Since the start of the custom skin system, we had been using 1k textures for our creatures. Due to some troubleshooting during that process as we continued to update, I started making some of the skins in 2k in order for them to function as intended in-game. Since then, some are in 1k, some are in 2k. Now I’ve been tasked with giving everyone a 2k upgrade. During this resolution upgrade, I'm also combing through these skins and giving a few of them a subtle cleanup. Below are some examples. Hopefully the older skins will look on par with the more recent ones.
I gave the team two months of reprieve from having to write in any of these and you can see why Fred is the GoodNoodle™ of the team. This officially makes my entry director’s commentary and I don’t have to write a saga. We’re going to start strong with bugs. I’ve been partaking in bug hunts this month that make me want to put my head in a bag of holding and scream until I’m dead or I wake up God. It has not been fun and it’s not even visually interesting so there’s no heehaws to be found unless you count the allosaurus (again). Are you starting to notice a pattern? If an animal ever deserved to be resurrected just to go extinct again, it would be allosaurus. Why does its foot shake? Why does it slightly glow? The Gods remain ignorant or indifferent to our pleas. The UI is nearing completion with only a few screens and pop-ups remaining. After that, there may be a few additional tweaks to allow a bit more of a personal customization for the display but the theme is largely there with a secret or two already buried in it. After that comes all the additional information like hints and tutorials. As testing builds have gone on this month, a lot of animal colorization options have been temporarily reset before being drastically reduced. The reduced color options are so that we can expand dinosaur patterns to have varying palettes. This will allow us an overall greater freedom for color choice that stays within an intended artistic vision without letting players run around as giant rainbow monsters. (There is an option intended for player servers to allow all palette colors [or possibly a color wheel] so you can visually do whatever you want. If I can’t see it, it can’t hurt me.) Pteranodon flight stats were drastically changed this month as well with all the aerial stamina requirements lowered across the board. Pteranodon carries its momentum exceptionally longer in flight than it did previously as well. There’s one more turn functionality for its flight to keep it nimble, but otherwise flight is done and it's time to give it some terrestrial enhancements. Don’t forget, when we’re done with it this animal is going to have a violent ground game. The animation team has leaned fully into the camarasaurus. This sentence is just to pad the paragraph since I’ll let the attached media for the sauropod speak for itself. Bryan is putting the finishing touches on the quetzalcoatlus rig, which now has dimorphism in the crest for females and an additional edit to the juvenile. After that, he’s on to oviraptor locomotion so it can be plugged up alongside baryonyx, kentrosaurus, and austroraptor. The animation team will remain with our sauropod until its complete, barring an occasional switch over to any austroraptor cleanup that may be needed during its testing. That being said, austroraptor, kentrosaurus, and baryonyx have had their basic functionality, locomotion, and lifecycles put in. I know some of the images are already floating around the community, but I’ll get some more out there in Phase Three this week. The three of these animals have needlessly cute juvenile morphs that may make a player stay their hand for a moment before trying to kill them, so use this to your advantage when the time comes. Since last month the sound team has burned through the austroraptor, with only a few juvenile calls left before its time for kentrosaurus. The kentrosaurus’s core vocalizations have been done, so this is just like the austroraptor from last month where they can smoothly move from one dinosaur to the next that has a core vocal palette prepared. In the interim, Will is tackling some foley audio for the large animals before we can change the way footstep audio is handled (Nothing too crazy here. Just having footstep audio dynamically change based on weight). A myriad of other balance/bug changes have found their way in. In no particular order, just going to throw out some mentionables: Tyrannosaurus changes went well with only one particular spot in the early juvenile life stage that was allowing tyrannosaurus to hit a little harder than intended. There’s a little more to shore up on making his crush initiate a spar, but he can no longer just pin and kill things in its own weight class (and paleo calls work). Maiasaura thirst decay has been reduced. This animal will be receiving a bit more attention for CC on its attacks and how easily it can stagger/knockdown an enemy when defending itself, including a small grace amount on the standing shove. Maia also has a small hidden passive most everyone doesn’t know about that will also be getting a minor boost in performance to make sure this is truly known as the good mother lizard. Omniraptor’s latch decay has been reduced to more effectively hang on larger creatures for longer. Beipiaosaurus and herrerasaurus oxygen decay has been greatly reduced. More of the larger animals have received growth curve updates so they have more overlap with animals of smaller sizes instead of linearly outpacing them almost immediately. As stated in the last blog, the times for growth have been slightly shortened as well and put on the end of these animal’s lives so that they spend more time in the elder phase. Jace has been hard at work on Gateway, expanding the outposts with the new buildings I spoke about last month. Gabriel has been supplying him with shells of locations you’ve seen in the GUTS locales, including some that will be too large for the outposts you’ve seen. You can also expect a new sanctuary near the highlands soon.
I leave you with media, good tithings, and an update to the HordeTesting branch. See you on the servers and Happy Halloween ya filthy animals.