We've got a lot of cool new things to share, but first, a word about the "eggstravaganza" we just had..
The Easter Eggcitement Is Over
Okay, we've eggshausted our puns. With the end of the Easter event upon us, we have concluded our first community scavenger hunt. Over the course of 6 days, players collaborated in-game and on Discord to find all the clues and decipher their riddles, unlocking special time-limited item codes.
Unravelling the mysteries of the scavenger hunt tested your knowledge of dinosaurs, prehistoric media and videogames. From a fictional phone number that provided a key piece of the puzzle, to an alphabet substitution test based on dinosaur nicknames, dozens of fragments were figured out and finally pieced together by the efforts of the intrepid primal codebreakers.
A real big thankyou to everyone who got involved!
We all had a lot of fun, and the team is already thinking about another similar event in the future.
In other news- points bonuses in Capture the Egg are back to normal now, and the Oviraptors have been netted and cleared out of the Extinction Store (FYI- if you still see any hanging around, you may not be fully connected to the PCE servers!).
Extinction Roadmap
With the Easter event out of the way, here's a sneak peek at what we're working on next...!
MAYHEM is up first, planned for the end of next month. We're introducing model "mutations" to PCE, which replace the default model for a dino class with a genetically different version. These modifications can dramatically change the look of your dinosaur, with some giving the *appearance* of a neighbouring species.
Talented community artists like Velociboy and DinoBear are already working on several variations...
Also coming next month are unique human and dinosaur sprays to use in-game. Whilst humans are blessed with opposable thumbs and can make beautiful art as seen below, the dinosaurs haven't quite figured out how to use a spray can (yet). Instead they will use the blood of their enemies and those sharp claws to leave their mark on the world.
(Alongside big content updates like these, we will also be continuing to address bugs and other issues, such as investigating just what is going on with Hunt mode).
MELTDOWN is the second major update in the works, and should be out sometime in June. This is a huge multi-week event, with a lot of community participation. Debuting with the Meltdown update will be the next two officially accepted Workshop maps, and they're HOT HOT HOT!
...PC-Volcano by ArchShiranui
...GTTC-PhantomCave by L.Merah
We are also working on several improvements to the ranking system, which involves tweaking the rewards received from rankups and challenge completions, and allowing players to "evolve" by starting fresh. Evolving resets your current rank to zero, but will give you something special for doing so!
There are 2 new community contests that we're planning at the moment as well, which will be announced in-between these updates, both here and on the official Discord.
And on top of that, we have another big surprise waiting to be unveiled closer to Meltdown's release which we're bursting to talk about-- but can't reveal right now, sorry.
We hope you're excited for what we've shown so far, keep an eye out for future announcements!
Extinction Store: it's rewind time!
Since game updates resumed at the tail end of last year, the number of impressive new creations from the community has skyrocketed. In fact, we've just passed the threshold of 500 items officially accepted on Steam Workshop!
To mark this milestone (and allow us to put all our efforts into the next major game updates), we're rolling back the clock to feature some of the best items that have been accepted since we returned in October. We have a handful of new skins in today's update, but check back over the next few weeks for a selection of modern classics cycling back in-store.
If you missed out first time around, now might be your chance to grab the skin that got away!
Patch Notes
We are pushing another patch out today, to end the Easter festivities and resolve some minor bugs...
- Easter Eggstravaganza disabled
- Double EXP when playing CTE mode is now ended
- Cleaned up some crazy scribbles someone had left everywhere
- PC-Borealis: fixed CTE human spawn protection being enabled in TDM
- PC-Borealis: various optimizations
- Sniper rifle damage at max range increased from 20% to 60%
- Updated the Excited Oviraptor taunt to be less back-breaking
- Fixed a rigging oversight with the feathered Novaraptor mesh
- Fixed white paws Novaraptor skin using incorrect feathers type