Filipe - Lead Programmer
This month I have been focused on kentrosaurus and its defensive stance. This helps it to reflect damage back to attackers when they hit its spikes, but this will also be seen for other animals that have spikes or build in defenses like ceratopsians. I also worked on the updated skin system color picker so that we can bring larger color selections back to you. Skin colors are based on a texture which the players can click to select the colors for each section. This allows more colors on a single texture and simplifies the process for us. It also allows us to introduce any additional palettes for skins, being each theme containing a new texture with a new set of colors in it.
See you!
Ariel - Programmer
I continued working on the hill slide mechanic to get it working right in all the different conditions, like how steep the slope is, which way your dinosaur is looking, how fast you were moving when you entered the hill slide state, and what the conditions are for ending it. I also set it up for all the dinosaurs now to test their animations. Other than that I took a look at the pteranodon as well because it received the updated terrestrial animations.
Wedge - Sound Designer
This month started with wrapping up on the five main calls for the Quetzalcoatlus and establishing the vocal palette for the rest of its audio.
Next was creating a set of sounds for the tree knockdown mechanic, including the creaking, squeaking and rattling of the trees as they fall and the punchy, woody and leafy impact as they hit the ground. This meant doing a set of sounds for three size stages to account for the range of sizes of trees that will be able to be knocked down. These sounds were then tested and adjusted in length and weight proportionately to the size of the trees.
Baryonyx calls are now being refined by the rest of the sound team after its new vocal palette was established. Its vocalisations are moving away from the standard guttural growls, a type of vocalisation that is already well covered by the existing roster to bring a different sonic perspective, while still leaning into its amphibious nature. Comprising deep ‘Bomp’ sounds, similar to a large bubble upwelling and popping in its throat, giving Bary a unique and threatening edge.
To wrap up this month I moved onto Oviraptors calls. Since this is the most avian creature to be added to the roster this was a design aesthetic that we really wanted to lean into with its sounds. Its vocals are made up of a diverse range of edited parrot chirps, screeches, squawks, giggles and croaks, juxtaposed with squeals and clicks that have a goblin-like quality to them, lending well to its ‘egg-thief’ niche. These pull from the cooing clicks of crows that have a natural vowel movement, tasmanian devil and rapid small bird beak clacks as well as lemur and honey badger for breathier clicking elements.
hypno - QA Lead
Unfortunately, no funny videos this time. The past couple of weeks for QA have been focused on gathering and verifying community bug reports, cleaning up the bug tracker, and testing new builds. There have been some major issues such as organs and meat chunks becoming uninteractable, sparring issues, and Dilophosaurus hallucinations not hitting players, etc, that we feel need to be fixed before the next hordetest. Fortunately many of these have been resolved but we still have a few outstanding problems we’d like fixed before moving forward with public tests.
KissenKitten - Animation Supervisor
Pretty much all of this month has been a continuation of the previous. Fixing animation bugs, tying up loose ends and putting our heads down on quetzalcoatlus.
I’ve been enjoying developing its personality and style that dips into science without compromising creativity and avoiding being too generic. We want playing the quetz to feel very unique to The Isle. Stealthy, deadly and deceptively alert. Disappearing into the background and at times coming out of nowhere. The animations lean towards illusive and measured but when it is time to deal damage or give chase, its unorthodox body type takes center stage that creates an unnerving silhouette in the darkness.
I’m pretty excited about this playable! Especially for the legacy folks out there that wanted a quetz experience and weren’t able to have it.
Here are a few animations (some revised) for you to check out.
Surf's Up! See ya next time!