Raptor Claus and Studio Wildcard would like to wish you a very Happy Holidays this season!

Thank you for making us a part of your festive time this year!

Winter Wonderland is almost here! This winter-themed holiday event begins tomorrow at 10am PST and will last through until January 7th. All of our maps are supported in both single player and multiplayer. The event will automatically activate on any map, even on your modded map servers.

Raptor Claus will be sailing across the night sky in his sleigh, air-dropping presents filled with high-end loot as well as Mistletoe, and Coal for those naughty Survivors. 



Raptor Claus won't be alone this year. He is joined by Gacha Claus who will be roaming all maps in a dashing Santa Hat and sporting holiday-themed colours to help out the very busy Raptor Claus. He will be accepting your coal and in exchange will gift you holiday themed items, or you can trade in your mistletoe for weapons and armor!

Gacha Claus will also have a random chance to gift you with a new special dino holiday candy when given mistletoe. This candy appears to have a strangely festive effect on any creature that eats it however. Better give it a try and see what happens. Bon appetit!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1594036744
Survivors can stay warm this season in their festively decorated homes with the holiday lights, decorative Christmas tree, wreaths, stockings, snowmen, and wrapped presents they receive from trading with Gacha Claus. Be sure to spread the holiday cheer wherever you go while it lasts!



Be sure to send us all your holiday-themed pictures, videos, and artwork on survivetheark.com or on Twitter as we'd love to see them!

In addition to the holiday event, we've included a bevy of fixes that we're launching simultaneously across all three platforms. We're starting to reach into the backlog and fix issues that you've been asking for starting with improvements to commanding flyers and better AI for the Manticore.

Winter Wonderland!
- Raptor Claus
- Flies over any map between 0am and 2am in-game (with event enabled)
- Drops Holiday Gifts     
- Gacha Claus
- Spawns where you'd find Parasaurs on all maps
- Has holiday colors and wears a Santa Hat
- Cannot be tamed
- Doesn't like being near other wild dinos
- Accepts Coal
* Gives Holiday Items in return
* Drops Dino Candy
* Feed this to a tamed dino for a strange effect    
- Accepts Mistletoe
* Gives Items in return       
- Colorization
- 20% of wild dinos will spawn with Holiday colors
- Uses the ActiveEvent system
- ActiveEvent=WinterWonderland
- Cleans up after ActiveEvent is reset
- Auto applies to all non-TC sessions from 12/18-1/7 (UTC)
- Run with ActiveEvent=None to disable

Extinction
- Fix for King Titan environmental effects starting again after boss despawned
- Fix for other bosses interrupting King Titan environmental effects
- Cave entrance cooldown display bug fix 
- Increased radius of city meteor shield
- Improvements to dome shaders
- Reduced meteor impact damage to 750
- Improvements to height fog in desert biome

Titans  
- Increased Mek sword damage to tamed titans approximately 9x
- Increased Mek pistol damage to tamed titans approximately 3x
- Increased turret damage multipliers to tamed Titans
- Changes to Titan downloading
- Titan is disabled for 15m after download
- Titan takes increased damage during this time       
- Increased Titan download cooldown to 6+ hours
- Fix typo in vertical Can't Damage message

Orbital Supply Drop
- Buffed Legendary Drops in difficulty and quality of loot
- Can now be claimed by a tribe in PVE
- Only that tribe can disable shield, eject items, gather loot
- Fixed bug that eventually only allowed 1 event at a time in a session
- Improvements to shield behavior on low FPS servers 
- Improvements to attacker pathing and behavior

Element Vein
- Can now be claimed by a tribe in PvE
- Only that tribe can harvest element
- Fixed bug that eventually only allowed 1 event at a time in a session
- Improvements to attacker pathing and behavior

Desert Titan
- Increased damage when it strikes itself with lightning
- Improvements to Desert Titan follow to address flying away
- Fix for flocks not defending properly
- Improvements to tail attack accuracy
- Made tail attack damage consistent
- Disabled cryoing the flock
- Fixed encumbered movement when walking on a Desert Titan

Dropped Items   
- Improvements to dropped item interpolation on low fps servers (less poking -through ground)
- Prevented dropped items from falling through structures on load
- Prevented dropped items from ghosting through structures if thrown close to them

Eggs
- Improvements to egg interpolation on low fps servers (less poking through ground)
- Prevented eggs from falling through structures on load
- Prevented eggs from ghosting through structures if thrown close to them
- Fix for invisible Rock Drake and Wyvern eggs

Velonasaur  
- Increased accuracy of AOE attack
- Reduced AOE damage to compensate for increased accuracy
- Wild Velonasaurs will no longer shoot for too long
- Fix for Wild Velonasaurs not doing damage in PvE
- Improvements to desyncs between spines and damage
- Reduced hovering when walking
- AOE attack will no longer loot victims

