A new update is now available for Primal Carnage: Extinction on Steam.
This release brings a collection of small but important improvements across the board to gameplay, UI and more. Today also marks the start of a special Flyer-themed event in store, with dozens of new Pteranodon and Tupandactylus items being added!
This is the first of two game updates for June, with the second kicking off the Summer Heatwave event when it arrives in just a couple of weeks. You can read the highlights from today's update below, for a full list of changes scroll to the bottom.
Tuning up the new Weapons
This update adds extra polish and stat tweaks for the compound bow & burst rifle which were recently added to the game. Using the bow is now much smoother, with less hitching when firing multiple shots in a row. It's faster and has extra regular ammo, but you must be more mindful of spread when pulling back a shot. There's also new details such as unique effects for charged up explosive arrow hits.
Burst Rifle melee has been made much snappier and more responsive, with more animation polish. Additionally, the burst rifle scope overlay is now cleaner and higher quality with no transparency issues.
Tyrant Roar Sanity Check
The roar buffs that the Tyrant classes provide can seriously turn the tide of a battle if deployed at the right moment. This has always been one of the goals for them, to make having a Tyrant around a valuable thing. However, we recently discovered that it was possible for multiple roars of the same type to stack. So with specific timing, you could end up with a 3x damage boost if three Rexes happened to roar close enough to each other. This was obviously unintended, so it has been fixed with today's update.
After feedback from the community, we have also reduced Tyrant roar buff duration from 30 seconds to 12 seconds for all Tyrants. This makes it less likely that you will have overlapping buffs from e.g. Spino and Rex at the same time, plus reduces the chances that Tyrants can do a rolling buff after dying.
Rolling buffs are where a Tyrant has roared before being killed, and due to buff duration that buff is still active when they respawn (with a new roar instantly ready to buff again). If they're fast enough the Tyrant can keep their team buffed indefinitely. It's somewhat of an exploit that we're looking to cut down with this change and will be keeping an eye on.
Speed Blending
Dinosaurs now smoothly transition from their slower sprint turning speed to their faster walking turn speed. Previously, you would instantly swap from one to the other if you stopped sprinting, which made certain classes able to turn much quicker than they were supposed to.
This change mainly affects Bruisers and Tyrants, who now have more momentum when exiting a sprint. They now take a moment to slow down from a full-on charge, and have much more natural feeling blends between walking and running. The handling of these classes now properly reflects the heavy weight of the animals, with it being harder to change direction the faster you're going.
Some TLC has been lavished on the other dinosaurs movement characteristics as well. Flyers now have more consistent diving momentum and carry that speed for longer when coming out of a divebomb. Finally, raptors have increased acceleration to let them dash off into a sprint quicker now.
HUD Help
We're continuing to add new features to the in-game menus and user interface with this update, including helpful notifiers for certain gameplay events. After roaring as a dinosaur, you will now hear a sound when your roar has recharged coupled with the roar icon glowing for a few seconds. A new UI sound also plays when a buff is applied to your dino. This will be expanded in our next update with a whole new popup info system for dinosaur roars.
On the human side, there are new quality of life improvements for the weapon HUD. For starters. you can now choose between the standard RELOADING indicator text or a simplified circular reloading indicator. The charging indicator for weapons such as the stungun, machete etc. has been updated with a smoother animation that's cleaner to read and the size of the chargeup spinner is now adjusted by the crosshair scale setting.
After much tinkering, the weapon HUD is now visible when using sniper scopes. This means that if you are aiming, for example, the burst rifle or sniper rifle - you can now actually see how much ammo you have left. Previously, scope overlays covered up this vital information.
Another new function is the crosshair will now turn red when hovering over a target you can hit with your gun. This has been a long requested feature and has definitely improved human gameplay from what we've seen.
Flyer Store Takeover
Flyer Season is here, and the birds have come home to roost...
Until the next update arrives, these flying fiends are taking up residence in the in-game store. There are dozens of new Pteranodon and Tupandactylus skins available and a handful of new mutations such as the Guidracos Ptera and Pirarucu Tupa.
There are also a whole flock of classic Flyer items returning, including several taunts. As of this update, we have added taunt previews to the in-game store, so you can finally try before you buy. Simply click a taunt in the store to play that animation on a loop and see how it looks!
Full Changelog
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
- Tyrants now take longer to slow down from sprinting to walking
- Faster walking to sprint speed acceleration for raptors
- Reduced cerato walk turn speed
- Reduced carno sprint turn speed
- Reduced minimum speed required for air ramming as tupa
- Adjusted momentum on Flyers when going from divebomb to regular flight
- Flyer diving speed multiplier is now the same 3x boost regardless of whether you are sprinting
- Reduced control lock time on Ceratosaurus tail swipe
- Reduced secondary attack stamina cost for Carnotaurus
- Reduced secondary attack refire delay / control lock time for Carno
BURST RIFLE CHANGES:
- Updated burst rifle scope overlay
- Fixed burst rifle scope-in animation "stuttering"
- Made burst rifle melee attack more responsive
- Fixed melee animation playing in 3rd person when shooting the burst rifle
- Made sure burst rifle melee does not apply knockback to bruisers / tyrants
BOW CHANGES:
- Increased bow default ammo reserve to 32
- Increased regular arrow max damage to 140 (charged shot)
- Slightly faster rate of fire / reload speed for bow
- Crosshair is now hidden when you are not aiming the bow
- Charging a shot now quickly reduces the spread over time as you draw back
- There are now different effects for charged & uncharged explosive arrows
- Fixed some issues with spam clicking when using the bow
- Fixed explosive arrows causing bleed status sometimes
- Fixed explosive arrows not dealing enough damage to their owner
- Fixed arrow model still being visible when no arrows are left
- Fixed no arrow being visible on bow unless you press alt fire
- Fixed arrows incorrectly disappearing sometimes
- Fixed solo mode showing the wrong arrows
MENU / UI CHANGES:
- Crosshair now turns red when aiming at a target in weapons range
- Added new weapon charge-up indicator with smoother animation
- Can now choose between default RELOADING text or circle indicator in options menu
- Crosshair scale option now affects weapon charge indicators too
- Fixed ammo counter / weapon HUD not being visible when scoped in
- Fixed round number not being shown on the HUD in GTTC
- Added taunt animation previews to the in-game store
- Added new flyer themed scene variants to main menu
DINOSAUR CHANGES
- Added a sound for when roar is fully charged
- Added new sounds for activating / receiving a buff
- HUD roar icon now has a pulsing glow that shows up briefly when roar is recharged
- Fixed tyrants sometimes being able to run while netted
- Reduced tyrant roar buff duration from 30 secs to 12 secs
- Fixed multiple tyrant roars (of the same type) being stackable
OTHER CHANGES
- Decreased respawn wave timer in Get To The Chopper mode from 20 secs to 15 secs
- Fixed certain plants and vines blocking weapons fire on PC-ForestChasm
- Updated integrum rex mutation model
- Fixed only one eye animating on the Cerato Prayer Taunt
- Fixed some regular MK pistol skins having Party Pistol properties
- Fixed urban camo MK pistol having wrong texture applied
- Upgraded texture resolution of several assets
- Updated post processing effects
We'll be back with the next major update for Primal Carnage: Extinction later this month! It's going to be a big ol' beach party with the arrival of the new Dead Tide map...
See you when the heatwave hits!
-The Primal Carnage Team