Jul 3, 2022

Animalia Survival - Zeev

Hello Wild Friends

Sorry for the delay in the update, but we wanted to fix common bugs first, so we made some big tweaks to the new engine, and as a result, we started a massive survey of patches and tweaks to both the game and our team, and in this update, we've added a lot of new features. We hired a new designer and animator to work on this project together, along with changing the engine to Unreal Engine 5, allowing us to incorporate new workings and mechanics into the game. We will be testing new features, as well as continuing to improve existing ones. We will be sharing more news with you all in the near future, and we'll work together to make sure it's as exciting as possible.

Gameplay

First off, we wanted to address gameplay. After receiving significant community feedback concerning Animalia, we are only able to make targeted fixes to keep the overall balance and feel of the game consistent while we continue to gather in-depth feedback from our passionate players. In short, we want players to develop an understanding of the system.
We value feedback from our players, and we are constantly working to address concerns raised by them. We hope that you continue to provide us with your thoughts and feedback. We're working on new features for the game, and we're excited to share them with the community.

In addition to making a general game change for the maps and fixing some common bugs with the skins and mechanics, the stats of all animals have been updated and revised, making them more balanced and fair. Additionally, the stats of all animals have been changed to better reflect their real-world counterparts. There are several animations that will be implemented in each animal, such as grabbing prey and climbing (which we have already tested with the Leopard). Also, we will integrate other animations into all animals.

In preparation for using Nanite, we have started tweaking the shaders for the foliage and rocks of both maps as well as the collisions of all the objects hidden inside them.

Due to the new account linking method, Animalia Staff should be informed if a login crash occurs, as those who were using the old method before the official update (public testing) might experience a crash when a friend is in the same session with them.

New game mode: Deathmatch

We are thrilled to introduce a new game mode to our community as well as a brand-new map, adding a new game mode to our multiplayer list. This mode offers a unique experience for players, and we hope others enjoy playing it as much as we do. A deathmatch is a game mode where players fight each other until all the players are eliminated. The objective is to kill as many players as possible while avoiding being killed yourself. When the game ends, the player with the most "Deathmatch" (DM) points will be the winner. We hope to see you on the field, doing your best to contribute your success. Be prepared for anything, and don't be afraid to get involved in the action.

Servers

We have been asked where the official servers are and why they are not populated. Our team is currently working on a solution to this issue. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. We understand that we have been falling short in this area, and we are committed to making improvements. We are working on the official Animalia servers with an enhanced admin panel and new features, adding various regions to minimise the lag. Animalia's staff team will now be active on the official servers and we look forward to having the players in-game with us. We are planning to host events on the official servers, we will tell you guys more about that soon. We can't wait to see you there!

Since we are adding the official servers to the multiplayer list, we are looking to add a ticket system so that players can report and appeal bans. If you would like to see this feature added into our official discord, we would love to hear your thoughts.

Leopard

- Added a new Climbing System.
The leopard has new animations that allow it to climb trees without needing to jump. This means you can get close to the tree, and it will climb on its own.

- Adjusted the system of loading cubs/babies

Crocodile

- Decreased speed of Crocodile on land.

Hippopotamus

- Added new statuses.
- Increasing the hippo damage.

Elephant

- Added new statuses.
- Increasing the Elephant damage.

Rhinoceros

- Added new statuses.
- Increasing the Rhino damage.

Gnu

- Added new statuses
- Increasing the Gnu damage.

Lion

- Decreased the lion’s running speed.
- Increased the lion damage.
- Increased the lioness speed.
- Adjusted the puppies loading system
- Added new statuses
- Adjusted the 65 points of the lion who gains 65 more in the last stage.

Gazelle

- Increasing the Gazelle damage.

Unreal Engine 5 & linking your account with Epic games

We are grateful for Unreal Engine 4, but we recognise that it is important for us to keep up with the latest technology so that our game can be even better. Unreal Engine 5 gives us more creative freedom by introducing new tools that have never been available before. We're excited to announce that we're working on something great and can't wait to tell you all about it!

Unreal Engine 5 (known as UE5) is the world's most powerful and integrated engine, bringing together high-quality graphics and visual design along with sound, lighting, animation and other capabilities.
In particular, UE5 allows for improved graphical resolution by removing the need for developers to separately specify how an object is illuminated, by replacing a global lighting engine, and the level of visual detail, by dynamically shrinking the higher resolution model. These alone make up a great deal of work on making the game look good; Dynamic lighting requires a lot of work, and designers often have to make multiple copies of each object and character with different levels of detail.

