Hello everyone. DOGMAN 1.0.8 has been released and brings with it a much needed remaster of Hopkins State Park. Lets dive right in and see what's new.
First off, let me give you some back story on Hopkins State Park. When I decided to create DOGMAN, Hopkins was where I learned everything. I learned how to sculpt landscapes, assign textures to that landscape, adjust materials, create simple AIs, create foliage, and it was my first time ever designing a map. While I look back fondly on those memories and the skills I learned back then, I realized that it was by far the most outdated map in the game. First off the map ran not so great for lots of people. This is due to a whopping 4.2 million foliage actors being loaded into the map. While you wouldn't be rendering all 4.2 million actors at once, it still caused poor performance, and long loading times. This number has been greatly reduced to 230 thousand. Loading times have been improved and performance has also been improved. Normal maps have been added to all ground textures, meaning that these textures will cast shadows, greatly improving their looks. The grass texture has also been changed to a more realistic forest floor.
The pathways in Hopkins State Park have been updated as well. While they have not been entirely changed, many more paths have been added and other have been re-directed. Along with the performance update comes a visual update. Most noticeably, the heavy dark fog has been entirely removed from the park. You will now be able to see much further into the forest and see a starry night sky. Also, the old pine tree models have been removed and replaced with conifer trees. Many places in the park now are named and have a small sign near them displaying theirname. An additional dogman has been added to Hopkins State Park as well, making a total of two. This number may be adjusted based on player feedback. Next, I am extremely excited to announce a fix for the collision issues with the game's cabins. This fix brings with it another improvement to the game as well.
First and most importantly, players will not teleport through the cabin if they collide with furniture anymore. Blocking volumes have also been added to reinforce this fix.
Second, the cabin model has been completely overhauled and three different variants have been created, making cabin exploration more interesting. These updated cabins have first been added to Hopkins State Park, and will be coming to each map in time. Please be patient with this change, I promise it will come. I am also very pleased to announce that ranger towers now have an accessible interior in which you can find flashlight batteries as well.
A negative bit of feedback I was left has been sitting in the back of my mind and growing like a weed. "The unremarkable gameplay is complemented by an absolutely empty area,
lonely houses in which there is nothing but trees growing through them". This was the driving force behind the remaster of Hopkins State Park. I would like to thank this commenter, and announce that I will be remastering both the Blueridge Campground, and Amberg Industrial Park. No more boring areas, and no more unremarkable gameplay.
Finally, four of the five bodies hidden in Hopkins State Park have been relocated to allow for a fresh playthrough of the map. Thank you so much for playing DOGMAN,
I hope you enjoy this update, and the ones to come.
Until next time, farewell.
- Daniel, developer of DOGMAN
All changes made in update 1.0.8:
- Hopkins State Park Remaster
- New Cabins/3 variants
- Ranger Tower Interiors
- Changed end credits music
- Changed end credits screen
- Changed State Park Dogman's collision box to help with any issues getting stuck
- Total number of grass foliage actors reduced from 4 Million to 230 Thousand
- New Police Car Model
- Updated loading image and level select image for Hopkins State Park
- Menu background video has been changed
- Player jump height has been reduced
- In-Game park maps have been updated
- Fixed an issue that caused the player's HUD to overlap the loading screen on Hopkins State Park