After a quick break we started working on fixing the main issues present in the latest patch, but that didn't stop us from working towards overall progress of the game, below are some of the main things that I worked on this month:

• Skin Creator has been updated with a new UI design to provide more room for the new rendering camera. This new camera isn't based on a 2D texture anymore, allowing it to look and perform better:
  
  
  
  
• In addition I also added access to the Skin Creator from the Main Menu so you can create your skins freely without having to log onto a server first:
  
  
  
  
• Global chat will be brought in as an optional setting for community servers. This won't be enabled on officials, but server owners now will be able to turn it on.
  
  For server Owners:
  bEnableGlobalChat=true
  
  It is disabled by default, so in order for it to be enabled it needs to be added to the TIGameSession within the Game.ini file of the server.
  
  
• Several balance changes with the introduction of the new stamina regen system, but more to come such as new diets combinations, new growth times, hunger and thirst decay adjustments, migration and food availability.
  
  
• Overall progress on some new dinosaurs like Triceratops and T-Rex.
  
  
• Overall progress on the latest burrowing prototype.
  
  
• Bug fixes
  
  
• Pounce to pin is still WIP, requires several new animations and extensive balance tests.

Those were the main topics excluding a few small things. See you next time.


I started the month focusing on fixing bugs that came up during the break. Some of the most important ones include the one where players lost the ability to rest and had to reconnect to fix it and hypsilophodon’s blind effect not being clearable if they applied it again while it was being cleared. I also prevented herrerasaurus from being stuck latched to the air when there is some lag, it should not find the wall it was supposed to latch on to. It can also die from falling now, we wanted it to survive falling from higher than normal, but it accidentally went a bit too far.

I also made various background improvements like reorganizing some of the damage dealing system to combat some of the hacking issues that have been popping up, hopefully that will make the game more fun for everyone. I looked at some saving related bugs as well and reduced some hitches caused by loading on the server. It’s difficult to track down issues where saves are lost, as I can’t just go back and look at what happened exactly after it already happened, but I found some cases that should be handled now.

Later in the month I moved on to the newer mechanics and dinosaurs. I improved the alignment of the diabloceratops while sparring, which can be a challenge to line up in a multiplayer environment. Then I made some visual and polish improvements to herrerasaurus that I didn’t have time for last year, these are mostly visual ones for a bit of extra polish. I’m currently working on a new, powerful attack coming to the stegosaurus, but it’s in quite early stages so I cannot get into the details for now.



Trike has been a pretty good way to get started in 2024, just got the first round of locomotion for the adult and juvenile Triceratops out the door today and now it’s on to the injuries. I always forget how much longer quadrupeds take to do for all the left/right plus the body, leg and combination thereof variants, it’ll be nice to move on to something with just two legs again.

Once this guy makes it out to a build you’ll find the run to be very familiar, it’s essentially a remastered version of the run from Legacy. On the other hand the walk and trot are all new and convey Triceratops’ unique swagger a bit better than they did before.














This month my first focus was designing outstanding sounds for Herrerasaurus that did not make it into this public release for this creature.

Firstly, I designed vocal sounds that were missing for both its adult and juvenile stages including mechanics such as pinned, pounced, eating, wallowing, resting, blinded and the hatchling beg vocal. After implementing the rest of Herrera’s vocal sounds my time has been spent updating the climbing foley sounds to encompass dirt, rock and metal surfaces and sounds for its slide mechanic that is performed by holding ctrl. With the addition of the slide loop, the implementation and design for the placeholder latch sound will be altered (a pain point I’ve noticed from the community in relation to this creature), improving this creatures stealth capabilities whilst still giving a realistic sound representation and opportunity to be caught out if not choosing your jumps carefully!

Finally, I’ve returned to working on Diabloceratops’ audio, with a priority of working through vocals for the juvenile stage. I initially did a pass over its adult stage vocals as it had been some time since working on this creature, familiarizing myself with its sonic palette and ensuring all sounds are up to a completed and presentable standard. Then I started altering these vocals to work for its younger growth stage, pitching them up and then altering, removing and/or adding new layers to create an appropriate design and sound aesthetic for this animal at its smaller growth. I’ve completed over half of the vocal sounds needed for the juvenile Diablo and will be continuing the work on this creature as we move into February.


QA has been focused on playtesting this month in order to verify some of the more consistent problematic behaviors for each species. While the following will not be a full list of everything we have planned to address, this should give you some insight into what they’ve been looking at recently and which areas we’re looking into adjusting and/or monitoring over the next few updates:

General

• It is unsurprising that the majority of players exist in the north east migration zone right now due to the number of species that it was assigned and a spawn zone overlap. Some species have been unassigned from this migration and the spawning zone has been moved into the jungle.
  
  
• The stamina changes that have been made are still a large focus for all species. Time spent resting is still within acceptable range, but we are looking to further reduce the stamina costs of actions and the ability to regenerate stamina during certain states of locomotion based off of a player’s current stamina.
  
  
• Hunger and thirst times were not adjusted for Gateway to see how they would fare with Spiro values. As expected, these needed to be increased due to the larger map size and has been done so accordingly – these will be in the next update. Players will now be able to more comfortably traverse the map for their needs without feeling undue pressure.
  
  
• Growth times were adjusted across the board in accordance with the new hunger/thirst times and diet system changes. All times were made longer but the bonus from each of the diet tiers was also increased, to further discourage players from becoming malnourished. This should allow players appropriate time for foraging and hunting with a noticeable payoff for maintaining diets.
  
  
• The diet system has been adjusted to include new “tiers”. We believe that the system was far too lenient on players that would fill their diet slots with just one type of nutrient, and not adequately rewarding players who had two or three nutrients of their preferred diet. Without revealing the raw numbers, having a mixed diet will now yield the best bonuses and possessing all three nutrients will greatly increase growth speed as well as wield the bonuses from other dietary combinations. There have also been additional considerations on how this can be applied to older dinosaurs when the elder and mutation systems arrive.
  
  
• We’re currently working on a way for players to manually alter which nutrient slots are being filled as we know it can be annoying for them to fill a slot you did not want to.
  
  
• Health regeneration seems quite slow as a whole at the moment which requires further investigation.
  
  
• Smaller characters have difficulty with visibility in even the normal grass. We’re currently looking into adjusting the grass so that this is less of an issue.
  
  
• Various issues with fog result in player visibility becoming too difficult to navigate and affecting other systems such as envenomation highlights. Fixing the fog has been a big priority as of late.

Otherwise, I just wanted to post a quick bulletin of some of the problem areas currently under investigation for each of the species we have focused on so far:

Carnotaurus

• Lipid options for the carnotaurus do not feel adequate.
  
  
• Charging as a mechanic can feel a bit clunky due to how it’s currently set up.

Ceratosaurus

• The ceratosaurus is currently in a weird spot where it cannot receive nutrients outside of its diet unless the corpse is rotting. While this is currently intended, we are aware that it falls short of a fully enjoyable experience and often is poorly impacted by players awkwardly waiting for corpses to rot.
  
  
• Attempting to be stealthy as a juvenile can prove problematic with the auto-chuffing around corpses, oftentimes resulting in the player’s death.
  
  
• Likewise, chuffing at group members is something that is also being considered for removal, for the same reason. This will require further discussion as it was intentional as part of the character’s design.
  
  
• Auto-chuffing can be a nuisance for players that are trying to scent or eat. We will allow players to override the chuff by performing these actions in future.
  
  
• The charged bite controls and auto-slide during attack feel counterintuitive and will be altered.

Deinosuchus

• We have altered the deinosuchus growth so that the character starts exceptionally smaller. What was once considered a large hatchling will now be its starting size. Its growth curve as a whole will also feel different as it is no longer linear. Players will reach the physical morph (~80%) of an adult much sooner in their growth than before, which removes the appearance of massive deinosuchus juveniles capable of running down victims on land. There is also an excessive increase in growth time from that point onward as the deinosuchus grows to full size. This will result in a more difficult growth cycle for the character and surviving to adulthood being much less likely.
  
  
  
• Undisclosed solution to remove “stegosaurus fishing” because that’s awful.
  
  
• Schooling fish have appropriate caps for food and size scale and can no longer sustain an average deinosuchus.

Dilophosaurus

• For our first pass, dilophosaurus was given its maximum duration that we wanted for the envenomation timer. After playtesting, we found this to be overkill and unnecessary for the character. Instead of the envenomation recovering after 5 minutes, it takes just 1 minute for the cooldown to kick in and start the regeneration process for the prey.
  
  
• Dilophosaurus swim speed seems to be abnormally slow, so we’ll be looking at speeding it up a bit soon.
  
  
• We are aware of player’s exploiting the hallucination ability by standing near water to prevent the AI from spawning. Luckily for us, we never decided that the only hallucination a dilophosaurus could spawn was another dilophosaurus. Standing near water could prove to be far worse than out in the open in future. 😉

Herrerasaurus

• The hunger drain for herrerasaurus was dropping far faster than its nutrients did. This has been addressed, so that the player does not find themselves in an awkward position of needing to eat to avoid starving but being forced to take on a nutrient that they did not wish to consume.
  
