FTessaro - Lead Programmer
Desync was the main issue on public builds since we went on a quick vacation. In the end, we found out the main issue behind it, which was a tool that helps with performance. Took some time for me to find the exact piece of code in the engine that was causing that, the lack of documentation is a big problem in those cases. Fortunately I found something and managed to decrease the desync issue, which can still be tracked and improved more, hopefully.
We also updated the engine to the latest version, which broke a few things and created more bugs, some of them are still in-game right now, like a strange sound stuttering for some people, we are investigating and will send an update as soon as possible.
Besides that, the work continues as always combating bugs, crashes and working on new features and dinosaurs. Deinosuchus and Ptera are taking a little longer this time because their gameplay is very different from most animals in-game, and we want to make it right. Have been working on Deinosuchus, mostly, with its different ways to interact with food and combat, especially the lunge ability. This ability is similar to pounce in some aspects, but won´t be an automatic ability, the player will have to time the lunge with bite to actually grab prey. Also, this ability has different effects when swimming in deep water, shallow or even on land.
dmIV - Programmer
An issue that affected many of our players is that sometimes players get out of sync with the server and they see your character running in an incorrect direction. At this time they are able to attack and damage you before they receive a correction from the server. This led to many annoyances because players were taking damage unfairly. I addressed this issue by adding a server-side validation. Hopefully this will reduce your frustration when playing the game.
There were a few methods that people could use to safe-log instantly. It was quite annoying to track down what was happening exactly and it turns out that those cases are treated as a “kick” by the engine instead of a standard disconnection. I added a check to make sure that the instant safe-log only happens when someone was kicked for real.
I don’t think a month goes by without me touching our animation blueprint. I made several new improvements, especially to diving. It feels much better now and I also addressed some more specific cases. I also spent much time setting up the water walking system. What it means is that the animal detects the ground when swimming and uses its legs to “walk” when close enough.
Another new mechanic for the Deino is called water sense. This lets you detect vibrations in the water you are in. It’s a passive ability, but you can hold the scent key (Q by default) to extend your detection range when stationary.
There were a few other smaller changes, like the Tenontosaurus claw being usable repeatedly or meat chunks being scentable. There are still several features in the works that we need time to work on, but I expect that we will be able to get them in your hands soon. I hope you are as excited as I am to work on them!
Wedge - Sound Designer
This past month has seen me creating and implementing sounds to the new mechanics being introduced to both the Deinosuchus and Pteranodon as well as creating more suitable foley. Considering these two are the first water-based and first flight-based additions to Evrima, this has involved creating bespoke sounds that fit the unique circumstances for each of these creatures.
The Pteranodon flight sounds have been improved adding more variations in the strength of the wing flaps and a dynamic system based on velocity to accompany; when velocity is slow the flap sounds are slightly stronger, and vice versa. A flight wind system has been introduced, also controlled by the velocity of the Pteranodon. The intensity and pitch of the wind sound is increased as the velocity does, resulting in a rushing wind sound when diving or falling. Subtle wind whoosh sounds have been created for moments where players are passed by a Pteranodon, and are ready to be implemented. Although the new wind system does achieve this doppler effect, I think the combination of a systemic approach layered with recordings will further improve the believability.
For the Deinosuchus a lot of attention has gone into its unique water sounds, taking into account that the sounds need to suit the movement, but also be subtle enough that it is viable for the creature to hunt undetected. Subtle trickling and paddling sounds have replaced the more blatant quality of the generic swim sounds. The introduction of animations for the water walking will allow me to also play subtler sounds. At the moment walking in shallow waters uses the land walking animations, consequently the conventional footstep sounds are played for this surface type, which does not reflect how the sound should behave. However more expressive splash sounds have their place for the Deinosuchus, such as with it’s Lunge ability.
Because the Deinosuchus introduces lots of potential for underwater gameplay, the underwater ambience and sound mix have been adjusted and will continue over the coming weeks. However they are not currently implemented correctly for all water bodies, which will be addressed as well. In addition lots of underwater supplementary sounds have been created and are gradually being implemented to support the audio immersion of underwater gameplay.