Nanite

Unreal Engine 5 goes granular. Nanite is a virtual geometry system that can help speed up the design process when working on large projects. It saves time by allowing designers to work with a reduced amount of detail. The software helps to reduce the level of detail required for importing objects, making it easier to use high-quality art. Nanite's data format is optimized for detecting and processing small details, and it can stream high-quality data with automatic level of detail.

Lumen

To create a realistic scene, the lighting must be accurate. Lumen is a tool that enables us to make quick changes to the lighting in their shots by adjusting it to match the time of day, the new light source (like a flashlight), or a sudden beam of light entering the scene. Adjusting lighting from open and dynamic scenes to every detail. Lumen uses infinite jumps and indirect specular reflection to diffuse mutual reflections in large, detailed environments on a scale from millimeters to kilometers.

Expansive Worlds

Unreal Engine 4 allowed us to create beautiful landscapes in Animalia, but Unreal Engine 5 takes it to a new level. With Unreal Engine 5 us developers can create even more intricate and realistic landscapes than ever before. Collaboration is made easier with the help of this software, it helps to speed up the process of creating something.

Animations

In order to be innovative, you need to keep evolving your ideas. Unreal Engine 5 offers powerful new animation tools, such as Control Ride. This tool allows us developers to control the movement of objects in 3D space, making it easier to create realistic animations. Now you can create rigs for multiple characters and share them with others. To create more natural movements, we can use Full-Body IK solver to save and apply poses. This can help us to move with more fluidity and ease, resulting in more efficient and effective workouts.

MetaSounds

Metasounds can help us to control audio in a variety of ways, as well as being more flexible than traditional audio methods. The software helps us to manage every aspect of a sound experience more effectively. This allows us to create more realistic audio effects and improve the overall quality of our audio products.

Other top additions and fixes

Animals

Changed all animal stats to a new version.
We changed the status of all animals for a better configuration, before they were all done on each animal and its individual stages. Now, we have a table that allows you to configure each status individually without having to go through each blueprint.

Added new event for critical damage (stun).
With critical damage, an animal can fall stunned in the middle of a battle if it suffers a very strong attack. This can happen even if the animal's health is already low, so it's important to take care when attacking.

Added new Food Intake System, now animals vomit when they eat and drink too much.
Adjusted Cat Load System, coming soon with new animations.
Adjusted Meat Switching System.
Adjusted the skins of cubs/babies that were born with skins of other animals.
Adjusted animation speed and status of each animal.
Testing new plants in deathmatch for medicinal purposes on animals.
We will be added new plants to be eaten for healing purposes so that both herbivores and carnivores can heal.

We've added support for game controllers, so you can play the game on your Xbox or Steam deck controllers. Stay tuned for a review of the Steam deck controller!

New Night Vision.

Implementation of the day/night cycle in Animalia along with updated night vision. Keeping night-time frightening but also interesting and engaging to play through is key. We focused on making the environment feel oppressive and dark and create unique encounters that keep players on their toes.

- New Lighting.
- The rain sounds have been changed to better match the environment. When the event occurred, the only sounds were distant drips and the wind. New events have now been added, and the sounds are normal again.
- Added sandstorm to weather.
- Added Screen effect when turning the camera to the rain.
- Foliage modification of the African Map.
- Adjusted African Map Foliage, Rock and Ground Matters and Textures for the Weather Effect.
- Added New Postprocessing on Maps.

After the image has been captured, post-processing effects allow us artists and designers to adjust the look of the scene by choosing properties and characteristics that affect colouring, tone mapping, lighting, and more. The new lighting in Unreal Engine 5 has caused the post-processing of both maps to be replaced.

Adjusted Mesh of event contents; bunny ears and hats that were duplicated.
Adjusted fish that had duplicated Mesh, fish will now properly despawn when eaten
Adjusted duplicate Mesh on all animals.
Adding new Radial menu System for G Button Communication events.
New Radial menu can also be used to use Gamepad and Xbox controller.
Adjustments for African Map plant collisions.
Adjusted and renewed the Climate System.
Adjusted Ultra Dynamic Sky ambient sounds.
Some animals do not make a sound known as a threat call (number 3), which we are currently working on new vocalization animations for.

Admin Panel

Added the hare in the admin panel.
Added new weathers on the panel (sandstorm).
Adjusted texts and buttons on the panel.
We are checking the black and white texts with the same background, with the engine change the text colours in the admin panel have changed.

Graphics cards

Now with the introduction of Lumen and Nanite from Unreal Engine 5, DirectX has been permanently changed to DirectX12. This new version of DirectX is more efficient and allows for more realistic graphics and gameplay.