  
• Herrerasaurus’ mobility in trees feels far too slow for the average player to ambush from. Locomotion adjustments while clinging to a surface are currently underway.
  
  
• There are a number of trees that are deceiving at the moment on whether or not they can be rested on and will be getting updated collision or visuals.
  
  
  
• We have a solution ready for the pterodactylus AI knocking herrerasaurus out of trees that will be implemented in the next update.
  
  
• The “latch” icon when aiming towards a water source causes it to go beneath the water. We will be adjusting it so that the icon collides with the water plane, making it easier for players to aim their drop attack.
  
  
• Herrerasaurus ambush attack animations (and the fallover bug) were causing players to be locked in place, effectively punishing them for playing the herrerasaurus correctly. This has since been resolved.
  
  
• The directional attack currently feels unreliable due to the nature of the animation, causing players to miss smaller targets. We will be looking into adjusting this.

It’s good to be back. This month has been heavily focused on bugs, meetings and more bugs. But it has also consisted of a lot of continued R&D and production of new playables and interactions. So far things have been going well on that front but there’s no rest for the weary.

I’ll focus a bit on playables for this devblog. Thus far we’ve been moving along at a nice pace in getting the tyrannosaurus, triceratops and maiasaura functional. Tyrannosaurus and triceratops are on pace with one another development wise. Pretty much being as evenly matched in production as they’re likely to be in-game. Once spar testing for diabloceratops is solid, the giants will get their sparring animations done and then they can battle it out in testing before we unleash them upon you.

For the sake of interest, I’ll explain a bit of how things work when we’re introducing a new playable. Particularly one that is a legacy port. Maiasaura is the first hadrosaur coming to Evrima and due to that, it is likely to set the stage for what to expect out of a hadrosaur. We start with concept art, design discussions and multiple prototypes to get a feel for the character then out of those discussions emerge the core thematics we want to explore.

For example, stances and what they mean for the maiasaura and what they mean, if anything, for the family at large which includes the parasaurolophus, shantungosaurus and eventually corythosaurus. We also need to decide what stances mean for the other playables as well. To understand how they will function if they have stances of their own and understand how they will fare against an opponent that has a stance when they don’t have one.

When a new creature is being worked on, these exploratory discussions and prototypes help us unearth what we can and cannot do as well as what we want to and don’t want to do. Often those are all very different. We also decide how far we plan to push the characterization, gameplay and mechanics forward and how possible it all is with the time and resources we have and also when to execute on them.

Hadrosaurs are largely depicted as little more than walking lunch boxes. Lacking horns, a sharp beak or noteworthy claws. They are pretty much just mass. However, that doesn’t prevent us from delving into abilities that allow these animals to mount a sufficient defense against the other inhabitants on The Isle without them feeling generic or low effort. All animals are interesting and hadrosaurs being one of the most iconic families of all dinosaurs should be no exception.

Here’s an example of what a bipedal stance for maiasaura may look like and what attacks and abilities performed when in this state may be like. Things like flailing kicks, stomps and throwing a little weight around as well as reviving legacy concepts of greater speed during a bipedal stance vs a quadrupedal stance.











Some examples of what the quadrupedal stance may allow us to do. From headbutts, stamps and more.

Hey Islanders,

We're deploying a small patch aimed at addressing various issues, while also implementing some adjustments related to stamina regeneration. Please note; You may need to restart your Steam client if you find that the patch is not immediately available to download.


0.13.26.10

Added stamina regeneration during movement states based off of current stamina.

Updated stamina regen values for all species
Improved AI animals attenuation volume/filter/reverb curves and falloff ranges
Made adult and juvenile deinosuchus have the same NV fog values underwater
Reduced dilophosaurus' hallucination recovery cooldown from 5mins to 1min
Increased footprints default despawn time from 1min to 5min
Reduced food proportion of schooling fishes

Fixed a server hitch during player connections
Fixed some server crashes
Fixed Pteranodon corpses not rotting
Fixed eat hint showing for herbivores near plants while carrying something
Fixed fruits despawning
Fixed wounds and low stamina not affecting final damage output
Fixed vocals not working on replays

Hey Islanders,

Due to the holiday season we will not be providing a devblog over the new year. However, in the spirit of moving forward with presentable content, we are releasing a new patch that will be delivered straight to evrima as opposed to the standard hordetesting branch. The inclusion of herrerasaurus and dilophosaurus has come early, however there are certain quirks both visually and mechanically for each of them that will be adjusted after the holidays. Continue using the bug report functionality regardless, as we will continue to refine content as much as possible in the coming days before holiday break. I hope you find the new additions to the roster as fun as we do.

Please note; you may need to restart your Steam client if the update is not immediately available to download.


Additions
Added dilophosaurus as a playable class
Added herrerasaurus as a playable class
Added the ability to scent when crouched or resting
Added dryosaurus directional attacks
Added new AI world spawner
Added replay focus and hotkeys to adjust playback speed
Added zoom function to replays
Added new hypsilophodon grab animation
Added input release to digging to interrupt it early
Added an additional effect for sting stage for sanctuary bees
Added a warning pulse effect and sound for agitated sanctuary bees
Added "wounded" as a status report and calculation for bite force
Added condition for pounce hit to check front and back of a big target
Added giant wax palms to Gateway
Added a NV brightness curve for all species, separate from range
Added new lunge swimming animations for deinosuchus
Added new water sense effect for deinosuchus
Added deflect animations for omniraptor and troodon when pouncing from the front or behind targets


Enhancements
Carnotaurus now requires a "run up" in order to charge
Ceratosaurus stability is increased when chuffing around corpses
Smoothing adjustments to animal head tracking
Smoothing adjustments to pounce latch translation/rotation and pouncer´s camera
Adjusted boar carry position
Reduced dirt vfx amount when digging
Improved trying to rest from sliding
Adjusted hypsilophodon and stegosaurus footprint sizes
Enabled swallowing while latching
Removed schooling fish from the gallimimus diet
Shortened stegosaurus knockdown duration
Migration zones now display immediately when scenting
Allowed corpses to update locational effects
Improvements to large call attenuations
Disabled chuffing while swimming
Hatchlings are now added to their parents' group regardless of size limit
Updated friends session finder
Made pounce and headbutt to ignore alt attacks
Weather sounds are now filtered when a player's camera is underwater
Increased ceratosaurus scent range
Players can no longer pick things up if they are charging as carnotaurus
Increased pachycephalosaurus bleed resistance
Setup new threshold values for bees attacks and juvenile diet swap
Updated admin panel event to match new input name
Adjusted nutrients prortions for sanctuary mushrooms
Updated deinosuchus underwater vision
Removed initial bleed damage from target when an animal pounces them
Increased pachycephalosaurus intake values when eating or drinking
Nutrient decay rates have been slightly lowered
Adjusted ceratosaurus animation swallow curves
Adjusted gallimimus, hypsilophodon, beipiaosaurus, dryosaurus, pachycephalosaurus, and troodon knockdown times
Restored minimum sprint duration/distance before sliding can activate
Ceratosaurus charged bites now force the player out of crouching
Added a stability multiplier to tenotosaurus when attacking behind itself
Removed impact sound from death screen
Adjusted pachycephalosaurus ram downwards activation angle
Slightly shortened recoil and stagger animations
Organs should now properly reflect food values based on the size of the animal they are taken from
Pachycephalosaurus headbutt can now properly hit swimming targets
Edits to nv underwater values
Updated balance values for pounce (stamina cost/damage)
Updated headbutt balance values (stamina cost/damage)
Updated all bucking stamina damage values
Increased the diet boost values to scent and NV ranges
Fast transitions from sitting to standing no longer cost stamina


