per tick reduced.
  
• Stamina per tick increased.
  
• 0.5s delay for targets to attack back after releasing the pin.

ALT Bite stamina cost

• Added stamina costs to Deinosuchus ALT bite.

• Fixed characters not saving properly.
  
• Changes to spectator mode to fix performance issues.
  
• Fixed wide Ceiba assets vertex colors.
  
• Fixed Stegosaurus not being able to vocalize or bite if carrying an impaled body.
  
• Fixed UI hints on top of character panel.
  
• Fixed all character calls playing at wrong pitch and made some minor improvements.
  
• Fixed fish always spawning in the center of swamps.
  
• Fixed some inconsistent hint messages.
  
• Fixed lunge applying wrong bleeding values.
  
• Fixed some issues related to pounce sync.
  
• Fixed Character UI overlapping Admin UI.
  
• Fixed staying on the water surface as Deinosuchus not working sometimes.
  
• Fixed some inconsistent values when growth is set using admin panel.
  
• Fixed invalid chat commands.
  
• Fixed some abilities draining stamina while swimming.
  
• Fixed incorrect growth montages playing.
  
• Fixed being unable to take off as Pteranodon while bleeding.
  
• Fixed stamina drain after stationary take off.
  
• Fixed Hypsilophodon stamina recharge after charge jump.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus blending issues.
  
• Fixed speed values being incorrect on the character menu.
  
• Fixed blood level affecting charge.
  
• Fixed small UI hint bugs.
  
• Fixed growth tick restoring status.
  
• Fixed a particular collision issue affecting some abilities, like pounce and lunge.
  
• Fixed small issue related to corpse disable being interfered by interaction main disable overlap.
  
• Fixed collision on FoliageDeactivationVolume.
  
• Fixed some crossfading and pitch issues with Deinosuchus, Stegosaurus and Pteranodon broadcast calls.
  
• Fixed issue with foliage interactor collision.
  
• Fixed small distance issue in Interactor component causing interactive foliage to not go back to foliage instance.
  
• Fixed spectator names not working with Chinese characters.
  
• Fixed a bug with spawn cooldowns sometimes not being removed.
  
• Fixed Stegosaurus calls not working when impaling something.
  
• Fixed footprints sometimes having a rotation issue.
  
• Fixed speed issue when swimming up/down.
  
• Fixed flying Pteranodon not colliding with pouncer.
  
• Fixed idle walk bug.
  
• Fixed juvenile Deinosuchus not playing certain montages.
  
• Fixed vocals not updating properly with growth.
  
• Fixed vocals pitch issue.
  
• Fixed footstep decals not appearing sometimes.
  
• Fixed pounce cancel while looking down causing the player to become stuck in mid air.
  
• Fixed corpse despawn not working sometimes.
  
• Fixed lunge causing jump issue on target.
  
• Fixed Fish not getting a reference to surface correctly.
  
• Fixed growth and status issues with animals.
  
• Fixed vomit revert tick rate.
  
• Fixed overexposed clouds.
  
• Fixed some issues with UI cancelling eat and wallow.
  
• Fixed some abilities cancelling sprint.
  
• Fixed and updated RVT material Landscape texture color tweaks.
  
• Fixed Spiro level bounds, updated river sections along the NE river.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus broadcast getting cut off.
  
• Fixed layer volumes on Pteranodon broadcast.
  
• Fixed cave loop not looping seamlessly.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus footsteps position.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus not able to remove spit sometimes.
  
• Fixed not being able to sprint while pounced.
  
• Fixed pouncer rotation on other clients.
  
• Fixed client memory leak when opening Admin panel.
  
• Fixed issues with status decay/regen values.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus footstep socket location.
  
• Fixed Dryosaurus resting animation transitions.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon skimming additive.
  
• Fixed bleeding not being updated by movement.
  
• Fixed escape menu not working in spectator mode.
  
