FTessaro - Lead Programmer
Hey everyone, it’s been another month of intense work, design and code changes for the diet system, based upon the enormously helpful community feedback which we’ve highly appreciated.
You’ve likely noticed other additions that are already available in the Mechanic Test branch, such as the new pickup system for herbivores, allowing them to remove pieces of edible plants to carry, eat or swallow. The same mechanic also applies to fruits that are now fully interactable, which are able to be snatched from the actual tree. We’ve also added digging animations for certain creatures, this process destroys the flower but allows the animal to devour the roots that lay beneath. The plant spawners have also had modifications applied to them, making them more efficient and it includes cluster spawns for certain types of plants like the horned melons, as an example. Besides all that, we’ve made some changes to the UI, mostly in the character panel to account for the new needed information related to diet and fracture.
Plus some new animations applied to the fracture system and several bug fixes in general, but mostly everything lately has been related to Diet and Fracture systems.
dmIV - Programmer
I started the month working on tail physics. It’s animation-based which gives us much better performance and reliability in exchange for not supporting collision. We also had to look through basically all the different actions each dinosaur can perform and selectively disable the physics where it didn’t look right. This included the tails clipping into the ground or not showing enough movement in tail-focused actions like the tail slam or the Hypsi jump charge.
I also made changes to how mud works. The first few versions ended up being quite deadly so it had to be toned down a bit. The final version is not much different from walking normally. Heavier dinosaurs can sink down quite deep which results in slower movement and increased stamina drain when moving. I also enabled resting and wallowing in deep mud, it looks like a fun way to chill with your friends!
We wanted to take a look at replacing the scent particles with icons. It went through several iterations so we could get a feel for each one. The most obvious one was just placing the icons on the food/water directly. We also tried a compass style to keep the screen more empty. The current version is a circle around the character in the world that hasn’t made it to your hands yet. We’ve been looking at feedback for the different styles to make sure we end up going with what’s best for the game.
Amar0k - Programmer
More backend work from me over the last month as I have mostly finished the integration of Easy Anti Cheat as those of you who have participated in the mechanic test may have noticed. Linux server testing also seems to be going extraordinarily well and we are looking forward to releasing this to the public soon.
Recently, AI has started to get some much needed attention and has seen some big improvements with a lot of work left to go. The Carno has been introduced to Spiro along with the Compy and various animals.
The boar will put up a fight and the rabbit will now burrow if you can't catch it quick enough. Over time the majority of these animals will have some quirky behaviour to make them more interesting to interact with.
Seiza - Video Editor
Besides the "Field Observation" video (of which you will see more of in the future) and other small projects, I've also focused a lot on the work on the Update 4 release trailer in the last months.
The Diet System and the Fracture System offer potential for two completely different moods in the trailer. While the Diet part can be presented rather calm and slow, the Fracture part has to be fast and dynamic. To achieve this, I mixed two very different soundtracks and created a suitable transition.
The two new mechanics also had to be explained a little closer in the trailer. The Diet System is especially hard to visualize without it having a HUD indication. So you can expect more informative texts to the cinematic shots this time. I already finished the planning and the filming and editing is in a good place too. Currently the Update 4 release trailer is longer than the Update 3 release trailer, I can't wait to show you the result! Here is a little preview:
VisualTech48 - 3D Environment Artist
Since I didn’t cover the previous DevBlog, I’ll be expanding mine a bit in detail.
These past 2 months have been heavily focused on the Dockyard and all its planning and peripherals. Tapwing has made wonderful concepts that you have most likely seen, and with this, we went full ahead with the first initial blockout of the dockyard:
Keep in mind this is extremely early and changes will be made no doubt, but it gives a proper scale on what's to come, and the sheer size of it. We might decrease it by a bit but this is the general idea of the size.
Besides that, Dockyard received its own road system, alongside the corresponding signage, leaks, damages, etc.
With that came a completely new and reworked floor shader to encompass a lot of cool maps which would make it truly shine, such as progressive “random” damages to the road, sidewalks, and the floor in general.
As well a new Decal Trim mesh has been added, to add neat detailing alongside any wall or any part of the mesh we want. A great example is the Dockyard perimeter fence:
With a great addition of new materials and textures:
Lastly I’ve been working on the Dockyard Kit, which is a task that is quite large due to the variation and sheer size of it. That has encompassed pretty much the whole of this month, starting with the models that the kit needs. We have a bunch of sloped items and roofing which is a challenge on its own to fit and make modular without breaking the system at hand. Preview:
Lastly, the shader. The bane of my existence. The shader of the buildings for the Dockyard and the future iterations of any kit from now on will be handled differently.
