Instinction News

With the end of the year behind us, we thought the Instinction Tribe would enjoy a look back at 2022 – touching on some of the biggest moments from the development of the title throughout the past year.

In this video you’ll hear from Tom and Jay as they reflect on the biggest moments from 2022, and also give you a first look at lots of never-before-seen artwork from our game. We hope this is an end-of-the-year present our community can get excited about.

Hold onto your butts as there is even more to come in 2023 and beyond.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Don't forget to wishlist Instinction!

ADDITIONAL INSTINCTION LINKS:
Instinction Website Instinction Twitter Instinction Instagram: Instinction Facebook

VIDEO PARTNER LINKS:
Hillfarrance Venture Capital NZGCP Intel Announcement Video

Many of our supporters may remember that we showcased our trailer for Instinction in October of 2021 – providing a glimpse at a vast and vibrant landscape filled with exotic locations, deadly prehistoric creatures, and an expansive world for players to explore.

Two brand new dinosaur reveals are about to be released.

Since the debut of this trailer towards the end of last year, we have been busy behind the scenes – working on the next phase of development for the upcoming title and we have been growing our team. This resulted in New Zealand-based investment firm Hillfarrance investing an additional $2 million into the game – providing the funds to take production to the next level.

Hillfarrance’s Managing Partner & Founder, Rob Vickery, said the following about his partnership with Hashbane Interactive:

“With over 50 years of combined gaming experience at Hillfarrance, when we meet a team building a game that we cannot wait to play they certainly get our attention. This happened when Jade and Courtney presented what they had already accomplished with Hashbane’s first title, Instinction.
Aside from crafting a story and gameplay demo that kept us wanting more, they had captured the imagination of millions of gamers worldwide via their launch trailer. Equally as impressive was their ability to build partnerships with some of the titans of the gaming industry – such as Epic and Intel.”

The game promises to take advantage of its roots in Unreal Engine 5 – producing a truly immersive experience which the team hope will give Dinosaur Fans the videogame of their dreams. Although news on the production is still heavily under wraps currently, Rob was also keen to share how he hopes Instinction will shape the New Zealand Game Industry:

“We are delighted to increase our investment into Hashbane to $2m and help fund the expansion of our team to complete the next phase of game development. In what we believe is the largest ever video game studio investment from an NZ-based venture fund, we are helping lay the foundations for a new, Triple-A game development studio with a wildly audacious vision.
This vision is attracting some of the most exciting talent in the industry to our shores, whilst also bringing the world’s eyeballs to our burgeoning game economy. Perhaps more importantly to our purpose-driven fund, Hashbane will also hopefully encourage our youth to seek out careers in game development and the creative economy.”

The investment has allowed us to bring on more world-class talent to the project. Cameron Suey has recently joined as part of the game’s narrative team – with previous working titles including Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Marvel’s Avengers.
Prehistoric Planet’s Lead Creature Model & Sculpt Artist, Sanjay Singh, has also joined the Instinction team. Soon to be joining our team are multiple AAA developers, artists and animators, these aren't just individuals with great talent, but great attitudes too!
We've begun to look for more suitable office space to facilitate the growing local team.

When asked about the newest additions to the studio, founders Courtney O’Neill and Jade Saunders said:

“We are incredibly excited for Cameron and Sanjay to join our team. Cameron’s in-depth understanding of narrative design will help to enrich Instinction’s story, and Sanjay’s prior experience delivering some of the best dinosaurs for television will help to immerse our players in the encounters they have with these animals.
As a studio, we are so thankful for the support Hillfarrance have given us. We hope that Instinction will be a catalyst for kickstarting the Games Industry here in New Zealand – showing that with the right projects, we can put our country on the map and create an industry which can be world-leading in its own right.”

Instinction can be wishlisted on Steam - Steam Wishlist
Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

In our next blog(next week), we'll dive into a bit more detail about the team and share some unseen footage and artwork. Future blogs will include insights about the updated dinosaur list, more about the characters in the game and the processes we employ in every aspect of game development.

And there's a little something we're working on for our community, any guess what it might be?




If you haven't yet seen the Carno reveal, you should take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kteJdmQAC-o

Oh and did we mention we received an Epic MegaGrant last month?



For additional updates, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

Nice to have a little cameo on the Future Games Show. Be sure to check out the full video here.
We're working on something big for our next collaboration with GamesRadar.

For additional updates, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

Here's the video link for Diabloceratops: Diabloceratops Reveal

As development continues and our team and internal expertise grows we intend to iterate and implement improvements to better correspond with scientific data surrounding the visual and behavioral accuracies of our extinct species in the game. For Instinction it's a delicate balance of realistic dinosaurs and behaviours vs. a compelling narrative gaming experience and we take that into consideration whenever we prepare dinosaur 3D model briefs and game related ideas.

For additional updates, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

We are fortunate enough to be talking with some passionate experts in various fields including prehistoric ecology, evolutionary biology, and paleontology to more accurately depict biomes, dinosaur behaviors, locomotion and appearance. More details about our process in creating new dinosaurs, and some examples further in the blog.


Theory of evidence and speculation is great and can only get you so far, although with talented artists, technicians and animators, a cohesive team with a shared vision and foundation can take that theory and create some meaningful gaming experiences, that's our objective. Not conjecture, but results.


If you like booty, our dinosaurs will all have cloacal vents.


With that being said, ahem, in our early development we made use of placeholder dinosaur models, broken wrists on raptors were a thing :(, we hadn't tackled feathers or pyncnofibers yet, to be fair we didn't even realise how much the paleo community cared and so they should, we just wanted to create the best dinosaur game in modern history. Mind you, some of the great artists that contributed to our October trailer we still work with, but we always knew once we were able to share and validate a community interest in Instinction that we needed to tackle and focus on creating unique and accurate models and animations.


When Hillfarrance supported our growth as a game development studio, the floodgates were opened. We were no longer just developing while operating a commercial 3D business, doing research and development, self-funding and building our team internally, we suddenly were able to grow the team externally by bringing on accomplished and experienced talent. We work with some truly spectacular experts in their own right and as a whole, the entire production, development and quality took on a new level of growth. Whats more incredible is we have relationships with some true veterans in game development and in some cases will be joining Hashbane.


What brought it all together was the online community that interact and support us, it brings tears to our eyes, a realisation of a vision, the validation that the game means something to them and we have the opportunity to make that a reality, a truly humbling experience. Thank YOU for the support!


We've spoken about Daryl before, our composer in a earlier blogpost on our website. How could realism in a game, movie or any other medium be fully realised or experienced without impeccable sound? All great directors will reiterate the importance of sound design to facilitate an exceptional story-telling experience. For those fortunate enough to hear, we don't fully acknowledge the importance of the role audio plays in story telling, it is fundamental to invoke emotion and aids in visual storytelling, and the best story telling takes into account every last little sound you hear.

We had a lot of positive comments about our October trailer, to put it lightly Daryl did everything you hear except for the voice over(he's shit at female voices). Go back and listen to every audio cue (headsets recommended).


We'll cover the location, lore, architecture and some concept design in a seperate blog post.

APPROACH TO NEW MODELS

When approaching a new dinosaur 3D model it is important to have a revision done on the scientific evidence by a paleo expert, collating evidence and expressing opinion on their take on how the animal should look and behave, and then also take into account the narrative set out for the game with the opinion of the creative art director who prepares a brief alongside the scientific review. There are many iterations during this process to make sure that the model retains integrity and artistic direction. The model needs to be created, revised, retopologised, rigged and then ultimately animated. In our case some of the animation, primary(main movements) and secondary(subtle movements) is handled inside Unreal Engine. Here's an example of one of our Paleo reviews that we use in part of our modelling briefs: Brief Link


Everything starts off with a brief and paleo scientific data, art direction including skin colours and scales, then the 3D modelers get to work, massing out the model in their desired 3D sculpting software. We're focusing on the bull first, uninjured, then iteratively we will focus on other variations after this model is complete, here's our Diabloceratops process:
Decent stance, weak silhouette, we want to find a good looking Diablo

Revision are discussed, compared to the holotype:
These iterations can be complex or simple depending on the experience and relationship between modelers and art direction. There are usually multiple revisions.

Another update(many iterations later):
Sexy legs, looks more menacing, we need to remember the feet aren't like an elephant, when rigged we need control of individual toes.

We discuss theoretical muscle definition and position, talk scales based off of evidential skin impressions, even related families, next.
More comments from art director, scale refinement, retopology, texturing, rigging for animation. Great artists make this all easy.

Then through some decent collaboration we end up with this:
These are low resolution viewport images in Blender, not rendered and not even close to what you will see in Unreal Engine.

We've uploaded the animated model in UE5 on our YT channel. Here's a peak of the rig:
For animators: there is a FK/IK switch, the eyes dilate and slit, the nostrils inflate, wiggle dynamics and more blendshapes.

We're working to include all these animation controls and implementations operating within Unreal Engine 5.


We haven't even touched on plants, general textures and foliage, but we wont bore you this time, we'll cover this in Development Diary 01.1 - Realism continued.

Here's the video link for Diabloceratops: Diabloceratops Reveal

For additional updates, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.