Managarmr
- Fixed anim bug related to Ice Breath
- Fixes for several orientation desyncs
- Fixes for desyncs when moving on low fps server
- Minor buff to landing damage
- Improvements to ice breath targeting
- Added message when you are unable to dive
- Slowed down baby Managarmrs

Enforcer
- Fixed instances where Enforcer could teleport to a non-existant wall
- Fixed instances where it could jump back to its last jump position 

Scout
- Improved Scout tagging accuracy
- Improvements to player inspection mechanic
- Scout will now show floating damage text when damaged

Item Balloon    
- Fixed instances of it not going to the correct destination
- Fix for cases where balloons didn't explode after landing
- Improvements to weight calculation

Gacha
- Fix for unclamped loot quality 
- Fix for incorrect UI when taming is interrupted

Ice Titan
- Fix for broken dino animations related to Ice Breath
- Increased collision radius for shoulder Corruption

Flyers  
- Improved flyer following when in water
- Added Whistle Land Flyer command
- Commands a flyer to land nearby

Crash
Fix low frequency crash

Manticore
- Improvements to landing logic

Performance
- Improvements to server performance

Map Markers
- Add support for decimal values

Snow Owl
- Slowed down baby food consumption rate

Daedon
- Disable healing when frozen

A reminder for mod authors that the sponsored mod program will be opening up applications again on January 1st. If you would like to apply for sponsorship you will have five weeks after the application period starts, so make sure that your submissions are ready!

In the meantime, I have received a couple questions about the sponsorship applications that I would also like to address. While this is is not all encompassing of the process of selection, in regards to the application process itself I hope that this helps you ready your submissions with more confidence.

One thing that has been a common request is for feedback on why a given project isn't selected. While I would like to be able to give feedback on projects, it is extremely time consuming to prepare these, especially with the volume of applications I receive. I want everyone to understand though that not having your project selected does not necessarily mean that there is something wrong with it, there are simply limited slots available with each application period. So don't let it discourage you from applying in the future.

The other question I have received rather frequently is for what kind of information you should include in your applications and design documents. How you choose to organize your design documents is up to you, but here is a very general explanation of what I am looking for. First is that you have a plan for the duration of sponsorship; the more detailed this plan, the better. After looking at the design documents and learning about what you do with your project, I then look at the mods as they currently are available on the workshop and try to determine whether or not the content available shows a good probability of being able to deliver on that plan. I might also look at other projects in your workshop to help determine that information.

I look forward to seeing what everyone puts forward in January. Happy modding!

Be sure to read the weekly Community Crunch over on our website, survivetheark.com!

Happy Tuesday, Survivors!

It's patch day and we've got two exciting things to chat about that we are currently working on.


Now that Extinction has been officially released, the team will be dedicating some time to the integration of Structures Plus. Pulling S+ into ARK's already existing structure system without causing issues with current structures is very important to us. There are also many features that exist in S+ that we cannot integrate into official servers without taking into consideration the impact on game balance.

The plan is to integrate S+ on a feature by feature basis, prioritizing features that are compatible with the official game. We may integrate additional features gated by options for unofficials as time permits. 

https://gfycat.com/appropriatefearfulfiddlercrab

Our first bit of integration starts immediately in today’s PC patch where we introduce the ability to pick up undamaged structures for free if it was placed in the last 30 seconds. You can pick up a placed structure by looking directly at the structure and pressing the interact key (E). This change will be included in the next patch for console, due later this week.


Extinction's kibble setup (known as Augmented Kibble) was phase one of our kibble rework. We are currently in the process of assigning these new kibble types to all of the remaining ARK creatures across all maps. 

All eggs will be assigned a value based on the size and rarity of the egg. These sizes include: Extra Small, Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large, and Special. The eggs are then used in a recipe to create kibble of a coinciding value: Basic, Simple, Regular, Superior, Exceptional, and Extraordinary. This new system will make it so that creature kibble desires are based on the quality levels instead of specific creatures.

We plan to introduce these changes on an experimental beta branch before letting it loose into the wild population at a later date. We’re excited to tackle this much needed rework!

NOTE: These plans are subject to change.

Have you been Naughty or Nice this year? I've heard whispers from the elves and reindeer that a certain Mr. Claws may be dropping gifts for all of the good survivors this holiday season, and coal for the naughty ones too. ;)

We'll have more information on this in the coming weeks!




This weeks diary entry is brought to you by Lead Programmer, Chris Willoughby. This weeks dev diary is about Extinction-related game balance and also about the big fixing process of Extinction since it's initial release.