Nvidia cards

Since 2010, NVIDIA graphics cards have been compatible with DirectX 12.x. This means that many of the graphics cards currently available work with this new version of DirectX. Additionally, all laptop versions of these cards are already compatible.

AMD Radeon cards

All AMD graphics cards from the Radeon R7, R9 and RX series, as well as the R5 240, are compatible with Windows 10. In notebooks, the Radeon HD 8000 and 7000 graphics cards are supported. APUs also supported: All A4, A6, A8 and A10 with Radeon HD 7000 GPU and E1, E2, A4, A6, A8 and A10 with HD 6000 GPU. 2.X12.

Intel HD Graphics Suite depends on the chip. If in doubt, check the chipset. Windows 10 and 11 already come with native DirectX 12, but just in case, make sure your machine is compatible.

Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 come pre-installed with DirectX 11.5. This enables them to not have the advantage of the latest graphics technologies. The versions of the game without DirectX12 are not currently available or compatible with Microsoft's latest gaming platform.

Information

We will be sharing some information in a Trello board with future plans and with possible modifications. We will start a Devblog on our website and Steam to let players know about upcoming changes and developments in the game. This will help keep players informed and engaged with the game.
Thank you all so much for your continued feedback on Animalia Survival thus far, and we look forward to an excellent year with the community.

For more information and details, join our Discord:
https://discord.gg/QGSwEdDY

High Brazil Studio.

Jul 3, 2022

Developer Interview - Nick - Community Team

Path of Exile - CommunityTeam_GGG

We took a moment to chat with Nick from our community team about his work with Grinding Gear Games. Check it out below!

Hey Nick, thanks for taking part in the interview! Please introduce yourself.

Hi! I'm Nick and I've been with the Community Team for a little over a year now. I joined the team just after the launch of the Ritual League. I've been playing Path of Exile on and off since Anarchy League (softcore Andy reporting in!)

Could you please tell us about your current role at Grinding Gear Games and what an average work day is like for you?

My current role covers a huge range of things from looking for feedback or issues with the game, preparing and posting the daily news posts and sometimes helping out with filming gameplay for microtransactions. If you see a Community_Team post on Reddit, that most likely would've been me! Almost every day is different, which is awesome for variety!

How and when did you find out about Path of Exile?

I found out about the game when I was still in high school in 2011. I think Closed Beta sign-ups had opened then, but I didn't actually play the game until Open Beta in 2013. Like many others, I'd have to say Kripparrian's coverage of the game is what really put it on my radar.

What was the moment that got you hooked on the game?

I think it'd have to be the different ways you can build your character and play the game. Modifying Fireball to be able to Fork or fire multiple projectiles felt like the coolest thing ever to me. Learning all the mechanics and having them "click" also felt really satisfying!

What are your favourite builds from your time in Path of Exile?

My memory might be failing me on this one, but one of my favourite builds I remember playing was I think when Mirror Arrow worked with Minion Instability, and you'd reserve your life so that your Mirror Arrow clone would instantly explode once it landed for juicy proliferating ignites. Something about it was bugged though, because I remember it being fixed shortly after!

Otherwise, I really enjoy CoC (YEP) builds, and fondly remember playing Shatterchuck back in the day, and Cospri's Malice Ice Nova more recently!

How did you end up working at Grinding Gear Games?

I actually applied for a community role in 2019 but didn't make the cut. In 2020, there was another call for applications so I thought why not try again? I was lowkey hoping Bex didn't remember I had already applied the year before, but she did :')

What are the highlights from your time with the community team?

Everyone in the community team is awesome to work with. Bex especially. For real though, she's awesome and the banter we have going between everyone in the community team is a lot of fun!

Are there any unexpected challenges in this job?

I think the most unexpected challenge was getting used to putting everything together for our livestream announcements. There's a loooooot of moving parts for these, and we wouldn't be able to cope without other departments like our awesome QA team and our UI Artists!

What hobbies or interests do you have?

I like playing a lot of video games (who didn't see that coming?). At the moment, I'm playing a lot of Path of Exile, Dota 2 and Street Fighter 5 but am excitedly waiting for Monster Hunter: Sunbreak and Street Fighter 6! I also like watching and lurking in Path of Exile streams, especially during events like our Boss Kill events or Zizaran's Gauntlet. Outside of video games, I enjoy playing badminton from time to time. I also like watching Anime and Marvel films. My favourite Marvel film would probably be Morbius, specifically the scene where he says "It's Morbin' time."

Anything you want to tell to all PoE players?

If you have any questions, feel free to drop a post in the thread here and I'll shoot you a reply if I can answer it!