• Fixed Utahraptor juvenile 3 call audio.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus broadcast power cutting off early.
  
• Fixed water sense sometimes not detecting fish.
  
• Fixed replication on Aquatic surface and Rivers.
  
• Fixed Rivers below mesh and water line not updating with water level.
  
• Fixed swimming state inconsistency.
  
• Fixed invisible map barriers.
  
• Fixed water tiling on a small pond.
  
• Fixed various map potholes.
  
• Fixed latency issues when dragging, causing desync.
  
• Fixed small issues with corpse ragdolls and meat chunks ragdolls.
  
• Fixed Landscape "Snow".
  
• Fixed some glitched terrain.
  
• Fixed server list name filter.
  
• Fixed animal forest footstep layer alignment.
  
• Fixed issue with safe logout not working.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus belly jiggling violently when eating.
  
• Fixed vocal animations while latching.
  
• Fixed some issues with the bleeding VFX.
  
• Fixed bucking issue with multiple pouncers.
  
• Fixed a crash that would occur when pressing "Quit" on the main menu.
  
• Fixed bleeding tag issues.
  
• Fixed being able to teleport a dead player.
  
• Fixed some wrong curve values for elite fish.
  
• Fixed scent issue on gore pieces/fish.
  
• Fixed rivers not playing water sounds.
  
• Fixed merge and submerge sounds.
  
• Fixed ocean underwater material.
  
• Fixed the rocky shore collision.
  
• Fixed sound issues with beach and rivers.
  
• Fixed issue with stamina when carrying stuff.
  
• Fixed landscape LOD causing crash.
  
• Fixed loose level assets.
  
• Fixed some issues with the UI. (Profile and HUD blood icon)
  
• Fixed corpse sliding.
  
• Fixed Tenontosaurus juvenile bite sound.
  
• Fixed issues of drag and carry with the animals.
  
• Fixed rest cancelling scent.
  
• Fixed misspelled vomit.
  
• Fixed issue with special ability cost on juveniles being too high.
  
• Fixed not being able to swallow carried food while swimming in surface, if not a Deinosuchus.
  
• Fixed pounce not working while falling/jumping.
  
• Fixed incorrect landscape LODs.
  
• Fixed underwater post processing having extreme colors during certain times of day.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus juvenile calls.
  
• Fixed small issues with pounce desync and while swimming/mud.
  
• Fixed Tenontosaurus tail slam not causing a stagger animation.
  
• Fixed corpses not being eaten properly.
  
• Fixed pounce issue causing client side stuttering for pouncer and "following" after dismount.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus and Tenontosaurus rest sounds.
  
• Fixed widget order.
  
• Fixed stat hints.
  
• Fixed autosaves not working.
  
• Fixed UI issue when logging in with 0 hunger/thirst.
  
• Fixed an issue with Pteranodon swallowing when flying.
  
• Fixed graze and swallow priority issue.
  
• Fixed drink intake inconsistency.
  
• Fixed not able to interact with plant or body constinuously after swallowing.
  
• Fixed pounce stuttering client side when bucking.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus charge not setting ability state to special attack.
  
• Fixed an input lockup when trying to eat a body while in water.
  
• Fixed issue with water ripple animation sporadically working.
  
• Fixed crouch causing a good portion of the player's mesh to sink or float.
  
• Fixed juvenile Deinosuchus broadcast not animating in water.
  
• Fixed meat chunks not removing enough food from source.
  
• Fixed pounce issue when hitting a target too close to the ground.
  
• Fixed various issues with pickup.
  
• Fixed issues with jumping at low stamina.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus blendspace speeds.
  
• Fixed ripple effects even when submerged.
  
• Fixed issue with meshcorrector when pouncing.
  
• Fixed scent range not resetting properly.
  
• Fixed water ripples being fired outside water.
  
• Fixed pounce issue when hitting small creatures.
  
• Fixed hint for when not able to grab.
  
