Filipe - Lead Programmer
This month I’ve primarily been focused on the Elder system, which the current roster is having their curves put in for players who meet the requirements once they become adult. We had to replace the growth curve system to allow more entries, which will help us to easily edit and balance normal and prime elders, but also allow even more expansions in the future if we want that. All the curves have been set up and the Elders morph targets are also functional. We will be setting up some UI systems and specific animations to use in the elder stage and after that it can go to QA for some balance testing.
Rex crush still had bug work to do but it seems to have run out of edge cases that we can find so it seems this will be ready almost directly after trike’s release.
Besides those bugs, I also worked on the human locomotion and traversal systems. The focus was to establish a base locomotion system to use, but in a way that we can easily maintain and continue to develop. Most importantly we wanted to include features from Epic and support modding in the future.
That's it for now. See you soon.
Ariel - Programmer
I started the month with a bit more work on the climbing features of herrera and hypsi, which now also made it to QA testing and will be released alongside the triceratops. I’ve also altered the ceratopsians’ thrash attack to make its activation much more strict on quick double clicks, so there should be far less accidental activations, while still being able to quickly use it whenever desired.
Afterwards I continued work on the pteranodon’s new takeoff and fixed some issues related to thermals and slipstreams. The end of my month has me starting on a feature that will provide a pteranodon (and other animals) with a new and more interactive way to hunt small animals and fish, but it’s still in early stages as of now.
Tapwing - 2D Artist
I’ve had more plants on my plate for this week as well as some edit concepts for the Giga elder model. It’s got some fan favorite elements from the older giga model that’s making a comeback in its more wizened age.
On the plants side, I've been working on what’s essentially ‘living barbed wire’, the very angry looking Razorbark plant. It needs to attach itself just about anywhere (within reason) which is why I gave it little graspers that the plant could use to adhere to walls or other not-so-upright surfaces. The other idea it needed to get across was “try to pass through me and you’re in for a bad time” It needed to be thick and absolutely covered in spikes, even the bark of the stem I wanted to look jagged and unpleasant to touch.
Some of you might remember the other one on this list. An old concept that’s been floating around is getting its name and home, the Arborburst Redwood. I’ve always pictured the plant having some influence from the type-H strain which is where the extreme growth and armoured appearance would come from, also why the tree bares some resemblance to the Metallivore plant.
Wedge - Sound Designer
This month I have been rounding out Triceratops’ suite of sounds. The remaining adult sounds have been created, including sparring which has been implemented, horns and all; just wrapping up some attenuation and volume so these big brutes can be heard from afar when shoving one another around. I have made my way through the majority of the juvenile Triceratops sounds as well with only its sparring and a few other erroneous sounds remaining. It's been quite the undertaking but the Triceratops is very soon to be audio complete after some testing and quality of life passes over its sound suite.
I have also added sounds to Hypsilophodon’s new latched animations and made some improvements to the setup of the new foliage audio system, making more adjustments to the behaviour that dictates how volume, the mix of layers and attenuations scale with the speed and size of your dinosaur.
hypno - QA Lead
Originally, our plan for the horde test was to evaluate the Triceratops on its own, then the Tyrannosaurus, and finally both together. However, we’ve decided to skip directly to testing them both together following the release of the Triceratops to the evrima branch. This adjustment is essential, as the additional stage was determined to be counterproductive given how long the initial testing has taken. While we'll continue to refine them after their release, they need to be in a solid state at launch.
QA has been busy this month focusing primarily on the Triceratops, ensuring that all of its mechanics are functioning correctly with the existing systems. While it does share the same ability as the Diabloceratops (sparring), it weighs a heck of a lot more once it goes beyond its subadult phase, meaning that we had to check that its interactions past this point made sense for an animal of that size. We’re comfortable that the Triceratops is working as intended in our latest QA build and will be prepping it for its official evrima release, which we are aiming to have released sometime next week.
In other news, we’re going to be sending this update with some other new features and quality of life changes, including the long-awaited Hypsilophodon Climbing feature.
Watch on YouTube
Acting almost like a hybrid between the Pteranodon latching and Herrerasaurus climbing systems, the Hypsilophodon is now capable of latching onto objects, but with the difference that it cannot move as freely as the Herrerasaurus can. This requires the hyspi to have some consideration on where it’s latching on to. Once latched, the player can jump and re-latch to another point; this utilizes its charged jump ability and launching itself to even greater heights. Taking your time between jumps will preserve your stamina and knowing which paths to take during a vertical ascent are key. This feature is the foundation for us to expand on its other potential systems, such as being able to create nests within trees.
KissenKitten - Producer
We’ve been toiling pretty hard getting things properly in order with hordetesting. Which has been challenging and taken longer than we’d have liked unfortunately. Classic case of surprise bugginess. But we grabbed a shoe and went to work.
The team has expanded, so there’re new faces, internal shifts, various system/mechanic/interaction tweaks/overhauls etc so it has been quite busy. Many of those changes should roll out with the release of triceratops. Who’s getting its missing sounds plugged in so we can get that umph in there. It’s a big animal with big bellows. There’s still more to do yet but now we’ve got more hands…errr EARS!
We’ve been making some combat changes here and there. A few are changes to recovery times on abilities that should allow you to respond in combat in ways more appropriate to the animal so you won’t feel as “stuck” in certain instances. Those alterations will be doled out over time since we’ll be going on a case by case basis but we won’t change all of those instances should they be placed there deliberately. But for the instances we agree are unintended and break the intended flow, we’ll be looking to take those shackles off, free up your movement a bit and make some abilities/interactions more responsive.
The animation team has been crushing it. They’re tearing through avaceratops animations in record time. Really goes a long way when the dinosaurs behave and the avaceratops has been a gem to work with but it won’t have anything to do with their demeanor on the island. I’d be careful tangling with one. The animation team has also largely completed the non-unique animations for the baryonyx, so it will be entering its holding pen awaiting its introduction onto the island alongside the austroraptor, allosaurus and kentrosaurus. I’m exceptionally proud of and impressed by their efforts and they should be as well. I’ll scrounge up some clips for you guys and give you a peek at the process of rig checking for the oviraptor and a test animation for the ovlet. Be good to each other. Toodles!
