Filipe - Lead Programmer
This month I worked mainly on two fronts. The unified systems for footsteps visual effects (VFX) and sound effects (SFX). The system just scales all conditions based on species and size, avoiding us to have multiple assets per dinosaur/per size (growth). This speeds up dinosaur setup and asset creation,
The second main front was finishing and merging the new systems for Migration and Entomb save. They are now on the master branch of the game being tested in QA. Hopefully their implementation won´t generate many bugs.
Besides, work continues on new dinosaurs and upcoming features/abilities. That is pretty much it.
See you!
Amarok - Programmer
Overall, this month was largely focused on strengthening the systems behind the game while continuing to add smaller gameplay, AI, world, and quality-of-life improvements. I spent a lot of time improving the development and support systems behind the game, with a particular focus on server performance, tooling, stability, and content.
I also continued improving the development pipeline and engine tools. The landscape grass painter was expanded to work across static meshes, walls, roofs, and landscape surfaces, with better surface previews. I also made further improvements to landscape streaming and tree-destruction performance and configuration.
On the gameplay and world side, I added nearby interaction cycling with R and controller D-pad support so you can now select what you want to interact with, expanded ambient spawning to include rats, grasshoppers, dragonflies, (GIANT ENEMY) crabs, snails, and lizards, and continued work on AI nesting and ambient-spawn filtering.
The prototype for advanced gore and runtime dismemberment systems also saw significant progress across dinosaur assets, alongside improvements to ragdoll behaviour and how bodies react and settle after being knocked down or killed. This gives a much stronger foundation for dynamic damage, dismemberment, and more natural physical reactions during gameplay.
I also worked through a large number of stability and bug fixes found. This included replay menu issues, proxy pawns falling through meshes after rerendering, SQLCipher linking problems, shutdown and game-close crashes, SQL and I/O issues and telemetry race conditions.
Speaking of, the replay system is updated to allow the configuration of time-of-day control, aperture and focal length camera controls, manual camera focus, weather presets, and additional effects so players can alter replays to make video content more easily.
I also added the initial arcade cabinet framework and built the first prototype game for it, Goat Run.
Ariel - Programmer
This month I primarily worked on two new upcoming dinosaurs. Starting with the oviraptor, its growth is similar to the hypsilophodon in a way, with some feathers growing out as the animal reaches adulthood. In the end we managed to make it look right.
Next up was the baryonyx with a somewhat new underwater movement system. It's similar to the beipiaosaurus's water latch where movement is aligned to the ground, but with a few differences. First of all, the animal sinks passively instead of being buoyant (like deinosuchus) and it also sticks to the ground automatically instead of having to "latch on" manually. Overall it is very similar to just running on land, except you can swim normally after "jumping". However, the dinosaur doesn't sink automatically if it's on the water surface.
I hope the explanation made sense, it's quite intuitive when playing.
VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist
This month and the last, I’ve remained focused on building elements that are being put in the world. The latest completed building is the Hatchery (Full details about this building are in previous blogposts), which is a large complex that has its own basement and multiple paths in and out of the building. The Hatchery is already prepared for the next HordeTest and will connect to a medical facility for the animals on the island.
Lastly, I’ve been tasked with making its exterior and interior gates, satellite structures, and areas that act as a staging area before you enter or exit the Dome. This brings us full circle and hopefully gives you proper access to one of the largest structures on the Island.
Wedge - Sound Designer
This month I revisited the updated footstep audio system to work on necessary fixes and volume adjustments ironing out any issues whilst it is implemented. The new system is designed around a more dynamic and robust logic that is weight driven, which adds a much smoother transition between growth/sizes across creatures than before. Moving away from rigid predefined size groupings. The attenuations are also dynamic; the falloff and filter values are affected by movement speed and weight giving us more control over these facets of the sounds. Having the footsteps condensed into a single asset also allows us a much easier way to make sweeping global changes to all footsteps.
Alongside that I’ve been making some adjustments to the foliage interaction audio to address some inconsistencies so both of these elements of the audio can be cohesive on finalisation.
A bit more progress has been made on spinosaurus’ call concepts before the entire audio team has shifted their focus over to avaceratops. The full suite of audio has been divided up between us and we are working our way through the adult sounds while the juvenile calls are also being designed to get ava out the door as quickly as we can.
hypno - QA Lead
Thank you to everyone who applied to join the QA team. Successful applicants have been contacted directly.