ARK, at its core, is successful because it offers the best and most diverse survival experience that it can to each player who plays it, and the many options that we provide allows that to happen. There are many, many players that play our game over multiple platforms and each of them has a different definition of what’s most important to them, what ARK does well, and what it should do better. Early on we made a decision to offer a vast array of options, modes, maps, servers, and mods to get as close as we could to being the best survival game for everyone. This creates a major challenge when it comes to development however, as each piece of content or change is used in a large number of different ways. The many play modes are likely to be at odds with each other and are competing for the same development resources, so we have to make a number of tough decisions and pick our priorities. This can result in mechanics that feel less than ideal for your setup or bugs that only appear in certain modes. I do believe it’s better than the primary alternative - not offering or supporting these options at all.

In this industry we need to develop and introduce new content and mechanics to keep our game interesting and relevant. When we set out to develop something with the size and scope of Extinction, we first sit down and figure out what new experiences we could bring to the table. We brainstorm far and wide, documenting and elaborating on ideas before scoring them. We try very hard to introduce features that either have broad reach and appeal across our play modes or add a high amount of depth to one. The things that resonate the most through this process are grouped together into creatures, items, or features that become the key features for the expansion. Generally when we do this we’re intentionally trying to shake up the meta to breathe new life into the game. Often times it’s hard to predict exactly how the new features will be used by players, and just how much they’ll shake things up.

On the other side of the coin, testing changes to a game like ARK is quite difficult. Stepping back, it’s really a numbers game. Let’s say, for example, that you have 10 QA testers, and they’re testing 50 hours a week, that’s 500 hours of testing per week. Next, let’s say that you have 3 months to fully test your changes. Multiply the 500 by 12, and you get 6,000 hours of serious, in-depth testing. That can seem like a lot, but it’s nothing compared to the amount of time that players put in. ARK averaged ~50k users for November on PC. If you multiply that by 30 days and 24 hours, you end up with a rough estimate of 36,000,000 hours of ARK played in November. That’s 6,000 times as many hours as in the example above. There were approximately 1,200,000 hours of ARK played in the first day of Extinction. There were 50,000 hours played in the first hour after release. 10 minutes after Extinction released, players had already played 10,000 hours of Extinction, eclipsing the amount of testing done by the 10 testers above. Suffice it to say that when you experience problems when playing a game just after release this is a big reason why.

Obviously we don’t like it when our game has problems, so we focus much of our testing on critical areas and we test them over and over again and prioritize the issues we find. As you can imagine, this is a lot easier in a single player game with a fixed path through a scripted storyline. Once you start multiplying out all of the options and variables, however, it quickly becomes a monumental challenge. As illustrated above, it’s impossible to test every experience that a player is going to have in a game like ARK within a reasonable timeframe. Our volume of players means that players will always have for more time playing ARK than us. When you combine this with the fact that most of those players are playing competitively you realize that many of them are looking for a way to get a leg up on their competition. Very quickly they’re using things in ways that you didn’t intend or even think about, and it’s up to strong systems and well placed testing to make sure that they stay in a healthy place. Sometimes you experience breakdowns in one or two of the above and you have to turn around a fix as fast as possible.

When we built the Titans, for example, we balanced them against dinos, items, each other, and bases. We wanted each of them to feel different and wanted them to have roles almost like classes in a class-based shooter. We wanted them to be somewhat slow and predictable, and ultimately squishy when faced with organized and concentrated fire. We felt very early on that they should be able to do a lot of damage to an endgame base, if left unchecked. Beyond countering this strength, we wanted to limit how fast people could tame and transfer in Titans, and make it a difficult decision to make - so we went for cooldowns on transfer and starvation. Of course, players discovered a way around starvation (kibble?!?!?!), so that broke a big piece of their cost completely. Last week we released a patch that brought this back closer to where we envisioned it, but it’s unlikely that it’s the end of balance changes to the Titans.

Meks were built to counter Titans. Generally, the math that we used when developing the Titans and Meks was that approximately three Meks should be able to make short work of a Titan, and we set out to arm the Meks with abilities (like the rocket pack) that would allow them to take the Titans on. In this regard, our primary focus was on the defensive capabilities of the Mek. Unfortunately, in our efforts to nail the defensive-side of things we overlooked a few issues that could occur on the offensive side; especially related to base raiding. The reality is that this was a mistake. Players discovered within the first few days that they could be used to dismantle bases by bypassing most of their automated defenses. Once something like this is discovered we need to act quickly - we ask ourselves if we feel like the mechanic is overpowered. Then we ask if it fits with the design of the creature. We ask what the counter is and talk through the best way to balance it. Ideally, we’d have all of these discussions and make all of these decisions early in development. When faced with the numbers game above, however, you realize how likely it is that a few of these slip through the cracks to the final game. We work diligently to to step up and resolve the issue the best way that we can, as fast as we can.