• Fixed bite sounds pitch/crossfade.
  
• Fixed Hypsilophodon's eyes not turning white when dead.
  
• Fixed small issue with juvenile Stegosaurus high eat loop.
  
• Fixed Dryosaurus and Pteranodon bite sounds.
  
• Fixed Tenontosaurus snore sound.
  
• Fixed AI not losing perception properly.
  
• Fixed AI spawning in trees sometimes.
  
• Fixed pounce foliage trace.
  
• Fixed clearing attacker on perception lost.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus' eyes being broken when using the shake animation.
  
• Fixed stagger animation not playing for hit client.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus stagger animations.
  
• Fixed controller camera controls.
  
• Fixed a few resting and drinking crashes.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus juvenile bite and generic call audio issues.
  
• Fixed a crash when fish get staggered.
  
• Fixed issue avoiding eating foley audio setup to work.
  
• Fixed small issue with vocals from DTs.
  
• Fixed sprint state not being applied if shift was pressed while sprinting is not possible.
  
• Fixed hit particles not spawning.
  
• Fixed persistent audio.
  
• Fixed pounce start animation stuttering when used right after scent.
  
• Fixed deino leg fracture speed info in dino profile
  
• Fixed plants, fruits and small branches material turning them invisible if too close.
  
• Fixed to headbutt ground causing knocked down players to stay forever stunned
  
• Fixed lunge causing oxygen decay on land
  
• Fixed "E" or "G" canceling stagger or knockdown CC effect
  
• Fixed deino and ptera being able to bite while being lunged
  
• Fixed knockdown into mud being permanent
  
• Fixed juv Deino buck animation not playing
  
• Fixed boar not rotating for attack

Hey everyone, it’s been a month of adjustments, fixes and preparations for what comes next. I’ve been particularly occupied with corrections of old and new mechanics this month to ensure that we have a clean path for the next updates, including humans as well.

One important fix was related to “Lag Compensation” which is utilized by a few abilities such as the Utah’s pounce and the Pachy’s ram, the system was causing a noticeable stutter and lacked the necessary accuracy in relation to server and client sync of events. The “Lag Compensation” is a generic term to help against the biggest issue in online games, the latency, or lag, which is the time certain things take to go from the client to server and/or from server to client. This system helps to reduce that latency the moment an ability is activated, which makes the entire ability chain significantly more reliable, accurate and ping tolerant. The problem is that such a system is sensitive to any code mistake, which obviously can break the various abilities, but it is important for the future. However, I’ve resolved the issues and with more tests/time we will finalize this mechanic so it can be implemented in other abilities and even expanded.

Besides that, I have also been working on humans (yes, officially) organizing animations, folders, classes, etc. Something important to note is that the initial implementation of humans will be basic and significantly expanded upon throughout development.

Hey all, this last year has gone by in a flash and I hope that you’re all looking forward to the holidays. This past month for me has been spent developing some of our server side tools, which will eliminate the issue of the servers not restarting properly, as well as making them significantly easier to manage on our end.

Based on feedback, the team and I are also reimagining our approach for the implementation of AI and the roles that they will fill within the ecosystem; we'll be able to share more specific details on that in future. I’ve also been working on the ambient animals, continuing to make their behaviour more dynamic and interesting to interact with alongside improvements to the fish. Other than that it has just been a plethora of bug fixes and performance testing as usual. That’s it for me this month!


I updated the stagger mechanic to have actual movement instead of just playing the animation in place. It’s just a little push, but the animations play out much better now that the feet are not sliding around. I had to set up a little “studio” in the engine to measure the movement speeds and durations for each direction of each animal but it will come handy for the new additions.

I made some changes to the tracking system as well. It’s mostly just balancing it at this point but there were some visual updates too. You can now see the cone and the footprints through foliage which was a much needed improvement in places with dense vegetation.