The QA application form will remain open for anyone who still wishes to apply. I’m still looking for additional testers in the EU and AU timezones, so please don’t hesitate to submit an application.
QA are still hard at work on the final tests before Oviraptor, Entombed Saves, and the Migration changes make their initial release to the hordetesting branch. We’re hoping to have them in your hands very soon.
KissenKitten - Animation Supervisor
New month, classic process. I’ve been primarily focused on the Oviraptor and Baryonyx that will be coming to hordetesting in the not so distant future. Separately. The oviraptor was giving me some mild irritation having to deal with those feathers throughout the lifestages but overall I think it’s handled (or handled enough to live with short term). I’m really interested to see how you all take to it since I think it’s fun to run around with for sure. The baryonyx is still being mechanically set up more than anything because it has a lot going on with it that’s not only for itself but will also influence the spino and sucho playstyle so it’s not as one and done as some of the other animals. It has a ton of animations and since it is bringing in new mechanics, it needs a fair amount of testing and tweaking. So we’ve changed swim animations, attack animations and other things so that it looks and feels like we want The Isle’s baryonyx to be.
While myself and the rest of the animation team have been fixing, replacing, and creating animations for the hordetesting creatures, we’re always making new animations at the same time. Enter the parasaurolophus. Thankfully it’s as easy to work with as it is to look at, so that has been smooth, however, it’s still a lot of work since we’ve committed to it being able to do just about everything bipedal and quadrapedal. This doubles the amount of already numerous animations we make for our animals, but a challenge has never been anything we shy away from so here we are. The animations are looking pretty dang good and we’re about halfway done which should speed up some more once we don’t have five other animals to work on and revisions of live playables all at the same time. All that being considered, I’m extremely pleased with the animation team’s progress.
More of the new animals have their vocals now so we’ve been creating the accompanying animations, which I’ve been happy with. One of my favorite parts of the job aside from working with dinosaurs is seeing the creativity put forward by other artists and developers that takes something from concept to what looks, sounds and feels like a real plausible animal. We’ve got vocal animations for the baryonyx and camarasaurus, which is included in the content below. Shout out to the sound department for giving us cool stuff to work with.
The bary is focused on selling its guttural bellows. Perfect sounds for a life in and around the water. So the animations help with that. Lots of vibrating and undulating going on. And some tail slaps here in there as well since that would work nicely when slapped in the water. Hopefully we can get some accompanying splashing as well. Fingers crossed.
The camarasaurus of course is still sing-songy like it once was but with more umph than it ever had before in my opinion. So the animations are tailored to showcase not just grace and elegance but raw power as well. When an adult camarasaurus means business we want you to hear, see and feel that. You may notice some vocal variations here and there but don’t pay those any mind at this time. Aside from the camara and bary, the avaceratops also has new vocals but we still have to animate some of those.
If all that weren’t enough, (there’s always more) we’ve been making some combat animation changes for the diabloceratops and triceratops. I’ve thought since release that some of their movements and attacks were too slow to properly defend themselves under certain conditions and against certain opponents. However, we prefer to see how things pan out over time once you guys get used to the moveset and playstyle before making certain changes. Now that the hours have been put in and the data delivered, you’ll see new attack animations that fire a lot faster than the previous ones. Programming lent their assistance in making sure the animals also recover faster after some of these animations, so you won’t feel so input locked before you can move/react again. While those recovery changes will be happening with the ceratopsians first, that specific aspect is going to be carried over for the roster at large so we can make recovery and reactions more fluid and appropriate for the creatures so you don’t have to eat several seconds of recovery time between issuing a new command.
Lastly, I’ve been going over the in-game implementation of the newcomers. Animation is only one part of the process. How all of the animations link together with one another, look/feel on the character in-game, how reactive they make the animal, how on theme they make the character feel, how well they work within the environment etc are all things that have to be massaged when all the animation is over. So for that, I’ve been seeing how the quetzalcoatlus, avaceratops and camarasaurus have been looking and feeling in-game and determining what needs to be altered, swapped out etc as I mentioned about bary earlier. A good example of this would be the austroraptor’s ability to jump out of the water while treading on the surface. That was not something initially intended, but it makes sense due to its lifestyle.
Anyway, that’s all for me. See you next month!