If I were to step back and put on an Idealistic hat, I’d want to reshape ARK such that none of these bugs ever made it through to our players. I’d want to test and retest every interaction, every spot in every map, every scenario that a player could find themselves in. The reality, however, is that it would take a very large team, a very large amount of time to develop something as broad as ARK and deliver it flawlessly. Large enough on both fronts, that the likelihood of success drops dramatically. And even then, that game would have bugs. Yes, ARK is not perfect. However, we enjoy working on a game that delivers a broad, good experience to many players over one that offers a narrow but perfect experience to only a few or takes ten years to make. We strive to minimize the number of problems. We pride ourselves on recognizing and resolving them as fast as possible. As we continue to work on Extinction issues, long standing issues, previous promises, and whatever is next for ARK (stay tuned!), we’ll continue to approach it from that perspective. Our job is to provide the best experience we can to the highest number of players we can reach, as fast as we can. Sometimes there will be bumps in the road, but they’re a necessary part of making the things we make at the scale that we make them. We think it’s worth it.

Tomorrow at 10am PST there will be a PC patch. There will also be another post tomorrow here on the community forums going over some of the changes coming up and things currently being worked on by our development team.


Hello, fellow modders. You'll be happy to know we have a manual devkit update ready that includes all of the extinction content!

https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/modding/ark-survival-evolved/62293-12-2-ark-dev-kit-v287-1-is-now-on-google-drive

We also have a new tutorial ready for you, this time we're finally going to get started on some graphs for this mod. Specifically how to convert our tamed creatures into the sentry crystals that will be used elsewhere by the mod.

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/387144-wildcard-workshop-19-vss-virtualization-process/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z99VYpN59o
Be sure to check out todays Community Crunch post on our website for the full Crunch announcement post.

Hello Survivors!

Today, Studio Wildcard is proud to announce ARK’s third expansion pack, “Extinction”!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOH-IOA9qq0
https://store.steampowered.com/app/887380/ARK_Extinction__Expansion_Pack/



Finish your journey through the worlds of ARK in ‘Extinction’, where the story began and ends: on Earth itself! An Element-infested, ravaged planet filled with fantastical creatures both organic & technological, Earth holds both the secrets of the past and the keys to its salvation. As a veteran Survivor who has conquered all previous obstacles, your ultimate challenge awaits: can you defeat the gigantic roaming Titans which dominate the planet, and complete the ARK cycle to save Earth's future?



ARK: Extinction is an entirely new map that promises to deliver the long-awaited climax to the ARK storyline, returning to where the story began and now ends: on Earth itself! Visit the ruined world that’s rampant with Element-corrupted creatures, scour the land for Orbital Supply Drops, tame exotic creatures, and build a Mek powerful enough to defeat the colossal, tameable Titans dominating the landscape.






Extinction brings survivors back to where the mysterious journey all started; Earth. What was once a lush and thriving home world is now a corrupt, hostile and desolate shell of its former self. Venture into the diverse landscape where ruins of a past civilization reveal clues to Earth’s demise along with the keys to reviving its future. At the heart of this bleak and foreboding terrain is an overgrown, deserted technological metropolis that rises amidst the waste. Discover and explore long abandoned micro-biospheres which served as the early prototypes for the ARKs of today.

Patch notes for 285.104:
- Extinction Expansion Pack!
- Removed Bodybags exploit!
​​​​​​​- Group ranking n​​​​umber increased by 5

Capture, tame and craft powerful and unusual organic and mechanical creature types different from anything previously seen in the ARK universe. Increase situational awareness by flying and controlling robotic surveillance drones. Harvest valuable resources by taming and feeding organic transmutation machines. Reach new heights and remote locations by climbing and teleporting with the ultimate security bot. Ensure your survival by building and piloting your own customizable battle Mek to victory!






Ensure mastery on this forsaken world with many new and exotic craftable items. Keep your tames where you want them with a creature leash, use taxidermy tools to enhance your home decor with trophy mounts from your most memorable kills, span and traverse previously uncrossable gaps with a Tek bridge, store and preserve your favorite friendly creature in a portable cryopod for reuse later, utilize Tek gravity grenades to attract or repel foes to your advantage, and autonomously airlift loot back to your base with an airborne delivery crate!








As Element runs rampant across Earth, corrupting and mutating all that it touches, Survivors must be prepared for the unique challenges fueled from these cataclysmic events. Engage in epic battles of titanic proportions when encountering the colossal Titans that rule this hostile planet as the ultimate apex predator. Scour the wastelands for orbital supply drops and protect the precious cargo they contain while fending off an onslaught of Element-corrupted monstrosities barely resembling their former selves. Survive and shelter from environmental anomalies such as Element eruptions, eclipses and meteor showers.