I also moved the scent icons back to the compass. When I first set up the system it was primarily for testing so now I went back and made some updates to support fading in and out. Finally I got around to moving the pack scent there as well.


This month QA has been busy assisting with rounding out Update #4. We’ve been spending the majority of our time bug testing and confirming the fixes for the programmers with each internal build of the game. We’ve noticed lately that the game has been suffering with a lot of crashes and input lockups (we hear you Stego players), so the majority of our focus has been spent on narrowing those down. These issues can arise from all sorts of unexpected places - one of the latest crashes was related simply to fracture sounds not playing properly, instead of the headbutt ability itself.

Besides bug testing, we’ve been following the mechanic test and balance feedback channels on the Discord closely, fine tuning the statistics for the characters across the board and the values for the diet system. A large focus during this time was spent looking at the Pachycephalosaurus and the accompanying fracture system, more specifically how well the character contends with the other species on the island. We knew that the Carnotaurus was going to be a huge threat for the Pachy and started by ensuring that this animal had the toolkit to deal with it effectively. The goal we’re currently pursuing is for the Pachy to be able to break its leg and be able to run away, instead of outright killing it; please let us know in the balance feedback Discord channel how it feels so far so we know how it’s performing.

Another focus we’ve had is the new scent tracking system that was mentioned above. We’re really excited to see this feature come into the game and think it’s going to push carnivore tracking into a whole new direction that the game hasn’t seen before. As mentioned in dmIV’s post, it’s mostly down to balance testing at the moment and we’re looking forward to seeing what you guys think about it!


This month has been all about the Dockyard and getting shaders ready for the new system.
Dockyard items have been progressing as expected with various buildings pretty much done. Just need to be put in a blueprint, optimize the distances and voila, we have at least 4 versatile buildings.

Others are on the way of course, with a large collection of props and interior changes, both in the decal department, and set dressing. These new items are a collection that we are pushing to make all aspects of human buildings feel unique and with a purpose, especially with coloring, which highlights the importance of each building, and what can be pretty much found there.
Alongside these, I’ve been making semi modular props for storage, to bring more life into these storage places.









That is so far regarding highly detailed items for the humans, and the new dockyard. I wish you all the best with the new year and holidays!

The art department has been keeping me busy a great deal. At the beginning of the month I’ve been working on finishing the Underwater Concept for our Rivers. Because rivers are thinner and longer in shape than lakes, I had to stretch out the concept art horizontally quite a bit to fit as much as I could. I’m hoping we can be quite creative with how the river bends, forms, deepens, and shapes. Default skins for all the animals have been completed and work on secondary skins has begun. We’re going to try and not be super drastic between patterns and keep them looking similar with their own flair. Think of them like different variations of the same skin, like different morphs in some reptiles. Hopefully they’ll break up the monotony of having the same patterns on every individual.



The release trailer for the 4th update had to be revised heavily in the last few months, as the content of the 4th update changed a lot over the course of its creation and thus many scenes of the trailer had to be re-filmed.

Especially the changes to the fractures took a lot of time, because now only the pachy can use fractures. So (besides small specials like the Halloween video) I spent the last weeks updating the release trailer.

Also during the last two weeks, I've been working on the audio effects for the trailer. When I film a scene in the game engine it is entirely without sound. I add the individual sound effects, each call, each step and each idle snort manually in the video editor, as it’s easier to adjust and edit the effects there.
When designing the sound of the trailer I make sure that the effects harmonize with the soundtracks. I often test many different variations until I'm satisfied with how the sounds fit. In the end there are often more than 10 audio tracks (uncompressed). Here is a little view behind the scenes of the audio tracks:



This month I continued the design of the Beipiaosaurus calls, which consist of a variety of unique bird sounds giving it a colourful sound palette. However, these sources are blended with more unusual sounds such as wood and plastic bowed with a cello bow, contrasting the delicate bird-like qualities with a harsher and raspier honking quality, which carries across the Beipi’s larger biology over modern birds, whilst maintaining the organic feel. The juvenile and hatchling calls follow the same gesture as the adult calls, but are created using a selection of the adult sounds pitched up combined with sounds from large birds in their infancy and in-organic elements such as glass squeaks.

