Filipe - Lead Programmer
This month I worked more on updating some remaining UI panels and bug fixing them. The UI took less time to implement than expected, which is great for once.
Besides that, new mutations have been added which allows you to change your gender, but also another one that allows a female to lay eggs without a mate, allowing more nests to be around. These are needed additions but required some additional setup to get working right. Some old mutations got some balance changes as well and a few bugs fixed.
Also worked in a new system for skins which will be added once we finish testing it, which is a theme system, which will give different color pallets based on those themes, for example, Forest theme will focus more on greenish pallets of colors. Dinos may have several different themes to choose from.
And of course, bug fixing.
See you!
Ariel - Programmer
Most of my time this month was spent working on updates for the pteranodon, the first of them being the dive roll. It’s just something fun the players can do without it really “doing” anything, but I think it really adds to the character of the dinosaur. Originally it would activate whenever someone tried to fly downwards, but that resulted in players being locked into the dive for a short duration even if they only wanted to make small adjustments. So it was changed to activate when double tapping Ctrl (crouch) instead.
The second feature is something that has a much bigger impact on its gameplay, adding a new way to turn sharply. With the pteranodon being a small, nimble animal we wanted to improve its mobility without having it suddenly snap in different directions when turning. This one’s a bit difficult to explain, but first we tried a version that would automatically change your turning behaviour based on your speed and turn rate. It didn’t feel completely intuitive at first, but after some getting used to I’d say it already worked well. The second version is what we have now, which is making it tied to air brake, giving players better control over their movement. This way braking and turning quickly are done with the same key, which made it a bit more difficult, but I think I found a good point where both can be used comfortably depending on how quickly one is turning.
Other than the usual bug fixes and balance changes I’ve also been looking at the austroraptor a bit, setting up some animations and reorganizing some existing code to fit the austroraptor’s needs.
Tapwing - 2D Artist
Recently I’ve been working at narrowing down the basic colour palettes for all dinosaurs to create some quality control for the colour combos that can be made. For example, an animal might look good in either green, red or blue, but making all those colours available in one set creates the potential for some truly eye-bleeding colour combos.
This brings me to the second part of my recent tasks, which is creating a number of alternate colour sets for the roster. This way we can offer a more expansive range of colour sets on animals like Tenontosaurus or Omniraptor, who are currently restricted to their respective brownish colours with the basic set, but might also look good in a set themed around forest greens or sandy yellows.
We’ll be able to add greens on an otherwise default red dinosaur without having to worry about how and IF those greens are going to work with those reds.
VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist
This whole month has been (mostly) dedicated to building the labs.
A massive facility that spans over 110m in length and is one of the largest locations above ground. It consists of over a dozen different room types, spanning from the known Lab Hub that was incorporated (RIP GUTS), towards a plethora of new areas, such as the armory, all new offices, administration, containment, and some others I can’t speak on yet. It is a multi story building and gives access to a lot of explorable areas, in which only a handful of rooms currently are not accessible. The building has numerous ways in and out, and not unjust from the front door. Most areas have two or more connections to prevent players from getting stuck, or worse, cornered.
This whole facility has been one of the most exciting pieces I wanted to show you and here you are, the only thing missing from the piece is the final weathering and satellite structures:
Besides that I’ve created two habitation buildings that are used for housing and R&R for staff that was on the island, featuring a separate kitchen, bedrooms, and various lounge rooms, and a small supply closet. All that’s left are a few independent models such as beds (no more just cots) and some rec room items.
That is it for this month, besides the usual bug fixing and minor new stuff that I’ve added this month.
See you in the next one.
Wedge - Sound Designer
This month started with us wrapping up the finishing touches on Allosaurus with some testing leading to adjustments to some of its audio and fixes to any bugs that we were made aware of along with any other audio related bugs that need to be addressed for the impending patch.
After that our focus has been on Kentrosaurus, which has come together swiftly. We have been exploring multiple angles within its audio palette, and have landed on a variety of sounds that have a diverse but cohesive range. It pulls a little from Stegosaurus, keeping it in the family with a different syntax and then incorporates shrill bugling, bovine honking and hoarse shrieks.
We have a large majority of its adult sounds completed with only a small handful left, and a decent chunk of the juvenile sounds designed as well.
Austroraptor has had its final batch of sounds implemented and with the new vocal animations being created a lot of attention has been put into getting the synch and age scaling of the vocal calls just right so they sound their best at each stage of growth.
In addition to the new sounds for upcoming creatures I have done some more work on footsteps, with additions of missing sounds in the large dinosaur footstep suite (and terrains that hadn’t been covered yet such as gravel and snow) as well as replacing either place holder footstep sounds or sounds that were starting to show their age. These have been implemented into the existing sound cues so the sounds could make their way into the game quickly. However more work has been done on a new footstep system that will correct any scaling issues with footstep sounds over the increase of growth as well as give us more flexibility in control over the various parameters so we can have pin point accuracy on every aspect. This will need more rigorous testing after being implemented before making its way into your hands (or feet).