Return to Earth and complete your conquest of the ARK universe, gain sought after answers to advance the storyline, discover the fate of the original explorers, determine the true purpose of the ARK network, and unravel the remaining mysteries of the Homo Deus!



Haven’t yet explored the thrilling world of ARK? Jump into the adventure today during ARK’s Free Weekend on Steam, where the base game ARK: Survival Evolved is available to play for free now - Sunday, Nov 11th, paired with massive discounts to own ARK and its other expansion packs, Scorched Earth and Aberration.

Stay tuned to our Twitter account for the most up-to-date information on Extinction official servers going live.

As we all know by now ARK: Extinction will be launching tomorrow on November 6th. We are expecting the download to be approximately 10-20gb in size for PC. The information below pertains to PC ARK servers that will be brought online tomorrow at approximately the same time as the expansion pack becomes available. 

On launch you'll be able to transfer your existing character from your current server into Extinction. You will not be able to transfer items or tames. You can however transfer characters, items, and tames out of Extinction onto other maps. If you were around for the release of Scorched Earth or Aberration this is the exact same process those servers underwent. 

There are no disabled engrams in Extinction like there was at Aberration's launch, meaning things such as Tek Teleporters are allowed. Creatures like flyers are also enabled on Extinction.

We will be introducing North American and European Extinction servers first. We will be releasing an initial start batch of servers, and bringing more servers online as needed so please be patient for us during this period. The servers will be the standard 70-player cap. Extinction will be included in all CrossARK clusters (except 'TheHundred'), as well as Conquest and Small Tribes servers. Extinction will not be supported in Primitive Plus on launch, but it is something we will consider looking into at a later date. Extinction will also not have NoTek/NTek-NoTaming, Primitive, or TheHundred servers for those currently playing on those subsets of gamemodes. The legacy network will get a few servers, however they will be in small supply. 

ARK: Survival Evolved will be free to play for a week, starting November 6th 10AM PST through November 11th! On-board your friends and family who have not experienced to give them a taste of The Island, Ragnarok, or The Center yet for no cost during those few days. And consider buying it if you enjoyed your time on the ARK to keep on surviving!


25-hours later, our Extra Life charity stream has come to a close and thus another chapter of our Extra Life journey does as well.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/331846172

There were so many great and funny moments throughout the stream. Members of the ARK dev team battled it out in several games that resulted in the loser receiving a penalty. There were wigs, there were hats, there were costumes and hair adornments. There were a special unicorn that managed to steal the show on multiple occasions as well.

There were also special previews and discussions regarding our upcoming expansion pack, ARK: Extinction. We showed off taxidermy, Ice Titan taming, Cryopods, Orbital Supply Drop gameplay, and a few creatures that you'll be able to get your hands on soon.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1558017754
This is our fourth year participating in this event and it also happens to be the 10th anniversary for Extra Life as a whole. We were thrilled to learn that on this 10th anniversary we were able to surpass our total donations raised in the past four years to over $100,000! As an individual member (not including team member contributions) we've reached $112,246.44 and counting! As a team we have raised $188,782.75 over the last 4 years (and counting as today is still on-going!).

This year was our highest ever personal amount raised. Previously our record was $23,805 and we are sitting at $45,122.27 at the time of writing this post. This was also our highest ever team goal. Previously we had raised $62,004.01 and right now we're sitting at $76,536. Our original goal when we began the stream was hoping to reach $30,000 and we more than doubled that amount, with $11,000 raised before the stream had even begun at 9AM. With all of those numbers, we're currently sitting at rank 7 globally as an individual and rank 6 globally as a team for donations to Extra Life this year!

We would like to give special recognition to our top streamers and top individual donators who were a big help in assisting us to our goals this year. We could not have done this without you!

Top Streamers (in order of amount raised):
LazyCat
Xastus the Mad King
RoyaleWithCheese
Ryan S.
FistofTheWalrus
Belle
Syntac
Kara_dee

Top Donators:
Pavan
Fred316
vl_darkangel_lv
Helldiver,
Anthomnia
SurvivalServers.com
Eric K.
Jerryn
tribe of bozo
JustPixie
Pac-Man443 family
KageRamen
Pip, Acidic
songtao ke
Eric P.
Jesse P.

If you want to contribute to the campaign it's not too late, you can do so right here!



Congratulations and thank you again to all of the survivors who joined us at any point during our stream. We'll see you again next year!