Bug fixes
Fixed mud not going away if wallowing after a rain event fired
Fixed headbutt slide and animation failing to restart
Fixed pteranodon animation blending when using vocals while flying
Fixed ceratosaurus charged bite tap animation
Fixed wallow adding mud even if raining
Fixed dryosaurus/carnotaurus charge indicator showing for hatchlings
Fixed morphs for animals with a subadult stage
Fixed wrong math on removing source food when removing a chunk
Fixed players occasionally losing their saved skins
Fixed grazing message having priority over eating a specific plant
Fixed bullfrog not being properly listed for omnivores diets
Fixed deinosuchus and ceratosaurus occasionally receiving vomit debuffs
Fixed gore chunks not having correct nutrient proportions from its source
Fixed troodon jump attack sound not crossfading by age
Fixed collision for physics assets against old cliff rocks
Fixed some foliage and rock collisions being inaccurate
Fixed beipiaosaurus upwards swimming animation not playing correctly
Fixed weather sometimes not replicating
Fixed beipiaosaurus vertical swim speed being incorrect
Fixed vomit animation making meat chunks clip through the neck and face
Fixed profile creating sound playing on start up
Fixed pachycephalosaurus juvenile generic call sound clicking
Fixed pteranodon not taking off at low stamina properly
Fixed carnotaurus not sliding after turning from charge
Fixed issue with eating value always being 50
Fixed boar montages
Fixed replay cooldown starting from the start of recording instead of its end
Fixed directional attack being spammable
Fixed wrong values on skin setup for AI spawn
Fixed organs not becoming rotten sometimes
Fixed pieces being interactable after destroy was called on server
Fixed schooling fish scale issue on spawn
Fixed trace attack hitting overlaps
Fixed dryosaurus/carnotaurus cooldown indicator color while the ability is active
Fixed organs weight values sometimes being too heavy
Fixed dryosaurus not biting while holding ALT
Fixed slowdown when landing
Fixed sinking too deep into mud when jumping in
Fixed deinosuchus nose bubbles showing above water
Fixed crouch jittering when stood in water
Fixed some species using diving animation for mud pools
Fixed locked damage not being added on some normal attacks
Fixed skin preview background not having light sometimes
Fixed sickness status on UI disappearing when relogging
Fixed meat chunks occasionally not despawning if eaten fully from swallowing or on the floor
Fixed pachycephalosaurus ram head damage multiplier
Fixed issue of swallow animation on simulated proxies
Fixed drag SFX sometimes playing louder than intended
Fixed certain hints not showing up
Fixed scent bar not being full when inside migration zone
Fixed flung animation repeating
Fixed carnotaurus slide animation after charging
Fixed sanctuary mushrooms being added to adult diet list
Fixed collision of gore pieces during swallow
Fixed swallowing state not applying once swallow animation starts
Fixed "can't swallow" hints not showing up in some circunstances
Fixed organs occasionally becoming stuck to the player's mouth
Fixed AI dinos not updating locational effects
Fixed bees not damaging adult dryosaurus
Fixed bullfrog and deer giving wrong diet nutrients
Fixed issues with drink distance checks
Fixed subadult to adult growth times for dinosaurs without a subadult stage
Fixed dryosaurus juvenile and hypsilophodon grazing/eating sounds not playing
Fixed bleed clogging sometimes not working when wallowing
Fixed vocals ducking venom ambience
Fixed goat, boar and deer sliding animations when sprinting
Fixed juvenile omnivores not getting nutrients from anything besides sanctuary mushroom sources
Fixed fall damage not being calculated when quicklogging
Fixed lunge sprint boost after leaving water to land during lunge
Fixed crouched scent animations clipping through floor
Fixed pawn being destroyed if quick logout after going to Spec mode at least once
Fixed scent blocking other abilities if it was activated when scenting is not possible
Fixed gore been somewhat intertactable after fully eaten
Fixed headtracking jitter
Fixed organs that were thrashed to be thrashed again using original corpse
Fixed pounce camera disalignment
Fixed some debuff values taking too long to disappear
Fixed animal AI not spawning blood pool effects
Fixed corpse flies not despawning
Fixed headtracking facing forward when looking back
Fixed wallow hint showing on blood pools for herbivores
Fixed beipiaosaurus bouncing on water surfaces when out of stamina
Fixed deinosuchus sprint footstep sounds not playing sometimes
Fixed hypsilophodon slide footsteps not spawning
Fixed pteranodon being able to skim above ground
Fixed a latency issue causing the pounce start animation to repeat

It’s been another busy month spent working hard to release Gateway, which included several adjustments because some of the new mechanics weren't ready in time, so they had to be removed.

The remaining efforts were focused on moving forward with some new additions to the game, but also to have the first post-Gateway patch released as soon as possible. However, some work in progress systems are:.

• Tyrannosaurus crush ability. It would be a mix of Pounce and Lunge, having different behaviors depending on the size of the target.
  
• Burrowing. The mechanic has been updated with proxy meshes for testing and adjustment, some design decisions are to be made, but the mechanic should be finalized as soon as we set the final choices.
  
• Mutations. Mainly the mechanic is done, but not all designed mutations were added, we can do that overtime so we have better balance applied to them. In that regard, we are allowing Server Owners to customize the values of each mutation, also enable/disable them all or just a few, all through server configs.
  
• Pounce has received some updates to the new Grapple system (disabled for release), also some balance changes and an important change: Pouncing the front or the back of a big target won't connect (latch) anymore.Instead the Pouncer will perform a claw attack doing small damage. In order to latch on the target it needs to be attacked on the sides. This change applies to Troodon as well. Latching from the front was initially implemented to assist players having a difficult time landing successful pounces but we feel is not needed.
  
• Balance Updates. In general more balance changes were made to several abilities and mechanics.
  
• Several bugs were fixed including the ones reported by stress testers, not only QA.

Thanks everyone!


I started the month setting up the new migration and sanctuary scent icons. On the topic of scenting, it is now possible to do it when crouching or resting as well. I also did some experimentation on human weapons, but that’s something that will be worked on properly a bit later on.

The diabloceratops also received some improvements to be more reliable and convenient to use. It has a sidestep action when sparring to quickly get around each other which was previously done by tapping a direction key, but we moved it to the spacebar to be more user friendly. I was also able to make the movement faster when locked together so pushing each other worked much better, it was quite challenging in a networked environment. The camera is also locked to the front now, it helps make it more focused on the interaction. I also started working on a new action, running into the side of another diabloceratops lets you push them around a bit differently. That one is still work in progress though.

I also made further progress on the herrerasaurus. The branch snapping system is being improved with more trees being supported and the movement working better in general. The jumping indicator also shows when you would break your legs from jumping now. Fracturing your legs is something you would really want to avoid, so it should be quite useful.


Humans. Yes. Humans. This month has been on humans and the extension of their presence on the island. Soon you’ll find the new aquatic fences when they are finished up, which will be the start of shaping up aquatic gameplay..

As well to further the future human interaction and gameplay loop, I’ve designed our new keycards. This card is WIP and it might go through some changes.



Earlier this month, I also finished our new door kit, which consists of a wide array of door types, which represent proper indoor and outdoor doors, so you can distinguish them easier, just by their look and bulkiness.





Besides that I’ve been busy with small additions to our human environment which will be revealed as we populate more places with human stuff, so stay tuned for that!

That is it for me this month, see you next month!


This month (outside of some icon edits) I've been working on designing two types of cloning tanks, one for large to medium specimens, the other for small and some splash art to showcase them. Full on large scale painted illustrations are intensive enough on their own, but these also needed to be layered in a way that different creatures could be easily swapped in and out from the tank without it looking like it was simply dropped on top of the canvas and where the lighting layers would still ‘play nice’ with any newer additions to the painting.

Not just a fun piece to look at but both will be getting their own design sheets as well so they can be turned into a 3d asset for the labs.


Just capping off the last of the monkey gator animations this month before I move on to the next beastie. But in other news, Maiasaura got a nice rig update and we’ll be able to spin up the big cow for some work pretty soon. Always liked working with Hadrosaurs, they’re pretty satisfying to work with so I’m looking forward to that.




This month the majority of my focus was on sounds for Dilophosaurus’ venom mechanic.
After concepting a few ideas for both the ambience and the sound to go with a hallucination dissolve visual effect, I compounded what worked into a singular design for both sounds. With the sounds designed, a large portion of the work was how the ambience was to be implemented. The ambience is split up into layers which are either introduced or removed as the victim progresses through stages of envenomation, becoming more claustrophobic as it reaches stage 3. The existing natural ambience is effected to compliment this feeling, with some ambience sounds still audible at stage 1 and slowly being removed until none of the original ambience remains at the final stage. Audio effects were set up, blending existing sounds such as the original ambience as well as vocals that occur while envenomated into the new venom ambience, helping along the spooky atmosphere created. To cap it off a sound which plays a random selection from an array of Dilo’s vocals, mostly choosing from its shorter gurgles, hisses and coos as well as its distinct venom laugh, to replace the ambient one shots. These are processed with slightly different effects to sell the ethereal nature, blend with the final soundscape, and confuse its victim in turn ramping up the tension.

After finishing the venom ambience I moved on to Herrera vocals, where I have the majority of its pain reaction and attack sounds done as well as a few other supplementary vocals. Designing as much of its sound palette as possible will be carried forward into December as my sole priority.

Aside from my main two tasks this month I also managed to work on a few smaller improvements and additions. I did another design pass on Diablos threaten call, improving all the vocal layers as well as adding in an impactful snap of its beaks. Sounds were added to Dryosaurus’ new directional attacks; however its vocal sound is likely a placeholder until a bespoke sound can be designed. The pulsing bees sound I made a few months ago have also been added in, initiating when dangers to animals that have taken sanctuary are near. Finally I also made use of the system that changes footstep sounds based on terrain to also do the same for body impacts, this not only applies to body falls from knockdowns but also landing from jumps or falls as well. And of course plenty of bug fixes to go along with all this too.


This month QA have been hard at work continuing to test Diabloceratops, Dilophosaurus, and Herrerasaurus. The latter two are nearing completion. All we need to do is a bit of balance testing, add a few assets and fix any lingering major issues, then they’ll be prepped for release.

One of the more interesting bugs that has occurred is the dilophosaurus’ head growing to a massive size when dragging a corpse. Here’s what that looked like…



Herrerasaurus seemed to be very keen on throwing itself head first into the mud pits until recently as well…


Diabloceratops definitely needs to work on its cardio…



Hmm, mostly been bug fixing, polishing some outdated concepts/content and a ton of reviews. Stegosaurus mechanics got approved so that’s nice. Grapple has a framework. I think we touched on it before but the TLDR is size doesn’t mean everything.

We’re glad to see how you all are taking to migrations and sanctuaries as a whole. Which largely has been accomplishing their intended goals. Expect to see more sanctuaries as we planned way more than what we released with. The concentrated sanctuaries as a test have yielded valuable information. Naturally, the features we release will require edits and review as we continue fleshing out the experiences we want players to have. There have been some changes to stamina that you’ll hopefully be seeing soon. But don’t get too excited. While the stamina regen is indeed heaving hitting, as was intended and although we will be making adjustments to it, stamina is going to remain an important resource in The Isle that needs to be managed well. Sprinting everywhere is not what we want. These changes have slowed things a bit and we are pleased with that aspect but still need to work on finding the sweet spot.

The herrerasaurus and dilophosaurus are shaping up nicely for their eventual release. Just needing some polish in a few places to get them fully tested and play ready. The herrera may get a few placeholder sounds if it ends up running too long production wise. So glad for big features to be less common all at once.

For myself I have enjoyed being able to work on ironing out some animation inconsistencies that have been long standing to help improve the smoothness and feel of the characters. I’ve been working on some ground based locomotion for the pteranodon in preparation for some changes it’s likely going to undergo playstyle and overall thematic wise. Pteranodons were supposed to be dogfighting and stealing from each other originally. Among other things.

The deinosuchus has also needed some love. The swimming is not nearly as smooth as I find acceptable so I’ve also been able to touch on some of that. It has been a long time coming for me to personally have time to devote to those kinds of additions/changes so I am just glad to be entering into more of a polishing era for once rather than plowing through a stack of animation sets across the roster. So expect to see some things altered, smoothed out or replaced entirely.

The maiasaura has had some establishing poses made and the animation team is about to begin chipping away at it. I enjoy working with hadrosaurs the most as they are usually by far the easiest to work with and you can’t have a game with dinosaurs and not have a hadrosaur. They really are painless. Hopefully not famous last words because we would like to preserve the biped/quad swap and that may end up being a lot of work. So we’ll see.

The diabloceratops is still in testing. We really want to hit the nail on the head with its mechanics and all the animations it takes to make it pop. Upside being as soon as we do finalize that animation list and the functionality, the triceratops will already have its path laid out. We’re trying to hit multiple ceratopsian birds with one stone.

As a general PSA please keep in mind, room needs to be made to have something to work/build towards. Some baselines are going to feel rough because they are but may have ways of mitigating them through proper gameplay. Building a digital ecosystem is challenging and it takes time to fully see the impacts of sweeping systems. That’s pretty much the month as a whole. I’ll see what I can do as far as getting replay polished up for the next update but don’t hold your breath on that cause we do have a fair amount of bugs to tackle and loose ends to tie up before break. We don’t want to leave you hanging for the holidays if possible. Anyway, that’s all for now. Toodles!

Hey Islanders,

We are now deploying Gateway to the EVRIMA branch. As outlined in our latest DevBlog, our current live version (Spiro, 0.11.59.04) will be moved to its own branch for a limited time. This move is designed to accommodate players who do not want to partake in active development but wish to continue playing the game on the previous stable version. Once Gateway's gameplay loop is assessed internally as stable and within the intended vision, we will drop support for 0.11.59.04 and return to a unified EVRIMA branch. All Official Servers are also transferring over to Gateway.

As always, you may need to restart your Steam client if the update is not immediately available to download.



Server Owners that utilize Gateway will have to make adjustments to their configuration files. Below, you'll find an example illustrating the required format for your Game.ini. Please note; You also have to use the appropriate depot when hosting for a specific map.

spiro0.11.59.04 - Server branch for Spiro
evrima - Server branch for Gateway

[/script/theisle.tigamesession]
ServerName=Official Evrima - EU 5
MaxPlayerCount=100
MapName=Gateway
bServerFallDamage=true
ServerDayLengthMinutes=45
ServerNightLengthMinutes=25
bServerDynamicWeather=true
bAllowReplay=false
bQueueEnabled=true
bServerPassword=false
ServerPassword=xxxxxxxxxx
bRconEnabled=true
RconPassword=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
bSpawnPlants=true
bServerWhitelist=false

[/script/engine.gamesession]
MaxPlayers=100


0.12.51.02

Additions
- Added new map (Gateway)
- Added new mechanic: Migrations
- Added new mechanic: Sanctuaries
- Added new AI: Sanctuary Bees
- Added weather
- Added new environmental material effects to dinosaurs
- Added new UI icons
- Added sanctuary (red) mushroom
- Added AI herds
- Added new edible plants: Jackfruit, Banana, Brazil Nuts, Dulse
- Added pushable gates/doors
- Added config option to toggle AI
- Setup new stamina regen during resting
- Setup damage outputs being modified by a player's health
- Added beipi nest animation
- Added new ram impact foley sound
- Added input release to digging so players can interrupt the ending animation
- Added required restarts to certain graphical options that failed to update without them


Balance Changes
- Slightly lowered carnotaurus attack rotations
- Increased some alt attack trace sizes
- Updated cerato bacteria gain values
- Set stego plates and hypsi eyebrows to not block penetration checks
- Enabled dryo evade when sprinting
- Adjusted charge and headbutt interactions
- Added the weight of all pouncers as a check to be able to sprint when being pounced
- Returned stamina cost for alt bites to all animals, besides deino
- Reduced damage output if a player is out of stamina
- Using direction attacks to substitute movement when bleeding now results in proportional drain to the animal's blood pool
- Adjusted stegosaurus growth times
- Adjusted deinosuchus growth times
- Added 20s cooldown to carnotaurus charge
- Globally reduced stamina costs for attempting to pounce and successful pounce states (latched, pinned)
- Removed initial bleed damage on pounce
- Updated all animals buck stamina damages
- Reduced stamina cost for headbutt and tenonto attacks
- Increased all hatchling/juvenile nightvision ranges
- Removed stamina regen boost from diets
- Adjusted nutrient slot fills so overeating is no longer required
- Adjusted cerato scent ranges
- Reduced stamina cost for bucking off latched players
- Reduced pterodactylus damage
- Increased pachy bleed resists
- Added stenciling effects to deinosuchus's underwater nightvision


Enhancements
- Engine version update
- UI updates
- Landscape shader updates
- Foliage shader updates
- Improvements to pounce animation visuals
- Disabled walking off ledges when standing on foliage
- Vocals and environment sounds improvements
- Updated omniraptor movement animations
- Improved corpse trashing trigger
- Setup day and night lengths to be modified using ini file
- Improvements to pachy ram hit detection
- Vocal calls take several uses before they start to fall in power
- Disabled resting in knee deep water
- Set skin variation to be saved and also exportable/importable
- Improvements to river, lakes and mud pool collisions
- Avoid hit animation when pinned
- Added cooldown colors to charge indicator
- Adjusted crab carry location
- Adjusted sea turtle pounce locations
- Adjusted boar carry position
- Made herbivores and omnivores adjust animation based on its location in relation to the player mesh
- Improvements to fracture animations
- Fixed rotten food not properly giving nutrients
- Updated night vision
- Added brightness curve for night vision
- Reflective eyes added to night vision
- Updates and fixes to fruit math regarding weight
- Fireflies now disappear properly during the day
- Made migration zones show up immediately during scent without having to hold the input
- Reduced intensity of galli feed vocal sound
- Adjusted hypsi footprints size
- Adjusted stego footprints size
- Adjusted organs giving little food/nutrients
- Avoid system spawning plants on big slopes
- Avoid trees being scented, rather than their fruit
- Made debuff nutrients such as cannibal/mushrooms decrease as fast as hunger.
- Block any kind of pickup during charge
- Changed admin panel input name from "Players" to "AdminPanel"
- Increased rate at which pachycephalosaurus eats and drinks


Fixes
- Pounce is no longer interrupted by directional attacks
- Fixed graze still being able to activate while sprinting
- Fixed Ptero using carry and drag anim froms Ptera, causing stretching
- Fixed tenonto default skin
- Fixed some foliage collision
- Fixed galli's environmental alert sounds playing outside of the jungle
- Fixed galli mobilize vocal not having an animation
- Fix to certain diets affecting bleed and health decay
- Fixed not being able to drop a turtle after carrying it
- Fixed deer carry offset
- Vocal sounds will now be heard in replays
- Underwater post process now displays correctly with replays
- Fixed gore scaling in a players mouth if they grew
- Fixed certain blood decay math
- Fix the grab high animation being canceled by certain features
- Fixed galli kick uncrouching when holding something
- Hypsi is now properly set to protein instead of lipids for troodon and ptera
- Fixed tiny footsteps inaudible in deep mud
- Fixed attacks not canceling buck
- Fixed getting interaction hints when latched
- Fix to small deino lunge causing target to be forced out of resting
- Fixed players being able to swallow debris
- Interaction hints do not activate when a player is latched onto a pounce target
- Fixes to blood vfx
- Fixed sliding not working properly
- Fixed ptera not using stamina for takeoffs
- Fixed meat chunks not giving nutrients if a juvenile carnivore swallows them
- Fixed stego 90 degree alt attack resulting in movement lock
- Fixed beipiaosaurus, pachycephalosaurus, and stegosaurus knockdown configuration.
- Fixed swallowed corpses scaling with the player
- Fix to vomit trace
- Fixed input lock if swallowing while vomit sickness is active
- Corpses can no longer be swallowed repeatedly
- Fixed grazing while moving not locking camera
- Fixed crouching deceleration
- Fixed camera lock while grazing causing player to move in circles
- Fixed ptera animation issue when landing
- Fixed not being able to activate hypsi spit while running
- Fixed rotten food not properly giving nutrients
- Fixed ptera vocal blending when flying
- Fixed morphs for dinos with subadult stage
- Fixed troodon jump attack sound not crossfading by age
- Fixed weather desyncs
- Fixed replay cooldown starting from start of recording
- Fixed river spline collision mismatch between server/client
- Fixed certain exploits that allowed spamming of directional attacks
- Fixed organ interaction and rot rate values
- Fixed issue with schooling fish scale increases
- Fixed organ weights being too heavy
- Fixed flung animations getting stuck in a loop
- Fixed carno slide animation after charging
- Fixed water splash VFX scale on tiny creatures
- Fixed boars not attacking

This month I have been working mostly on getting Gateway sent to the public while also doing more work on upcoming mechanics.

Most of time was spent working on several different approaches for migration, different design or technical needs to make the system more robust. Several options are going to be made accessible for community servers, so they can customize migration to their liking. Stress Tests have been great to not only find faults in the procedural system, but also balance it better after patching any holes in design.

During this time some bug fixes and improvements were done for weather as well. It should fully replicate properly and the changes in weather should no longer be immediate.

With the introduction of Gateway and the stamina system, we had a lot of balance adjustments to make. There is a global reduction in stamina consumption across all animals and a lot of per-species adjustments that were made in order to keep certain species viable. We still have more to do, but for now those balance changes alleviate most of the concerns till the next robust release.

For the main branch of production I continued working on mutations. It is nearly feature complete and we can keep adding more and more mutations over time, both up until and after the release of the mechanic. Also finished up working on dilophosaurus venom. It has a few other things necessary for release, we are ready to begin testing on it.

Besides all that. I have been working on the “Pounced-to-Pinned” transition that we call Grappled. The internal testing and animations testing have gone really well, so this would bring an entirely new aspect to pounce type mechanics, giving new options for strategic combat.


And lastly, the usual balance changes and bug fixes. See you next time!



I worked on various different things this month, starting with my personal favorite, the herrerasaurus. With the aimed jump system players are encouraged to jump more than other species, so for now we removed stamina cost from small hops, although we will have to test carefully to see the best balance settings. The dinosaur had many of its values tweaked over time to get the best results to make sure climbing feels and looks great across all kinds of surfaces, but I finally found a solid solution to a certain jittering issue that’s been bugging me. I also enabled swallowing while latched on to a wall, which could come in handy.

We use a framework to manage our character abilities and attributes. While it works great for the most part, there was some room for improvement in terms of data usage. So I ended up replacing some of their built in solutions with our own ones that don’t send any more data than necessary. The biggest improvement is where characters deal damage to each other, which is arguably the situation where you’d want to have the least amount of lag when playing. The changes will need to be tested properly, so they didn’t make their way to the Gateway test branch, but it’s something to look forward to.

The team also did some internal testing for the diabloceratops. There are several adjustments to be made there, so I got back into focusing on that dinosaur. You can now move while blocking and you also have increased protection against attacks that can knock down or stagger players.



The first half of this month my time was focused on creating all sounds for Dilophosaurus during its juvenile stage, pitching up the sounds used already for the adult stage, making fine adjustments and replacing layers that did not achieve the right feel for this creature when pitched up. I also worked on the sound effects to prototype for Diablo sparring, I ended up creating 3 elements that will be used in combination to create the sounds of these creatures’ locking horns. Firstly, a loud and hard impact with the additional connection of the horns is used for the initial locking as they begin to spar as well as the ram attack during a sparring bout. Then a collection of lighter knocks and scraping sounds of the horns have been created to use as they come into contact as they push and struggle against each other. These sounds will be used modularly for all Ceratopsians sparring, however what I have only covers the size category of an Adult Diabloceratops and these sounds need to be scaled for multiple size categories in preparation for when I come to work on the juvenile Diabloceratops and in addition the Triceratops.

The second half of this month I was focused on making adjustments and improvements in preparation for Gateway’s release, including ambience improvements, reducing the range at which vocal calls can be heard slightly and focusing on a final quality pass on Pterodactylus’ sounds.

I am also currently working on a number of sound concepts for Dilo’s venom mechanic, an ambience to homogenize with the visuals, heighten the tension and sonically isolate the envenomated player from the soundscape of the island. Additionally, a sound is needed for the hallucinations disappearing so some designs are in the works to really sell the undulating and morphing quality of this effect. More on this next month.

Finally, I have been working on herrerasaurus’s attack vocal sounds. With its calls having been created a while ago; I had established the identity of this creature as it is introduced to Evrima, taking the bellowing personality it’s known for and adding some character and individuality to it. With this in mind to help steer the design process I have created sounds for both its bite and attack which stay relatable to the established identity but scaling back on the weight behind these sounds to conform with the creatures’ size and allow its calls to be grand and pronounced by comparison.



This month is gun month. It has been a really long month but a month in which I will bring you more news about humans and their weapons.

We’ve designed all of the weapons to have interchangeable attachments, as we have standardized our rail, so this of course will apply to all future weapons as well. This means that any guns designed can have interchangeable attachments. It may fictionalize a lot of real-life counterparts but it mitigates the odds of never finding the appropriate weapon attachment, which in many looting games can feel like a chore.

This month we have a fully finished .357 revolver. It has been quite an interesting weapon to design and create. We’ve made special attachments to it such as the grip. With the exception of the name, it is otherwise finished.

*Keep in mind that all of our weapons are still subject to minor changes.




Besides that, I’ve been working on modular kits for the map as well, creating various additions such as stairs, and working to get the building shaders overhauled with our shader artist, Ikarop.

Lastly, an image of our shotgun for fun:



See you next month folks.



Besides some First Person Prototype videos, I've continued to focus on our Apollo Engineering software video format. Since we will create content and lore videos with this format more often in the future, it is important to try out some concepts and especially to define guidelines. As well as the familiar login screen and boot menu I also created concepts for a global archive, a chip tracking system, a trail cam and monitoring camera system.

You can see the first video in which we were able to combine the presentation of a new species and The Isle Lore here:



Additionally, planning for the most important and biggest video project so far has started, the Steam Page Trailer. It's still a bit early, but this trailer is meant to showcase all of the work that’s been put into the game since the EVRIMA branch as it moves to the default Isle experience. There’s so much content to work with and it requires a lengthy planning phase. I am incredibly excited about this project.

Since the content from the LIVING ROADMAP will be released separately, many have asked how we will now manage the update release trailers for it. We will not create release trailers for every piece of content that is released, but we will do so when enough content has been gathered. Gateway will not get an unnecessary release trailer, but will be presented in a later trailer with other content.



Hope you all have been enjoying the public Gateway testing. October has been a whirlwind for the team but a good one. Lots and lots of testing teamwide in preparation for the official release of Gateway to the public. As has been mentioned before and I will reiterate now, since we have laid a large swath of the foundational features/mechanics necessary, we are moving away from large scale releases and going to be entering more iterative releases. Which will have the added benefit of getting more frequent content to the public as well as getting more feedback and testing for development.

This month has been centered around getting Gateway in a decently playable state so survival is possible as well as integrating the Migration System. Which is intended to get players moving around the map a bit more frequently and should help create encounters with other players that feel more natural and spread out rather than constant and concentrated. The Migration System should also provide a fair amount of customization for server owners so they can tailor it to the preferred environmental desires. The next thing coming along soon will be Sanctuaries. Which are creches of sorts. Sanctuaries provide juvenile players greater survivability against starvation due to map size and a reprieve from larger animals as well as providing moments for exploration. But be very aware that while sanctuaries are aimed at increasing the survival rate of juvenile players and being fun to explore, they are not without their own dangers and are not going to make you invulnerable or keep you off the menu. Your time within a sanctuary is also limited. Overstay and death may not be far behind. Enter and exit cautiously.

The playables have been undergoing a lot of changes and iteration as we establish the basis of what climbing, sparring, hallucinations etc will look/play like from a foundational perspective. Some of the features you’ll see show up for a specific species may show up in small or large parts for other species as well. Sparring is a good example of that as that system will be shared among most if not all ceratopsians. With the visuals and some interactions varying based on species. The diabloceratops has been feeling pretty good lately even with a lot of its intended functionality missing. I’m personally pretty excited to get it into your hands. The same ideology applies to climbing. While the herrerasaurus may specialize in that action, other creatures may incorporate part of that system into their own gameplay as well. Like the hypsilophodon for instance.

All of the above brings me to Grappling. Grappling, which was previously Pounce to Pinned internally, is a feature that allows pouncers and grapplers more combat effectiveness against even the largest targets. An example of a pouncer would be the omniraptor while a tyrannosaurus or allosaurus for instance would be more of a grappler. Much like can be witnessed in nature today, large animals can be brought down onto their haunches as they become weakened or overpowered. Eventually resulting in them being pinned to the ground. Spelling doom for most. This makes pouncing and grappling carnivores a threat to creatures that may individually be well outside of their size ranges. This feature is being worked on in preparation for even the largest animals on our roster to be brought down if a pack is skilled and coordinated enough to whittle them down. Size does not mean everything. The Isle is never truly safe for any creature. Exercise caution against dangerous game. It still won’t be an easy task.

The triceratops is well on its way towards animation completion, we’re also making some quality of life changes to some animations here and there as well as preliminary implementation of long dormant features like jump attacks. The pterodactylus is also getting some new interactions (and slight nerfs lol). The next playable you’ll be seeing is going to be the maiasaura which I’m personally excited to work on as you can’t have a game with dinosaurs without a hadrosaur. That’s all for now. Happy Halloween!





Hello Islanders,

Upgrading to UE5 while also pushing forward new content has proven quite arduous but we are (relatively speaking) at the finish line for porting that content over. The embargo on Gateway was lifted, so I hope those of you that have had an opportunity to play have found our work enjoyable. The testing will remain up as we finish up the smaller details that are necessary to fully move the map and content to a public release.

As it has been impressed upon by myself, we are trying to move content out faster. The Gateway build will be patched to the EVRIMA branch once the last of any unforeseen technical issues are addressed. This is a relatively large drop of content and it goes without saying that almost always something goes wrong, so in preparation, the current active build of EVRIMA (0.11.59.04) will be moved to a temporary branch for those of you who do not wish to partake in the active development of content and simply want to play the game. Once Gateway's gameplay loop is assessed internally as stable and within the intended vision, we will drop support for 0.11.59.04 and return to a singular EVRIMA branch. There's no time like borrowed time.

I'm sure many of you have already seen previews of the sparring system that is being introduced alongside the diabloceratops. This mechanic is being created to span across as many of the ceratopsians as possible, including cross-species sparring so long as the two animals are within an estimated 20% weight differential. However, this system is also going to be functional for the tyrannosaurus and a few other projected theropods. Not only will they be able to lock up and fight with a ceratopsian, but they will be able to lock up and fight with one another.

Gen 1's have gone through many changes since we've begun concepting playstyles and intent. I'm happy to say their first playable archetype has been fully through the concept phase and can be moved into production. Attached below are some of the pieces used to dictate the design direction, including two different head customization types we intend to support. We went through many body types, head styles, and skin features to capture a creature that is very clearly non-human, but retains customization features indicative of a standard humanoid character. In the future, we hope to provide a myriad of head and body choices for a player to make this incidental abomination of science feel like their own.







Other than that, I've been working on refining the direction of the game's lore items and presentation nestled somewhere between analog horror and traditional text-based storytelling. It's been very enjoyable to work alongside Seiza, Tapwing, and Fred as both in-game documentation and videos are templated. It has not escaped my notice that a large chunk of the community is ravenous for story-telling and have created some incredibly fun theories and fan videos inside the game, so I will be providing some of the resources that were created for use in-house, including the guide-sheets we use for upcoming "in-universe" videos and the templates for dinosaur glance sheets and species specific character sheets. They should arrive within the week in the Phase Three channel and I hope they find some use with the loremasters among you.

- Don

This month I worked on several fronts, while also working on improving the Spectator Mode for the public Evrima branch of the game. We also fixed a few small problems server side, and introduced the new Vomit Sickness.

Like last month, I’ve cut my work into topics for easier consumption:

• Implemented more mutations and fixed a lot of related bugs. The mutations are made in a way that server owners can enable/disable all mutations, or enable specific ones and more: They can customize the specific values of the individual mutations, allowing a wider range of customization for community servers.
  
• New resting curves were implemented, still under work in progress balance wise, but now the longer you keep resting, the faster it restores stamina, health and blood.
  
• Other balance changes were added, such as stamina affecting damage output, and the addition of “Wounds” (not visual), which lower your health as well as certain stats, such as health regen, stamina regen, damage and more.
  
• The Dilophosaurus Hallucination System is mostly finalized, we are just adding some extra effects and balance adjustments.
  
• Several members of the team worked together this month to reduce memory usage of the new map (Gateway), especially server side. We managed to reduce its memory consumption by about 50%.
  
• A heap of Migration tweaks and bug fixes.
  
• Locational effects improvements and bug fixes.
  
• Setting up final assets and systems for the new playables.
  
• Several bug fixes in all areas and QOLs.

With the Stress Test now live we can finally gather the data we need to balance and adjust the map accordingly, so we can release it asap. See you next month!


This month I’ve been focusing on polishing the upcoming playables and fixing related issues. The herrerasaurus climbing is becoming more and more reliable, I found some networking related jittering that I also managed to smooth out. I also set up the special resting animations that are used when positioning yourself on thin branches. The animal was also given a new diving animation, we expect players to spend a lot of time up in the trees and jumping down into water can be a good way to dampen your fall, assuming you don’t jump into the jaws of a deinosuchus.

I also gave the diabloceratops some love, it now takes reduced damage to its head and can use its block ability to reduce it even further. I extended the dryosaurus’s dodge charge indicator to support a more generic functionality, it is now also used to indicate how many sparring abilities you can activate and also show their cooldown.

Finally I made some developments to the growth system. Our aim for the current apexes is to have a relatively faster growth in the beginning, and then significantly slow it down as you get older. There were a couple things that had to be adjusted, but it’s all set up now and hopefully it will lead to a rewarding experience.




This month I’ve been working on designing vocal sounds for both Dilophosaurus’ and Diabloceratops’ unique abilities.

I have made a handful of sounds, alongside Dilo’s menacing laugh that I made previously, for its venom mechanic. Initially I created a unique Threaten call for envenomation that can be heard before a hallucination initiates its attack, a layered shrill shriek, with a hissing rumble and a throaty roar. Additionally, there are some more comparably subdued but intimidating sounds, including some variations to its laugh gurgles and growls, and a couple of unique hisses, one layered with a trilling shriek.

For Diablo I’ve created a suite of grunts, groans and exertions for use when locked into a sparring match, emphasizing the struggle of strength between them. In addition, there are some more bespoke sounds used while sparring for ramming, being rammed, flipping, being flipped and trampling.

I’ve also started working on the foley needed for sparring, so far I’ve created a hard knock of horns clashing as they collide from a ram attack. Additional contact sounds need to be made for when horns interlock or come into contact outside of the ram attack during the sparring bout.

More sounds may be required as these mechanics are iterated on and progress to the final result, but with the majority of the work near completion for these two animal’s sounds I’m looking forward to moving on to Herrerasaurus very soon!


It’s been a marathon of T.rex animations for me over the last week, it’s got a full locomotion suite done, all 114 animations just for walking, trotting, running and all the wounded variations for them across all the life stages the Rex goes though, which is more than usual because Tyrannosaurus is a very weird beast that just had to be different from all the other Tyrannosaurids.



Aside from that, we’ve got the look for Herrerasaurus’ climbing squared away and with Rex out off my plate I can focus on getting its climbing suite done as well. Sure Herrera isn’t exactly built for climbing, but then that’s just part of the challenge for getting it to look believable. Chances are you’ll have other things to worry about when you look over the edge and see one skittering up at you anyway.


Gateway stress testing is again underway along with the corresponding changes we make based on feedback. The new playables are being put through their paces so they’ll be ready for their debut in stress testing at a later time. The dilophosaurus is getting some accompanying effects that you’ve likely seen the placeholders for on stream that will make its venom something you’re going to want to avoid. The herrerasaurus is getting some animation smoothing and swapping out of any problematic proxies. The diabloceratops sparring is going to be aggressively tested since we need to make sure the flow of battle feels right no matter what you’re facing. As they will be in direct opposition to other ceratopsians as well as certain large carnivores that specialize in hunting horned prey. The tyrannosaurus and triceratops are slowly lumbering their way into the spotlight and doing so in imposing fashion. Both need to be super solid as they’ll be some of the most formidable animals in the game and we really want to nail their gameplay and aesthetics so you feel properly powerful overall and not just a higher damage model swap. Fingers crossed! We’ve also been working with mutations and rounding out the gameplay loop for the dinosaurs as a whole. Hope you’re ready to be a feeble or ferocious grandparent.

This month has also included some quality of life changes across the board. Some you’ll notice sooner than others. But the keen-eyed may have spotted some of them on stream. Some examples include changes to certain species animations and changes to their fluidity of movement. The goal being to remove some of the jank the characters have had for a while now. Also changes to nightvision, weather, sound and more. The outlying creatures are also being pulled in line with the rest of the roster. Like the dryosaurus, hypsilophodon, deinosuchus, stegosaurus etc so they’ll have the same level of completion intent as the rest of the roster. Like directional attacks and over time, their other mechanics. There were several other features for some of the playables that had to be cut for expedience sake that we can now begin devoting time to. Yes, we’ve been working on burrowing. We’ve made promising strides in that direction and I’m pretty excited about it. There’s also some R&D in relation to pounce and how we plan to expand on that feature so pouncers feel more deadly even to larger, more powerful animals. Shouldn’t be too hard for those of you familiar with large predators and their large prey to guess what that is but more on that after testing proves successful. Humans have also been getting a lot of love this month from the design and animation teams and are shaping up to be something we feel will be an enjoyable and pants pooping experience. That’s all for now.

Hey Islanders,

In this small patch we've introduced a rework to the vomiting mechanic and introduced a "sickness" status effect. The patch notes contain a more detailed breakdown of these additions. We are aware of and continuing to investigate the ping issues affecting our Official Servers. We will keep you informed as soon as we have more information available.

• Expanded upon the existing vomit system. Vomiting now has a variable cooldown as to prevent players from becoming "vomit locked" when attacked by groups of ceratosaurus', which would stop them from fighting back. Whenever a player vomits, they will also incur a vomit sickness state that lasts 5 minutes. While this state is active, nutrients cannot be gained from eating and there is a chance to vomit again while eating/swallowing food. Additional vomits during this time will cause the vomit sickness state duration to stack and increase. As before, stamina/hunger/thirst max values are decreased after vomiting, and interacting with a salt lick can remove these negative effects more quickly.

• The vomiting animation will be prioritized over abilities and sprinting, but will still allow the player to walk/trot. This is to ensure that players can be seen visually vomiting instead of just suddenly receiving the debuff.
  
• Adjusted the vomit revert value proportion over time.

• Fixed vomit decal trace.

This month I have been working on several different things across various days/weeks, so I will mention the most important topics below:

• Reworked the thrash abilities mouse detection, as there were issues with certain resolutions that prevented it from triggering.
  
• The mutation system is in progress and new mutations have been implemented as their design has been approved. Alongside this, new UI alerts, panels and QOL messages are also being added.
  
• Reworked the pachy headbutt hit detection for more accurate bone fractures, it was almost impossible to hit certain animals, especially the head.
  
• Setup new SickState, from vomit, it now applies different rules making this a more robust mechanic, not only decreasing some statuses - This is being applied as a patch to the public, which you’ll learn more about in a future announcement..
  
• Helped set up new playable dinosaurs with animations and made specific code changes necessary for some abilities to function properly.
  
• Added Banana trees with bananas to be part of the new diets in Gateway.
  
• New Locational Effects. These are new shader effects that are applied by the environment, such as being wet when entering water or during rain, mud, duckweed from swamps, dirt, dust, blood, etc. It is a complex system that allows those effects to dry, transition between and be fully dynamic.
  
• Destructible fences. If the animal is big/strong enough, fences can be destroyed to create new entrances. These are different from the Physics Doors that you can push.
  
• Pouncing. Besides some improvements and different methods of latching the attacker to the victim, I've also been working on a transition from Pounced to Pinned, with a variant in the middle for very big animals, more details soon.
  
• Added skin variation to the saving and export button in the skin system, it was intentionally not added before, but by request we did now.
  
• Balance changes implementations and several bug fixes.

That is it, see you guys next time.


Most of my month was spent working on herrerasaurus improvements and fixing climbing behavior in some of the more uncommon scenarios. It is now more reliable to latch on to the wall without aiming accurately and a proper landing indicator was set up instead of the testing visuals.

I also added a new drop attack, which is executed by holding RMB when falling on someone. This deals damage and can stagger or knock down depending on your falling velocity. Another unique feature involves the dewlap of the dinosaur. You will be able to hold F and press the left mouse button to send signals to other herrerasaurus’. This will be particularly useful for communicating without making a sound.




This month I have been focusing my work on getting humans up and ready more and more, by firstly finishing up both the Pistol and the Rifle to its key details.

The pistol is now fully complete and has an assortment of attachments, most of which can be fitted to any appropriate weapon, consisting of Laser, Red Dot, Flashlight and Silencer attachments.




Next up for the human arsenal is the Pump Shotgun, which will have its own set of attachments, but we will reveal as we go. For now I’m happy to announce its progressing really well, however, keep in mind this is heavily subject to changes, as it's only the “High-Poly” phase.





Lastly, a lot of focus has been on a bit more freedom and advancement towards the buildings in general. The following images were made as a proof of concept, to showcase one of the capabilities of the kit, in which you can see a really “quick” and “dirty" rundown of a simple room.




I’ll be expanding on this kit furthermore, however, only after the shotgun is done, to feature more pieces to allow even more freedom. I’ll share just an example of a quick floor layout for the expanded kit. That is what I can reveal so far. See you next month!




This month I’ve been focused on wrapping up remaining sounds left for Dilo and Diablo in their adult stages, as well as refining, reworking or improving upon existing sounds as I test them. The only exceptions to sounds complete are what’s needed for their unique mechanics, i.e. venom and sparring respectively.

Dilo’s remaining vocals had included its pinned, pounced, eating, thrashing and courting sounds. I’m particularly fond of its chilling screams for the pinned and pounced, created from a blend of Bird and Loris screeches, glass squeaks and warping metal tones.

Diablo’s remaining sounds had included its pinned and courting as well as generic breaths and grunts to be used in animations like sniffing as well as for filling gaps where needed. Its court sounds are a playful mix of chirps, rumbles and hoots to coordinate with its movements. With these two mostly wrapped up for now I’m looking forward to moving on from these two creatures and onto the next soon!

I have also been making little improvements when and where I can, some examples include adding landing foley sounds when jumping or dropping on to your feet and some attacks as well, finalized moving calls and primary attacks to a new audio system, and calls only start becoming hoarse at half stamina instead of full now.

I’m itching to get back to working on the Rex and eventually Triceratops, but this month it’s been all Diabloceratops, Dilophosaurus, Herrerasaurus and John Cake.

Diablo is a pretty big project, it’s sparring ability is pretty complex and demands a lot of animations, and tweaks to those animations down the line so they look the best they can in-game.

Dilo got some updated Alt attacks as well, a bit more responsive and vicious than the first iteration. I always enjoy the freeze frames on these.




We have started the process of sending out invitations to successful stress tester applicants. If you have not yet received an invitation, do not fret, as we are sending them in waves due to the sheer number of those that applied. This process may take some time yet and is also dependent on the content that is being tested. We need to ensure that the servers are filled to maximum capacity for the entire duration of the tests but also give everyone an ample chance to access the new content.

The QA team has had its hands full testing all of the following: Diabloceratops, Dilophosaurus, Herrerasaurus, Gateway, Migrations, and Mutations. While we will not be introducing all of the aforementioned in a single update, we have been able to report issues for them as an ongoing effort as opposed to trying to focus on one mechanic only when it’s complete. As mentioned in my last devblog post, the changes to our roadmap allow us to send each mechanic as its complete as its own update.

The diabloceratops sparring mechanic is coming along well. The ability to strafe in combat while other species cannot will bring a new complexity to our combat that hasn’t been touched on before in The Isle. Where some players would run past a target to attack them from the rear, the diabloceratops is able to simply step sideways at decent speed to stop them in their tracks and bring them a swift end. Sparring with another diablo has not been finalized, so I will refrain from going into any further details about it for now.

Dilophosaurus’ hallucination has not been touched on much in other devblogs or shown, but I can confidently say that this has been one of the most enjoyable mechanics to test as of late and I personally believe this mechanic will make it a fan favorite. The current prototype prevents targets from seeing past a certain distance with a fog effect, and also causes temporary dilo AI to spawn and run towards its target before disappearing. This prototype may not be reflective of its complete state, but it is already proving to be very effective in both combat and bringing some much-needed horror elements to the game. It is especially effective at night time and very humorous to witness a player swinging away at a target that isn’t there.