VisualTech48 - Environment Modeler
This month has been a test of patience. The new *REDACTED* (Perimeter Fences) are going as expected, there is a lot of testing to be done constantly, and it's been a wild ride so far with all the fixes with it, but all in all going the direction we want.
These fences require some more additional planning as said and in its textures in which I’ve made a whole new trim kit, alongside a new concrete base and its own decal trim mesh kit for heavy and huge leaks.
That alongside a new really cool and simple animated model that should be coming at some point, which some might have seen, the Satellite Dish Tower, which has a lot of joints and I do believe is a model that I pushed myself even further to get it detailed properly in a constraint time, so It worked out really cool.
Baardo - Dinosaur Modeler
Over the last few months I've been working with the concept team to create elder versions of the various playable species in the game. From a design perspective it was a bit of a tight rope as we found it important to make the elder versions easily identifiable from their adult counterparts while also being similar enough in shape and proportion so they could reuse animations. Care was also taken to make sure that they worked with the existing topology so there is minimal technical overhead to their implementation. All in all it proved to be quite fun to take the already monsterfied dinos and make them even more gnarly and monstery.
Tapwing - Concept Artist
If I had to sum Kentro up, it’s our smaller, faster more offensive stegosaurid. I used a blend of oryx and porcupine as references for this one, somewhat elegant and very stand-off-ish.
There’s a few ways we could go about attacks/abilities on this one, a sweeping tail strike (as opposed to our stegosaurus’s stabbing strike), the shoulder check and something in the vein of a defensive stance - creating an aimed wall of spines to fend off foes, but we’ll have to see how that goes programming-wise.
Chubby looking yet nothing but muscle. I largely just referenced bighorn sheep for these guys; territorial, highly competitive and ready to showdown against anything around it’s size. In the way of abilities, we have the famous charge and a bone crushing head strike. Maybe it could even be more resistant to pounces and grabs.
KissenKitten - Producer
This month for me has run me a little ragged but not in a bad way I suppose. It’s been filled to the top with documents, animations and interview processes. For the team, although a lot of production time went into getting the current hotfix to live, I am still very pleased with the team’s forward momentum on Update #3. My time in regard to Update #3 has been solidly spent on prototyping and polishing.
I’ll lift the veil a little on how that shakes down for those interested. Forgive me if you’ve heard it before. So, we first start with the mechanics themselves on paper, or on screen in this sense. After the mechanics have been decided upon, the animation team enters into the prototyping phase. During which, Bryan and I come up with how we think the motion should look when performing that particular action. Sometimes there’s crude ms-paint drawings involved lol. The prototypes are made quickly and usually lack a lot of the polish we like our animations to have in their more complete iterations. The reason being, that we do not want to spend too much production time on an animation that may turn out to be a complete dud for that action in-game. Sometimes the idea and the final result do not align. So prototypes must always be a rough draft to save on production time. The prototype is very rarely what you see in the final version you get to play as. Once we’ve completed it, we send it over to the programming team and they plug in the prototype animation into the mechanics they’re building for that creature. Sometimes, it looks great right out of the gate. But most often, some adjustments will need to be made to the animations in order to get them to not only look good but function nicely as well. An animation that looks great outside of the engine, won’t necessarily look great in-game on import. Some tweaking is often needed. So a lot of prototyping in both animation and programming has gone into the Deino’s numerous lunges and modes of locomotion as well as the Ptera’s skimming, flying blends, landings, jumps and more. However, once we have the basic foundation set for how we want those abilities to generally look and the mechanical function is behaving how we want, then we lean hard into polishing up those prototypes and turning them into final versions. We’re really looking forward to completing this update and getting it into your hands!
Closing Remarks
Now that we’re back from our Holiday break we’re refreshed, eager and roaring to go. Whilst we’ve had a few bumps in the road in terms of performance (improvements still ongoing), the Pteranodon & Deinosuchus are shaping up to be our most mechanically intricate playables yet and we're all incredibly excited to see what shenanigans you all get up to! That’ll wrap it up for this month folks, look forward to seeing you in February! - Punchpacket.