The shader has been redone, using 4 colors instead of 8-9, with extensive overhaul to simplicity, yet unique for each building. It's partly based on already “known” ideas but implemented in a per building (class) basis, and combined with various technologies.
In simple terms, the way we build buildings now is a bit more performant, and we are able to paint unique damage/leaks/ on each building, at a cost of the material slightly.
This is still in development. but here is a quick glance at it (ignore the missing interior)
The shader features damage/leaks, and a custom color overlay on some parts, which we want (painting lines across the building for instance). And that is where we stand for these 2 months! Cheers!
Tapwing - 2D Artist
A contrast to our brawler Utahraptor, Austroraptor is our hydro-savi Dromaeosaurid of The Isle.
Many water birds served as inspiration to its lifestyle. A mix of the black heron's hunting style and supraorbital ridge of hawks lead to the idea of Astro’s prominent brow feathers, shading its eyes, allowing it to detect creatures in the water before retracting those feathers for its osprey-like pounce. In the realm of mobility it’s quite nimble on land and while not spectacularly speedy in water, it is still more mobile than most, being able to dive to escape prying eyes of larger land predators.
As a final feature inspired by swans, it seemed like a suitable idea that Austros might be able to carry its less mobile hatchling on treks down the winding river. Just make sure not to lose track of your baby should a fight break out! (Note: Nature sketches are not always indicative of the final in-game mechanics)
Jake Baardse - 3D Artist
Over the past few months I got to work on one of the more complicated edible plant assets, Sumac, Mountain Ash, Variegated Orange and the Mango tree. Unlike with previous assets this one did not involve a lot of Zbrush work, the only assets that really needed sculpting were the fruits themselves.
The tree branch cards and the trees themselves were constructed with the help of substance and speed tree. Substance for making the trunk texture as well as various leaf textures, and speed tree for the final construction and placement of all the elements. After hours of careful node editing and value tweaks the results speak for themselves.
The way the fruit wound up working ingame turned out pretty cool. All in all this is one of my favorite edible plant assets.
Hypno - QA Lead
This won’t be a long post, as most of you already know the public mechanic testing is underway and is our full focus at the moment; almost everything that myself and the QA team have been working on is already available on the quality assurance branch. Besides that, I’d like to thank everyone for the assistance thus far on the new systems. Without your feedback, we would be finding it much more difficult to determine how the systems should be designed and balanced. We recognise that they are far from perfect, therefore we will continue to monitor your feedback closely as we make further changes to them - keep it coming!
It should also be noted that the team is very much aware of the current performance issues with the game, which we’re thoroughly investigating and working to resolve.
Besides assisting with feedback on the new systems and their balancing, QA has been keeping on top of the community bug reports. These reports are checked daily by the team and are without a doubt the best way to help us out in making gameplay as smooth as possible. If you know of any bugs, please submit them here: Bug Report - Google Form
KissenKitten - Producer
This month has been full of challenges and hurdles that we’ve been tackling and leaping over left and right! Thank you all so much for hopping on for the mechanic test and assisting us with diets, fractures and their satellite systems. We still have more content to accompany diets including about 13 more plant species, changes to carnivore diets and other additions to how diets function overall that we refrained from including in the initial test. As a reminder, the fracture system is going to expand across all land-based locomotion (walk, trot, sprint). With that being a considerable animation undertaking, we will be adding them to the game in batches as we complete them. We still have more work to do now that we have your feedback but are pleased with the reception of the first implementation of these mechanics.
We’re also in the process of making some hard-hitting changes to address the harsh performance issues you may have been experiencing. Which has taken up a fair bit of time. But we’ll provide more information on that at a later date. While those issues are being parsed, several members of the team have since moved on to Update 5. Laying the groundwork for what is to come with the long awaited nesting, skin and night vision features.
Animation wise, there’s more to come for diets. Gotta actually crack those coconuts open in the future after all. Not just for a tasty, thirst-quenching treat, but for other reasons as well. The goal here is to provide more interaction with the environment as we know that has been relatively minimal in the past. As mentioned before, there’s more coming for fractures and some things in the gore pipeline that are being prototyped. We think you gore fans will be pleased at the results should we be able to do it how we’d like. So wish us luck on that front! The Troodon is also well on its way with a plethora of animations already completed which some of you keen-eyed folks have already discovered. We’ll be showcasing some of those animations for you guys soon so you can get an idea of how eerie the serpentine envenomator is. Especially when together and especially at night. See you in October!