Be sure to tune in to the Xbox channel on Mixer at 11am PST tomorrow (Tuesday) to see a teaser of one of the creatures coming in Extinction during their ARK stream!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1545824930
Last week we introduced you to our adorable giant sloth friend, the Gacha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHLPGQHB_RQ

Thank you for all of your questions for this digest, Survivors! Here is our question and answer session with Lead Programmer Chris Willoughby. This week we've covered some of the very popular questions we've received regarding Extinction.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1516371542
Survivor Asher asks, "Will extinction have an ocean, or at least a large body of water for some bigger aquatic creatures?" and survivor Alex asks, "All Extinction related pictures you've published were mostly on land. Is Extinction is going to be a map like Scorched Earth with no sea or is it a map with water creatures?"

Extinction does not have a large body of water. As you can imagine, the surface of the Earth has undergone some dramatic changes, one of which is that most of the water has dried up. That said, we did build the Extinction creatures with water in mind, and there should be a few surprises waiting for you when you take them to other maps!

Survivor Caleb asks, "Is the dev team currently working on a long-term solution to improve the quality of life/tame cap issues on PVE? If so, could the team provide us with some details?"

We think that Cryopods coming in Extinction should help with this problem directly. When a creature has been captured into a Cryopod, it does not count against the tame cap of the server. In addition, Cryopods can be kept forever in a Cryofridge with power, arming players with a powerful tool to work around the limitations of the cap.

Survivor Nattix asks, "As you mentioned in the previous digest, titans are going to be temporary tames. Will titans have more uses for PVE players who aren't looking to go to war or are they going to be solely for PVP like titanosaurs?"

Our hope is that Titans bring a new type of PVE encounter to the game with in-world boss fights and interesting new mechanics that are interesting in themselves. Once tamed, Titans are very powerful. They can clear space and take down lots of dinos quickly making them good for area cleanup or meat runs. In addition, we’ve worked to make each of them fun to ride. I enjoy exploring the various maps on them for that reason.

Survivor Thomas asks, "In a previous teaser we saw some Defense Units roaming the land, this time without their supreme leader summoning them. Could this be the time we finally are able to get our chance to befriend the buggers instead of ripping them apart limb-from-limb (or at least, put them back together again :P)?"

The Defense Units found within Extinction are part of the automated force that served and defended the city before it fell into disarray. These days they like to roll around and punch Dodos. They aren’t craftable like the other Robots found within the city (such as the Scout or Enforcer), but we felt like they brought a missing piece to the ecosystem there, namely punching Dodos.

Survivor Thomas asks, "Since we already have seen a glimpse of some Wyvern-action on the land below, can we then confirm that Extinction will have some more creatures from previous expansions living on earths crust and if so, will they be living under similar conditions as they were on their respective arks accordingly?"

There are a number of creatures that make their return in Extinction, and they exist in biomes/environments that you’d expect to find them in. In addition, a number of existing creatures have been corrupted by Element and they roam the wasteland. These creatures will not behave as they would traditionally, instead destroying anything that gets in the way of their hunt for additional Element to consume.

If you have a question you want answered by the ARK dev team please submit your questions with the Subject "ARK Q&A" to our email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com


There won't be a community livestream this coming Thursday, but it's because we're super busy poreparing for our TwitchCon event coming up this week, and our yearly Extra Life stream AND the launch of Extinction falls shortly after! These next few weeks sure will be busy. Jen will be present at our special TwitchCon event this year along with ARK producer John. To those of you that RSVP'd to attend we look forward to seeing you there and we hope you enjoy getting to be the first to play Extinction!

In case you've missed our last couple of mentions of it, Extra Life this year is on November 3rd and we'll be streaming for 24-hours straight to raise money for sick kids hospitals. We'll be dropping some Extinction teasers along the way and boosting our official server rates as our Extra Life team gets closer to our goal. Be sure to tune into our Twitch channel on the 3rd and we'll have more details about this next week.


Over the last two weeks, we managed to spotlight almost every mod in the contest. If you missed any and would like to see what all of the mods have to offer, the streams have been sliced and put into convenient episodes, all of which can be found in this Twitch collection.

Public voting for the Mod Contest has concluded but technical evaluations are still being finalized so rankings may still continue to change until the winners are announced on November 1st. The current Rankings can be found here:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/modding/contest-home/

The start date for the next contest has not yet been determined, the management system will be taken offline during the winter months for some updates and adjustments based on feedback from the current contest. Once a date is determined everyone will be made aware of it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1541038695



Survivors will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 26th of October at 1 PM EST until Monday the 29th of October at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share please get in touch and be sure to follow us on:

Community Hub: www.survivetheark.com
Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

Happy Patch Day, Survivors! It's Tuesday and ARK's latest patch is live on all platforms.