To end the month, the time has come to dig up an old concept I had designed a few years ago for an exciting audio component that will be making its way into the isle soon, the first of many additions to help breathe life into the sound of the island. More to come soon.
hypno - QA Lead
It’s been a busy month for QA as we close in on our last few updates of the year, with us tackling the remaining Tyrannosaurus and Elder System issues, as well as taking on the UI overhaul and Allosaurus character all in one go. Our current focus is testing server performance, ensuring that it’s up to standard for the evrima branch, as we’re using the Debug 5X Growth servers on the hordetest to identify any remaining crashes or stuttering that is occurring.
Tyrannosaurus had the unintended feature of becoming a home invader, capable of crushing a burrow and eating its inhabitants, despite them not being visible.
Sparring between Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops still had some issues lingering as well, which was mostly caused by the crush into spar interaction. When a Triceratops’ legs were almost fractured and received a crush on its head, it would break the sparring for the Tyrannosaurus but the Triceratops would still see it occurring, so it wasn’t replicating properly. This would lead to all sorts of weirdness, like the two becoming permanently locked up or the Triceratops strafing on their client while moving normally for others. This could also result in the Triceratops player looking in the complete opposite direction for each player as well, which made it look like you were attacking from behind while in reality you were hitting them from the front. We will be continuing to iron out these problems over the next few builds.
With your feedback, we decided to change it so that elders would no longer have an increased growth speed when they had received diets. This has allowed players to continue to enjoy their adult (and elder) characters for a longer duration before eventually reaching the point of entombment.
Speaking of which, entombing has had a continuous issue of resetting the player’s skin and swapping their sex since its implementation. With the help from community bug reports (which you should all be doing! 😊), we now believe to have located the source of the issue and are currently in the process of applying this fix to our upcoming hordetest patch. No more losing your beautifully crafted camouflage.
There are still improvements yet to be made to the Elder System. Some characters, such as Deinosuchus, Troodon, and Hypsiloophodon have an especially difficult time achieving prime status. This is something we are aware of and will be addressing in the near future.
You might not have thought about it, but the programmers replacing all of the assets for the UI took up a fair bit of QA’s time, with text fields breaking, buttons becoming non-functional, colours being mismatched, and menus extending beyond the user’s game resolution - just to name a few. Even now, we are still finding some more minor issues, such as the nutrients not scaling properly on the HUD.
All of our new UI had to go through extensive testing. Can I type into a box where a number should go? Can I open the character menu while the game settings are visible? Can I exploit existing systems with the new menus? The latter proved to be true, where players were able to invite others to their nest via a code and spawn them in before their eggs had even finished incubating.
Server queuing will be making a return and is expected to be brought back to all servers for the update to evrima. This is currently only present on one of the HT servers to see how it fares with our new server caching system.
One strange example we ran into is the new admin panel deciding to break whenever the teleport button was highlighted.
Watch on YouTube
The first implementation of the Allosaurus latch allowed them to stack on top of one another, creating a potentially endless chain of them. We were sensible and stopped at three but just imagine the potential!
Allosaurus has been experiencing an issue where it gets kicked from servers if it uses its pounce ability when it has attained prime elder status. This is expected to be fixed in our next patch to hordetest.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a complete devblog without mentioning whatever the latest fun our AI has decided to bring us this month.
Watch on YouTube
Sometimes, I have no words…
It is known to us that the Diabloceratops AI have been fattening up the Tyrannosaurus groups, making their growth far easier than it should be. These AI will be more evenly distributed across the island and improvements to them are constantly being made by amarok to make them less of a free meal.
We’ve been putting a big focus on making direct changes to the game based on your feedback. For example, we’ve made it so that the Beipiaosaurus, Dryosaurus, Hypsilophodon, and Troodon characters no longer become infertile when they reach 100% growth. They would grow so quickly that they did not have ample time to create a nest, including all of the other usual challenges that they face. So, this has now been addressed and is present in our latest hordetest builds. Justice for the small playables!
Lastly, Don has been making balance changes to the majority of the roster, fine tuning the damage, knockdown thresholds, and fracture modifiers of the larger species. Stamina is also being adjusted for these characters and has been temporarily put on a level playing field in order to find some more appropriate values for them. These changes should make them all feel fairer against one another, as opposed to the Tyrannosaurus breaking a Triceratops leg in 2 crushes and winning. Allosaurus went in with its maximum bleed values and has since been brought back down in line with the rest of the roster, though further tweaks may still be required. It is also suffering from a bugged delay to its movement when dismounting from a latch, resulting in the target being able to get a free hit on the Allosaurus.
Let us know your thoughts and keep that feedback coming; now is the most vital time to do so before we commit this update to the evrima branch.