I have also been continuing on the combat feedback sounds, the stab and claw attack sounds are complete with sufficient impact and gore, however the bite sound is still in development. As this sound will be heard very frequently a lot of attention is being put towards it in particular to ensure the sound is impactful, but also realistic, as we want the player to really feel these sounds as a clear indication of when they have been bitten. Additionally, I need to create enough iterations to the point at which repeat plays of the same sound do not occur so as not to break that immersion. This has to be achieved for all size categories so entails creating a large quantity of these sounds and making sure they hit the mark in both aesthetic and feeling.


Most of what I've been doing lately is updating rigs in preparation for future updates, for the rest you'll just have to wait and see when the proper time comes. Troodon, Beipiaosaurus and Ceratosaurus all got some modern upgrades in the puppeteering department along with some associated animation work with more to follow in the coming weeks.


With November having come and gone, we have gathered all the information we feel we need in regards to diets, fractures and the pachy. We have a few more things we want to polish and solidify before we fully release Update 4 but we are quite satisfied with the initial results. Which has led us to expanding on diets even more. The diet system has a lot more depth than we initially released it with as we wanted to take our time and carefully assess its impacts on the ecosystem first. We didn’t want to bloat the system with too many factors that may have led to a false assessment of how well the feature as a whole was performing. With diets being such a cornerstone feature, we really wanted to have a solid base to work from before adding too much complexity. But we are satisfied with the results and can begin working on the deeper gameplay we want to deliver. Some of the changes to come, in a later update, will center around mixing dietary elements that have effects that can then be tailored to your individual playstyle. We will be maintaining that one of each element will still be required for a dietary growth boost but we will be introducing combinations of diet elements that can result in substantial changes to movespeed, stamina, regen, damage etc depending on what exactly you are eating. If you like going fast, there's a dietary combination for that. Want to maximize your strength? There’s a combination for that too. We really want you to be able to choose how you play within the confines of the island's harshness. Naturally we will have to keep a very close eye on balance and will likely only include one active buff through diets at a time but we are excited to offer you much more complexity. More information to come as we are closer to the release of these new changes. Which will not be accompanying the release of Update 4.

With Update 4 coming to a close, I can reveal some elements of Update 5. Which is largely restructuring how nesting occurs in The Isle. While some of the basic elements you have come to know will still be present, we are adding more engagement to the experience. Players will have to engage in courtship displays, form a bond and then create the nest together, varying by species. There will be different requirements for the type of nest your animal creates and different incentives to nest in certain areas as well. We aim to deliver an in-depth parental experience so you can really bond with players you create nests with and invite to your nests. Which will make the stress all the more dire when your nest and offspring are inevitably threatened with brutality by outside forces.

The skin system is also underway with changes to patterns and colors and a means for unlocking different skins and patterns through gameplay. Maintaining an exploratory commitment to allowing server owners to decide how they want a species visually represented on their server. Before we go... I'll leave you all with a little preview of Utahraptor's courting animations. More information on Update 5 as we progress, in the meantime be kind to one another and we’ll see you in December!

Hey everyone, it feels like these months are flying by! As if it was only a few days since our previous DevBlog. As you’d likely expect, I’ve been primarily focused with the ongoing Mechanic Test for Update #4. For the Diet System I’ve set up some additional fruits and vegetables such as coconuts, interactable horned melons, radishes & pumpkins.

The implementation of coconuts also required collaboration with our awesome animation team, so that a certain hard-headed herbivore could use it’s ram attack to split them open to reveal the nutritious prize hidden inside. That collaboration also resulted in a system that plays low, mid or high eating animations based on the size of the eater and plant being eaten, dynamically.