First off, be sure to tune in to the Xbox channel on Mixer at 2pm EST today to see a brand new Extinction creature teaser during their stream!

We're also sharing some more previews of our upcoming expansion pack ARK: Extinction. Check out the images below for a sneak peak at what you can expect to see on planet Earth!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1540666780
In Extinction, Earth has become an Element-infested planet filled with fantastical creatures both organic and technological. Element has ravaged the planet and corrupted both the landscape and some of its inhabitants, causing mutations in the creatures and plants that can be found there.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1540666929
This will be the last Extinction Chronicles related event and screenshot teasers on patch day before Extinction release. We hope that you've been enjoying them, and we're very excited to be sharing the entirety of Extinction with you very soon.

Our Extinction Chronicles V event is going on right now, including new Corrupted skin, Explorer Notes, and Tek dinos. You can read all about it in yesterdays announcement:

https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791438250696/announcements/detail/2931173216371980922

Tomorrow there will be a client and server side update that will bring Extinction Chronicles V to survivors on PC, Xbox, and PS4!

Leading up to the release of Extinction there will be monthly drops of Extinction-related Explorer Notes on The Island, Scorched Earth, and Aberration. Once collected these notes will unlock new Extinction-related skins!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1540093443
There will also be the appearance of more powerful Tek-themed Dinosaur variants within the ARKs each month. These Tek Dinos are permanent additions (meaning they will continue to spawn even after the event is over), with a new one beginning to appear each month.

* In Extinction Chronicles I we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Helmet and the Tek Rex.
* In Extinction Chronicles II we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Boots and the Tek Stego.
* In Extinction Chronicles III we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Pants and the Tek Raptor.
* In Extinction Chronicles IV we released three Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Shirt and the Tek Parasaur.



And now, tomorrow we're excited to bring you three new Explorer Notes, the Corrupted Gloves and a new Tek creature, the Tek Quetzal!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1540094608
In addition, special colored dinos will be populating the ARKs. You'll be able to find creatures sporting black, red, green, purple, and white up until the launch of Extinction, beginning tomorrow. Be sure to take advantage of these special colors before they're extinct!

Last but not least: just like we did last month, you can expect to see some more extinction screenshots tomorrow here on our forums! Be sure to check back for that.


Here are the full fixes and notes in Extinction Chronicles V update.

- Extinction Chronicles V
- Added Tek Quetz
* New breeding line
* 5% chance to spawns
* 20% higher base level
- Added new color set (black, red, green, purple, white)
- Added 3 new Explorer Notes and matching unlock (Corrupted Gloves)
- Increased maximum player level by 1

- Climbing pick meshing fixes
- Better handling for low fps server dino attacking
- Fix for failure to cleanup structure placers
- Pre-emptive API for server structure cleanup improvement
- Increased damage range for players/dinos on surface of Aberration

Be sure to check out todays Community Crunch post on our website for the full Crunch announcement post.

On October 16th Extinction Chronicles V will be released on all platforms. As usual survivors can expect a new tek dino, new Explorer Notes, a new cosmetic, increased level cap, and special colored dinos on all ARKs!


This weeks diary entry is brought to you by Lead Programmer, Chris Willoughby. This weeks dev diary is about undermeshing, a hot button issue within our official server community. Rest assured that we’re listening and are hard at work on the issues that you have surfaced through our various channels. We thought it would be worth taking an opportunity to share our thoughts on the issue, some of the reasons it exists, and why it’s so challenging to resolve.

Undermeshing refers to the ability to get to where you aren't supposed to by moving outside of the playable space. Almost every game is susceptible to undermeshing in some form. Most speed runs rely on undermeshing, for example. It's effectively impossible to solve completely, at least automatically. The approaches taken to prevent it are usually a tradeoff between how much freedom you want the player to have, how complex your world is, and how much processing time you can afford to spend on physics. Generally, when there's an instance of meshing, it's caused by bad collision setup, improper level geometry (holes), or a problem with the algorithm used to move the character through the world. In some instances, you place kill volumes in locations that you want to guarantee that the player doesn't end up, but that isn’t a global solution.

The collision setup for our objects varies based on their complexity. For very simple objects, we use a basic primitive shape (box, sphere, capsule) that matches the shape of the object. It's very good if you're able to take this approach, because natively the physics system can treat that individual object as water tight - ensuring that another physical object will never end up inside of it, and that you'll always detect it if you're already inside. When constructing a modern game, however, it's very likely that you need to use shapes that are more interesting to look at and interact with than a simple box or sphere - so you use mesh based collision. Mesh collision treats the surface of the mesh as the collideable surface, but it cannot be treated as watertight, and the physics system cannot guarantee that you don't pass through it. You might ask why, then, don't you try to represent that larger object as a bunch of smaller watertight ones? We do that in a small number of instances, but quantity of primitives is also a major concern, so it is not feasible to do this for the entire world. Take the ground under your feet, for example, at any given moment you'd be surrounded by thousands of primitives to approximate the surface of a natural looking ground, and yet it'd be less smooth than the pure mesh shape. In addition, a guarantee to not end up inside of a single body isn’t a guarantee that you won’t end up between them even if they’re tightly clumped, leading to more instances of getting stuck.

