Aug 28, 2020
The Isle - Punchpacket
Filipe - Lead Programmer
It has been a while since our last devblog, but that doesn't mean we were any less busy. In the last week we’ve been occupied with bug fixes and performance improvements. Servers in general were having CPU performance hits to process all the game logic and replications, creating lag that isn't related to bandwidth, but simply the time the server takes to process what is needed. Besides that, clients were encountering several performance problems, which the most common is an over time one, that some people refer to as “Memory Leak”, but in fact, it was a combination of problems in the rendering process and collisions.
For both the Server and Client we managed to make improvements such as increased server stability and processing, significantly reducing the “lag”, client rendering improvements and much more stable over time performance. During this time we also managed to introduce some new mechanics, which the other programmers are going to talk about, as well as additional dinosaurs that are coming soon and faster.
We’re aware that we still have some issues to resolve, especially related to UI and pounce for example. Some of the problems with pounce were related to actors teleporting, which we’ve managed to reduce with the performance improvements, but pounce is a work in progress mechanic and will be changed heavily in future updates. Remember we will continue to optimise performance throughout the development process to allow for even more players and mechanics. For those asking about those new things, check out our realtime roadmap!
dmIV - Programmer
After releasing the safe log mechanic I continued with tying it to a sleeping state. It’s an extension to the rest ability we already had in place, so adding it was relatively simple. The original fade out I made was pretty basic and we wanted to improve it. The team looked at several different visuals and we went with a UI-based approach. I feel satisfied about how the whole thing looks.
Not a month can go by without improvements to the scent mechanic. This time I made footprints be managed separately from other scentable objects. This allowed for increasing the scent range significantly, while reducing it for just footprints. Thus you can smell food and water from much further away without footprint detection reducing the performance. I also finally got around to optimizing the way footprint effects appear. Originally there was a noticeable FPS drop when the effects fade in and out, now that’s a thing of the past. Newly scented footprints will still fade in gradually. Each character has a number of footprints they can leave, so when that number is reached we remove the oldest footprints. I made that fade out smoothly as well. We had various other issues with footprint scent as well that I finally got around to fixing, so it’s a huge relief to finally put those behind me.
I also implemented a pack scent mechanic, that you might have already seen in game in the form of orange clouds. It’s our way of combating large or mixed packs. When too many dinosaurs gather in an area they become detectable from far away. Different species have different pack ranges and dinosaur counts, with young dinos contributing less to the pack size. The system can be configured separately for dinosaurs of different species, so a mixed pack can show up with much less members than same-species groups.
I worked on the programming side of making water post processing functional. The ocean and swamps were fairly straightforward and came together in a short time, but rivers were more challenging. They needed a different implementation both in terms of just making the effects work and programming logic to support it. We are close to the finish, though, so expect pretty rivers in the near future!
We know you were disappointed about AI not making it to the last patch, so we worked hard on improving performance to support it. Most of the network usage comes from movement. Faster characters also need to use more data to avoid jittering/teleportation. I made the server dynamically change the individual characters’ update rates depending on their velocity. This results in significantly reduced bandwidth being spent on slow/idle characters and that bandwidth can be spent on something more important.
We also had huge FPS drops when a large crowd of dinosaurs gathered tightly. I looked into why that was happening and fixed it. All the changes we made add up to provide you a smooth gameplay experience.
Amar0k - Programmer
Heyo, I feel like these dev blogs are every week not every month... Time flies. Not a lot to talk about this time around. Although it's been a busy month fixing issues with AI and looking heavily into performance for server and client, Lots of really good improvements are being pushed into QA at the moment. AI was delayed due to some issues with performance and optimization. I won't bore you with the details but when AI is not rendered by any character it goes into a sort of sleep mode which was having unexpected results however all of which seem to be resolved. I'm hoping by the time this goes out AI is either with you or coming very soon.
I have also been busy working on grouping over the last few days so you can enjoy playing with friends in a team again. Original concept was to use a multi-wheel however we felt adding it for a single feature didn’t feel right. So the initial implementation is 2-calling(Friendly Call) near other players and they will receive a group invitation they can accept or decline. You have to be next to each other and you can block further requests to avoid spam. I know a lot of people have been requesting this so hopefully it gets through QA in a timely manner.
I know some people have been asking why I haven't been streaming. I think most of that is pretty self explanatory. I do plan to start again in the coming weeks though. So hopefully I can help keep everyone up to date on what’s being worked on. We have a nice new realtime roadmap where you can also check out what's to come!
VisualTech48 - Environment Modeller
Hope you all are doing well, had a pleasant chat recently with the community, and as I said something might come up of mine this patch, it most likely will.
This month I’ve been focusing on props and the Modular system for the Utility /Ranger buildings, and doing a lot of prop work, starting with the possible “big prop” you’ll be seeing soon, a radio tower. Pushing mostly prop by prop to be properly done and to look pretty great, like the AC Unit you might have seen while doing the high poly, and the Vent System which we streamed not so while ago.
The Modular system as well is going on its course, with an addition of some textures we might bet soon to testing it out how it stacks and if all of the modules are properly working for a construction of semi small/middle sized buildings which would be found in the wilderness. But all models parts of the kit except the windows are done.
Along with this there has been a lot of work on my texture game, as in, there are a lot of tweaks and additions for the new Utility/Ranger outpost, and I’ll be doing a new trim for the kit as it’s very specific.
Thirdly, I’m slowly importing my stuff in game which, as I said, means that we are 1 step closer to getting something in, most likely starting with the Radio Tower. This along with the Utility/Ranger buildings would bring another cool dimension of mystery for both the humans (at some point) and dinos so I can’t wait to put this stuff into the game.
dinosauriac - Sound Design
With a new playable dinosaur coming in the near future, the past couple of weeks have been a lot of mixing and experimentation to find the voice for Oviraptor. An excitable little thing, their speech is mostly made of short bird-like chirps and trills, which they produce in melodic sequences. Animation and I decided to give it a musical personality to set it apart from a lot of the other dinosaurs in-game...
Some of you will have no doubt seen that some old friends are returning to the game if you've looked at our roadmap, so I have also started touching up the Carno, Dryo and Stego vocal sets in preparation for their reintroduction. Their entire range of calls were remade last year, and are now higher quality with greater variation. Now comes the final task of implementing them into the game along with their new animations.
One thing I've been working to make sure of during "Evrima" is that everything is set up in such a way that it would be relatively easy for others to make their own dinosaur vocal sets further down the line. There are soundcue templates and attenuation presets I've created for the different "weight classes" of creatures, for the sake of consistency among the game's species and to reduce iteration time when making new content. These are more rough guidelines than strict rules, something Utahraptor-sized or below is usually considered "Small" whilst the average hadrosaur such as Maisaura would fall into the "Medium" bracket.
Since there are creatures in this game that go from the size of a mouse to the size of a house, we've had to work out a lot of fairly complicated transitions to have dinosaurs swap out Small effects sets as they grow big enough to require Medium and Large effects over time (e.g. Tyrannosaurus juveniles have completely different requirements than their adult forms). This is still being perfected, but most areas from vocalizations to footsteps are accounted for and easy enough to make variations of when using the core presets as a starting point.
Tapwing - Concept Artist
At the time I was nose deep in a number of sketches and cleanups, it was a welcome opportunity to tackle a painting again. Art for a wallpaper was called for and I was given free reign on what the subject could be (though still limited to our revealed creatures at the time). At first I wasn’t sure which dinosaur to feature, but after some thought, an old unfinished painting crept into mind. Something that was inspired a while ago by videos of Jaguars hunting crocodiles and originally featured an old fan-made strain of mine.
Well I saw no reason why the half made painting couldn’t be repurposed. The fan-strain was replaced by a Utahraptor and the originally full grown Deino was shrunk down to a juvenile. This still left the piece a bit awkward looking, particularly with the original composition being as close up to the two subjects as it was. Both either looked smaller or larger than they were supposed to, so the piece was going to need more context. To that end, we decided to blow it up and fill it out, fleshing out the forest, populating it with more Utah’s and adding the angry mother Deino for a proper size comparison.
We all knew the ankylosaurus was going to be a challenge. It’s an infamous tank of a dinosaur - sturdy and solid - the only problem was the silly thing had the mobility of a brick with legs. For the animal I’m sure it worked a treat, but for our game - with the map as large as we plan to make it and with the other animals as speedy as they are - Anky was going to need to evolve the ability to run a little. Fred led the charge with the designs, coming up with really nice concepts for armour plating and what would be the final concept for the face. I experimented with the tail and toyed with ways I could lightly break the ankylosaurus’s anatomy into doing things it probably couldn’t do. (Mostly running and being able to bend and twist it’s back some) One of the main references I used were rhinos. As they filled a few categories I was looking for, they had a wide ribcage, armoured looking skin and could run.
KissenKitten - Producer
Heyo everyone! This time around the team has been concentrating very hard on bug fixing and stability. But in addition to that ongoing process, I have shifted everyone’s focus to the roadmap. There you will find a comprehensive guide to what we’re working on (that we want you to know about) at any given moment. The dryo has at last gotten it’s special ability which we’re excited to send to testing. For the moment, it will not be burrowing as we’re going to revamp how that ability works in general. But as I stick to my word where I can, we will still allow the dryo to enter burrows and potentially refurbish them. Think warthog. We still may not allow you to create one from scratch. That is to be determined. With the addition of the dryo’s new special ability, creating burrows may overload it’s kit. Time and playtesting will tell. So we’ll look forward to your feedback on that as time goes on.Stegosaurus has been rounded out and will be making its way to QA as AI for testing. I may want to add another attack for it but that will come later. With each update we’re trying to insert more and more life onto the island without creating a massive power imbalance amongst players. That being said, we’re gearing up to add new playables to the roster. The Hypsilophodon and the Carnotaurus. The hypsi is well on it’s way animation wise and since it’s a little guy, it’s a lot faster and easier to animate than the larger dinos. Smaller creature, smaller frame range to complete an action. WooHoo! I’m rounding out it’s vocal animations as of this blogpost and will then move into some more exciting animations. So be on the lookout in the Phase Two channel on discord for clips of it’s progress. We’re currently looking into dynamic solutions for it’s brow feathers etc in-engine so Bryan and I do not have to hand animate those things in max. Not the most difficult thing in the world if we have to do it by hand. But definitely more tedious. While we can do a dynamic simulation in max, I want it to have more complex motion than being a limp string in the wind. I want it to more dynamically react to the motion driven from the base. Similar to ribbon twirling. So during all of it’s vocals and actions, the creature is as expressive as can be. Cross your fingers.
The Carnotaurus is earlier in development than the hypsi as it is going to be reanimated from scratch for the most part. The carno, as well as a few of the other older dinosaurs have/had extraordinarily outdated rigs that do not allow for the kinds of actions we need our animals to perform in this new iteration of the game. So unfortunately for the nostalgic, we have to reanimate them. We may keep the same flavor of the older animations though. We’ll see. But fortunately, for the forward thinking, we’re going to be able to do a lot more with these animals than we ever could before. Things we wish we could have done years ago with the animations that we can finally do now. The carno will make it’s return in a big way. Careful this speedy hunter doesn’t sweep you off your feet!
I also have the concept team working on a few things that we’ll reveal to you all at a later date so stay tuned, be kind and be safe! Toodles!
Closing Remarks
That wraps up the August Devblog, we hope that you enjoyed the insight into our development process and look forward to all of your thoughts & feedback! Speaking of feedback… A few days ago we released our new and improved development roadmap, built using significant community input, if you haven’t already I’d suggest giving it a look, it’s another step forward in our mission to increase both transparency and community interaction. Check it out here: https://trello.com/b/G5tsb4XI/public-roadmap
See you all next month for September’s Devblog! - Punchpacket
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