Herrerasaurus’ climbing and “divebomb” attack is the most complete of the new species mechanics. Taking the pteranodon’s clinging to a whole new level, the ability to climb up almost any surface and drop down onto unsuspecting prey has been thrilling to experience. The attack scales with both the velocity of the character and the size of the herrerasaurus, allowing for some fun interactions. As this attack requires a fair bit of planning and skill to pull off, it will definitely need further balancing to ensure that it’s both rewarding but also not being overpowered. Currently, I believe that an adult herrerasaurus will be able to instantly kill an adult dryosaurus with a far enough fall, and deal a large amount of damage to an adult omniraptor. We will be playtesting this further in stress testing to find the best values though.

Gateway and migrations will introduce a far more interesting experience to all of our characters, humans included. With different biomes to explore and a plethora of POIs, no two places look the same. There are areas that have been exclusively made for creatures of various sizes, including but not limited to juvenile sanctuaries that can be used as a safe haven from the much larger species on the island. Migrations pushing the different species around the island in a controlled manner will also help to deter issues such as megapacking that plague Spiro.

Finally, mutations have brought in a mechanic that could make every single lifecycle a different experience for the player. Being able to adjust your character’s statistics, characteristics, and attune them to the various environments in the game has been very intriguing so far. For example, if you enjoy living in a coastal environment away from all the chaos in the denser areas of the island, you could find that performing certain actions there would allow you to drink from the nearby saltwater. There are many other mutation options that will be available with the mechanic's release and I hope you look forward to discovering more for yourself. This system will play a vital role with introducing Elders to the game, rounding out the dinosaur’s mechanics and gameplay loop as a whole.

In my completely biased opinion I must say that this has been one of the best months I’ve had working on the game. The time finally came for me to continue working on the herrerasaurus. There had been a few times when I experimented with it due to the pteranodon’s latching for example, but I can focus more on the movement and agility now.

The climbing system is made up of several parts. First, there’s moving the character along the wall and there’s always room for improvement on this one. There are two actions that can happen related to this, climbing up a ledge and climbing down from a ledge into climbing mode, the latter being difficult as the character has to turn around and align itself to the wall.

Aiming your jumps is very important when playing as a herrerasaurus, so we added indicators that tell the player where you would land when jumping. You can hold the right button when standing or climbing, then press space to jump there. Jumping this way when standing in place will let you jump forward instead of straight up, this is extremely useful when jumping from branch to branch.

Speaking of branches, when walking on our largest trees the herrerasaurus will automatically follow them to avoid falling from a potentially lethal height. This one took quite some time to figure out, but it makes moving around much more convenient, so I’m glad with how it turned out.


All these come together very nicely, here’s a little teaser in its current unpolished state. Most animations are also just placeholders for now:




This month I’ve mostly been continuing to flesh out the vocal palette for Dilophosaurus, using the calls as a baseline for both aggressive and non-aggressive sounds. The low gurgling defined in its broadcast and attract have both been adapted as well as used to influence new sounds, including more sounds for idle and generic uses, along with drinking, wallowing, resting, sniffing.

The harsher shrieks from its threaten and danger calls have been a good reference to expand its sounds, particularly its attacks and various pain sounds, including death, pounced etc. I’ve also created the first sound that will be part of a suite of sounds for its venom ability, 3 very low and menacing hoots bookended by its signature gurgles, coming together to give the feeling of a mocking yet chilling laugh as it plays with its prey. This sound (among others), in theory, will be manipulated from the perspective of the prey to move around the spatial field, disorienting players that have fallen victim to this creature's venom.

I’ve also done some preliminary work on the Herrerasaurus. Its vocal calls have been set up with some alterations to the exports to facilitate the correct sound when the layers are passed through the various attenuation and processing. I’ve also done a first pass on adding footsteps and foley sounds to its animations. Finally I’ve started recording, editing and processing foley sounds for its climbing. So far only sounds for climbing trees have been done and they are in an iterative phase with the mechanic still undergoing work, however adding these sounds helps to define how this ability is going to feel as it progresses.

I’ve also been working on some bug fixes for issues related to calls distant reverb/delay as well as how vocals behave when performed in water


I've started creating the control rigs for our characters. They will help me create more detailed animations in the UE5 sequencer and also help me make the animation transitions a bit cleaner. I will certainly tweak the implemented IK system and gizmos a few more times until they fit perfectly for my work.



I've also started to create a sort of console-style in After Effects to begin capturing the “Apollo Engineering software.” This style will surely be with us more often and can be used in many ways. We've already used it in the Roadmap video, but trailcam videos or introductory templates for "found footage" could also be presented with this design.

In general, the goal of this new format is to get closer to the atmosphere of the lore, and I'm excited to see what we can do with it in the future.




This month, I’ve been mostly occupied with environment concepts of internal lab designs and icon work - creating cerato and troodon prototypes of our games logo (as a mini celebration for some of our new releases).

Cerato’s design was pretty straight forward since its skull is fairly distinct on its own.
However, Troodon came off a tad generic with just the usual skull pose; but it did give me an opportunity to try a version with multiple skulls to showcase the swarm gameplay-style of the animal. Hopefully these shake out to be something final that you all can see soon!


This month I spent some time on bug fixes, AI, and the addition of server whitelisting. Workshopping the base dinosaur AI has been heaps of fun. The base logic of tenontosaurus is mostly complete. They can be solitary or have their own AI groups they stick to. Anything further may spoil the magic, but it’s already capable of providing some exciting fights with players. I hope to get carnotaurus and omniraptor up and running shortly, too.


Been spending a lot of time with John Cake lately. He might come across as a bit of a showoff but he’s actually a pretty chill dude even if he doesn’t talk much. Thinks he’s still gonna be a guide on some island safari tour, dunno where he got that idea though, something about a book he read. I haven’t had the heart to tell him what his actual job is gonna be.

Aside from rigging up John Cake so we can do some of our own in-house animation, I’ve been working on the T. rex and Diabloceratops this month and Trike is finally all rigged up and ready to receive new animation. The T. rex has new locomotion for all of it’s growth stages as well, it’s a pretty big departure from the legacy animations, even the growth is different, it’s practically a whole new beast.

Herrerasaurus finally got a skeleton as well, had to grow some backbone to do all that climbing and jumping it’ll be doing and next I’ll be working on its climbing animation, touching up the prototype and placeholder animations with some more final animations for its debut.


With our recent change to the roadmap and how we approach game updates, the majority of QA’s time was spent focused on validating bug fixes for the latest patch that introduced server whitelisting. We also used this time to address some of the balance concerns that were prevalent in Update 6.5, including vomit preventing movement and an input lockup that occurred if a target was knocked down while pouncing on a character.

Talking of balance; now that we have moved away from larger updates and instead pushing out content as and when it’s ready, we are working on a new process for how we handle balance changes so that they can be provided much more frequently in accordance with your feedback. We hear your concerns about the ceratosaurus “vomit lock”, whereby a group of ceratosaurus’ will continuously bite a target, forcing it to vomit nonstop, preventing it from defending itself. This is not an intentional feature of the ceratosaurus’ kit and will be addressed as soon as possible, though it will require a rework of vomiting in general so expect to see more information on that when we have a solid direction that we want to take it in.

A few more known issues include the loss of player characters and both omniraptor and troodon pounce not “connecting” with a target, usually resulting in death. These are marked as high priority on our bug tracker and are actively being investigated by our programmers. A big thank you to those of you that have been reporting these issues.

QA have already started testing some of the upcoming playables in our latest builds and they are coming along very well, particularly the herrerasaurus with its unique ability to climb surfaces, as you may have seen already in dmIV’s post.

As many of you well know, the stress testing team applications were reopened recently and resulted in an astounding 1,400 submissions. These are currently being reviewed and successful candidates can expect an invitation to our new stress testing discord server very soon. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.


The wheels have been churning around here all month. Fixing various issues and gearing up for a tonal shift in the game. I’ve been moving from dept to dept making sure everyone has what they need to swing for the fences. Hopefully there will be some homeruns in it for us and you.

The herrerasaurus has been coming along quite nicely. It’s been gaining in fun factor around here for a bit now. It will be a lot of fun seeing how you all like it and how many of you are going to plummet to your deaths. Practice, patience and prayers. But overall you’ll be able to make a leap of faith with a fair amount of surety.

The diablo and dilo have also been getting their special abilities implemented and tested. So we can shift the prototypes to their final form. Diablo is moving pretty good currently but needs a few tweaks to really make it something special. Hopefully resulting in some moments that feel good to play with as well as against. Dilo also seems to be heading in the right direction. Our intentions being to make it every bit as fear inducing as it used to be but modernized.

If all that weren’t enough, the rex is growing in power each day. I’m so excited to see what an apex can really do. But anyway, that’s all for now. I look forward to seeing you all over on Gateway.