When we lay out our levels - we construct them in the way that is interesting and optimize them for efficiency so that we can maximize quality and quantity. What that means is generally the world outside of the space you're meant to play in is empty - we spend our resources on the spaces where players are at. In addition - we reuse assets many, many times - rotating a rock different ways to make it look different before shoving it into the terrain at various depths to mask the reuse and keep it visually pleasing. Technically, the physics for these objects overlaps, and if you get past the surface of one, you'll stand on the next one down. While that sounds like it would help, it’s actually the meat of the problem. Adding more meshes doesn’t help, because once you can get past one, you can get past the next one. That said, there have been many instances where we’ve flagged the collision on an object incorrectly, or left a minute hole that we can and do address through Level Design.

Nearly every game uses custom physics for characters. Much of ours is built on the out of the box simulation that you get from UE4. Fortunately for our players, our game is one where the world is vast and complex, and players have the freedom to build many objects and have many dinos. Unfortunately for us, this pushes all of these algorithms to their breaking point. We've had to augment, rework, and add additional tests in many places that affect the simulation to improve our core player experience. In addition, we've built many gameplay mechanics that don't exist out of the box. Wall climbing, for example, requires a completely new set of physics tests to understand and hug the wall surface. When we set these up, we build them to be as flexible as possible, but it can be difficult to predict how the player base will use something when they get it in their hands. In many cases, this is a good thing - we’re delighted with the creative things that our players do, but sometimes they’re able to abuse mechanics in unintended ways. When we find problems with them, we have to find solutions that won't break the mechanic completely for the many other use cases, sometimes an impossible feat! This is also why we aren’t quick to completely disable a feature - we evaluate how much harm versus good it is doing across the entire experience.

We do use kill volumes at a broad scale - usually high in the air, or far below the surface. Far outside of the playspace, to segment specific areas. The reality, though, is that when someone is meshing, they're usually not out in that empty space around the world, they're running around on the insides of overlapping shapes or physical surfaces that are just below the real surface. In order to implement kill boxes in these places, we'd have to go back to every location in the map and place a kill volume just below the surface that will kill someone that touches it. As with the terrain example above, it would require entirely too many objects to cover the entire world in these accurately. In addition, a major downside to this approach is also the fact that it will detect and kill something that may have a good reason to be below the mesh - on a Basilisk? You just got killed by the kill volumes. Misjudge where the surface is, and a bunch of players are being killed erroneously and losing their stuff.

As with all aspects of making a game, it's all a balancing act. We try to spend our time on the things that are most valuable to as many of our players as possible - which means attacking holes in the world in waves and making algorithm changes when it's become obvious that they're having a large enough negative effect on the experience for our players. The reality is that there is no silver bullet, no automatic solution - so it continues to be a problem that our game (and many others) continue to fight throughout their lifetimes. Recently, we’ve fixed a bunch of holes across all of the maps and did a pass at removing Climbing Pick exploits. Going forward, our best bet is to remain diligent about resolving issues as they arise and improving the experience over time. The good news is that we like solving hard problems - and exploits like these are some of the more interesting ones to try and tackle!

Today marks the start of a two-week streaming schedule to spotlight all of the mods entered into the contest. You can vote now for your favorite mods as they compete for a Grand Prize of $15,000!

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/modding/voting/

You can follow the rankings with hourly updates as well!
https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/modding/contest-home/

Meanwhile, I will be streaming from the ARK twitch channel showcasing all of these mods, every weekday for the next two weeks! You can find the full schedule here:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/371532-ark-modding-contest-stream-schedule-october-2018/

Come check out some mods and support your fellow community members that give so much of their time to make these fantastic creations!




This Thursday October 11th the community team will be doing another biweekly livestream!

During these livestreams Zen Rowe, Chris, and Jen bring you ARK news, celebrate modding, and the community as a whole every other week. We mix it up between playing ARK, showing off mods, and showing off your community creations for all to see. Survivors are invited to join us in the chat (and sometimes even in-game) to play and talk with the community team.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1391754339
We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, October the 11th at 1pm EST! We hope to see you there :)


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1532287707




Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 12th of October at 1 PM EST until Monday the 15th of October at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share please get in touch and be sure to follow us on:

Community Hub: www.survivetheark.com
Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark