DevBlog #26
[h2]FTessaro - Lead Programmer[/h2]
It’s been very a busy month overseeing the stress test and fixing bugs. We also upgraded our security and added a variety of quality of life features for the skin system, which were built upon feedback provided by our very helpful stress testers, such as being able to rename the skin preset slots, save and share patterns as well as some improvements for the camera.
In addition, we’ve also continued to make headway on the development of Update 6, such as participating in design meetings and the planning for the expanded diet system, which should also bring forth the new Migration system, as well as the Gore system. So despite Update 5 not having been released yet, the game production continues, such as the development of the Troodon for Update 6.5. We can confirm that the Troodon is feature complete now, while balance and QA testing are still pending since QA is currently focused on helping with the stress testing.
Besides that, there are some cool systems that I have been working on in the background, such as prototype concepts for the burrowing mechanic and a fully dynamic scar system, that doesn't have a release update yet, but should be able to give players the desired “permanent scars” feature.
For now that is all I can talk about, see you next month!
[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
Most of the month was spent fixing bugs and adding some finishing touches before the update goes out. We have gotten a lot of useful feedback from our stress test which you may have seen some videos from already. Some of the more important changes include making the nest widget less obtrusive, it now scales down with distance and fades out when there’s nothing important going on like bad temperature or invites. Nest placement has also been improved to work on steeper surfaces. Hatchlings now automatically join the parents’ group, but they will also be removed automatically if the group is over the standard limit when they hit juvenile.
Originally all of the nesting system required both parents to be alive. During actual gameplay however this turned out to be quite limiting due to one of the parents often dying or having to log out. So I ended up making some changes to make single parents a possibility.
I also had time to work on something that will be coming after this update. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but it has to do with the movement of a dinosaur you might have seen some teasers for on our Discord server.
[h2]VisualTech48 - 3D Environment Artist[/h2]
There is a reason I’ve missed the last months DevBlog is that I’ve been working on items such as rocks, which have been ported to the game to be fully usable and customizable to our needs. This means pretty much last month I’ve been making those rocks proper and optimized.
We now have heavily detailed cliffs, large rock formations and proper detailing kit with them for the environment. I won’t go into more detail with them, but hopefully you will see them soon enough.
Besides that, I’ve been working heavily on set dressing for the flooring, aka. Base plan foundations, of various locations which Jace has been crafting.
As well, I’ve made a few large prop set pieces for the Dockyard, such as two variations of silos and one fuel silo:
In addition I’ve worked on the monorail base, so we can incorporate it in the map, which features more detail and changes to the mesh itself:
And lastly, I want to showcase, the Aviary. Which will be soon featured in the game.
[h2]Tapwing - 2D Artist[/h2]
Shantungosaurus
Return of a titan. I didn’t get to see it much in it’s heyday, but whenever I did see them they always looked like a force to be reckoned with. Which made me eager to put it’s full size to work.
A major source of inspiration were moose and other sizeable ungulates. With the idea of it being a fickle animal, ranging from benign to knocking your lights out without a moment’s notice. We were leaning toward abilities where it could throw it’s weight around, from knocking others down, crushing the air out of them and of course it’s notable stomp. While you may think they’re relatively safe to be around, you’d be taking a big risk getting too comfortable with this hadrosaur.
Ankylosaurus
Normally you’re always going to have to worry about the bigger creatures on the isle, ankylosaurus might be the opposite of that.
Borrowing inspiration from armadillos and some lizards, we very much wanted to keep the ‘anky doesn’t care’ tone with this animal. Hunkering down and shrugging off attacks from larger predators, but needing to exercise a little more strategy against smaller foe, leaning towards attackers to hide the sides of its underbelly from smaller predators that can nip away at it’s soft spots. Some other idea’s we’re playing with are: it’s heaviness, allowing it to walk under water rather than swim to cross rivers, along with the ability to use it’s tail to get at foods some other animals might not be able to reach. And of course it wouldn’t be anky if it couldn’t crack some bones.