Besides all that, I've been busy making adjustments to the Diet and Fracture systems, the usual day-to-day bug fixing and testing some things that we’ve been working on for updates 5 & 6, which we’re all excited to share with you sometime in the near future. That’s my October everyone, see you next time!



Most of my month was spent reworking how footprint scent works. They are now detected passively around the player in a small radius, which increases as you hold Q. This can be toggled by tapping Q as well. Players can also begin tracking specific dinosaurs by tapping Q while standing on top of a footprint. This will highlight the prints left by that player with a different color.

Another big change is that you can no longer scent all footprints. Instead players will only leave behind groups of scentable prints a distance away from each other, so you will need to find these instead of following a continuous line. We are still experimenting with different cues and visuals but that’s the general direction, making tracking feel more like tracking.



Hello! This month I spent a bit of time working on a new monitoring tool for the team to use as you may have seen in some previews or my stream. It includes a heatmap of where all the players are hanging out. We can use this for balancing or map design to name a few functions. I have also spent a bit of time on the ambient rabbit which I'm hoping to do something similar for each of the ambient animals it now burrows after a certain distance and time spent running from a predator. It will eventually come out of the burrow if you are far enough away. There has been some pretty heavy work going on with the backend servers and how we manage them which is still on-going. Carnotaurus AI also received some much needed love recently as it was slaughtering everything in its path.


This month I continued work on the edible plant assets, including a remake of an older asset, the Coconut Palm. I was able to bring the asset up to a higher graphical fidelity as well as add some extra details to it for the diet system. It comes complete with bushels of coconuts and the coconuts can be cracked open in multiple layers. Quite a glow up for one of the assets that made its debut with the first batch of tropical foliage!



Additionally I made some new smaller diet assets, including a season appropriate pumpkin! In addition to smashing some pumpkins, the player should be able to gorge on radishes and russula mushrooms soon.



This month I have been continuing to round out any audio missing from update 4 content – I created the sounds for coconuts being smashed and foley sounds for eating, particularly herbivores which now just need to be implemented. Additionally I have been sourcing more sounds for the ambient animals in spare time when possible.

I created more variants for the Troodon calls as previously only one iteration was made, which entailed recreating them from scratch with the audio files used originally and manipulating the elements to create subtle diversity. I have also started conceptualising calls for the Beipiaosaurus, after a phase of drafting ideas I have a clearer direction and am now looking for unique sources and sounds that can be combined and processed to have a referential aesthetic to sounds produced by waterfowl, whilst adding layers with a more harsh or threatening dinosaurian quality.

With the introduction of blunt force impact sounds on the Pachy headbutt I have also been looking at creating sounds to complete the audio design for combat. I have planned what sounds will be needed for the various combat situations and started designing impactful hit feedback sounds for all sizes of creatures, on top of blunt impact sounds these will include bites, stabs and slashes as well as additional gore sweetener layers with potential ongoing additions as new abilities are added.









This month has been pretty busy with skins.

Fred and I have been working to finish dressing up the remainder of our current planned roster.
It’s been an interesting balancing act coming up with fitting patterns that are unique enough to the animal while still abiding by our skin system of 4 separate colours and a detailed colour for the male pattern.

When the time does come where we get to elaborate on our skin system and add multiple patterns, we’ll have plenty to draw upon.



October has been a whirlwind of epic proportions! A lot of troodons running around all over the place in addition to hammering away at the remaining content for Update 4. There are new diet plants incoming and more to be created even after those. The creatures have their fracture animations in testing currently so you can finally limp away at a decent speed like a boss should you get knee-capped. Just a few final touches and tweaking a few stats and we’re going to be ready to drop Update 4 and start previewing content for Update 5. All of your help has been very valuable to us and we appreciate your contributions. Enjoy the spooky treat Seiza and the team have cooked up for you all! See you in November!