[h2]Hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
QA has been busy this month validating/invalidating all of the bug reports submitted by our new Stress Testing team. With these two teams working in conjunction, you should expect the playing experience for future updates to be a lot smoother than previous iterations, as performance and mechanics working currently under higher load is of utmost importance during these sessions. In the month of June alone we've validated a whopping 300 unique issues since stress testing began, so hopefully we'll have caught any glaring issues from the last update that were causing you headaches! You'll be happy to know that the areas you can drink through the ground are now a thing of the past. No more escaping the wrath of the Deinosuchus!
Besides bug validating, I've been keeping a close eye on feedback during this time and looking for trends amongst the stress testers. They've been very useful in pinpointing areas where balance has been suffering or where new mechanics aren't living up to expectations. To give a few examples without spoiling everything:
And much, much more!
[h2]Jake - 3D Artist[/h2]
These last few months I’ve been doing a lot of vegetation overhauls, we won’t be going over that today. (but they look dope and should be revealed soon) Instead we’ll go over another collection of assets I made that will serve a gameplay purpose for the juveniles. These ones take the form of various shapes of cycads. The asset was actually prototyped a few months ago but now I’ve gone and refined its visual appearance. Pretty straight forward on a technical level, just lots of texture work to make sure it looks its best.
[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
I’ve been gradually making progress on sounds for Troodon. With each new mechanic added more sounds are necessary to be made, so the list of supplementary sounds needed for each creature is now pretty extensive. Troodons attack vocals will contrast its colourful signature sounds that will be used throughout the rest of the vocals for the troodon, using gnarly aggressive sounds starting with a sharp attack to give it that fearsome snap that will alarm the unsuspecting. The sound for Troodon’s unique ability will be a mixture of these two sound styles.
I’ve also created a vocal sound for each playable when feeding their hatchlings, and a wet squishy foley sounds to accompany the regurgitation visual. Some final additions this month are missing foley and dinosaur specific sounds on all nesting animations and adjusting the tap-hold modulation on the threaten vocals so that the difference is more apparent.
[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
A big thank you to all of those that diligently participated in the Stress Test. The feedback was quite valuable and put to good use. It has been an uphill battle getting the creature foundations into a mechanically comfortable state but we’re finally almost there. With the general framework and foundations set for the animals once the gore update launches, we can move production away from such heavy-hitting mechanics for the animals and focus on bringing in new playables. Which may have unique features and abilities but not much that would cause roster-wide changes which is very good. Some of the new editions will include Beipiaosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Gallimimus and Herrerasaurus. As well as a few we’ll be getting to after those like Diabloceratops, Dilophosaurus, Baryonyx, Oviraptor, Austroraptor and more. Not necessarily in that order and perhaps with a surprise twist here or there.
On the human front, the framework for our Gen 2s has been established and will be making its way to the design team for fleshing out. We’ll finally start showing a little bit more of the development the Gen2s have been undergoing. But I digress. Update 6 will be introducing gore as mentioned before. We have some prototypes we’ll start showing off here within the next few weeks pending some art so you’ll get a rough idea of what to expect. Filipe has been hard at work on various prototypes actually.
Additionally, alongside Update 6 we’ll be including the features omitted from the initial implementation of diets as well as the accompanying migration system. If all goes well, we may also include a previously unannounced feature intended to make juvenile gameplay more fun and engaging. Be good to each other!
It’s been very a busy month overseeing the stress test and fixing bugs. We also upgraded our security and added a variety of quality of life features for the skin system, which were built upon feedback provided by our very helpful stress testers, such as being able to rename the skin preset slots, save and share patterns as well as some improvements for the camera.
In addition, we’ve also continued to make headway on the development of Update 6, such as participating in design meetings and the planning for the expanded diet system, which should also bring forth the new Migration system, as well as the Gore system. So despite Update 5 not having been released yet, the game production continues, such as the development of the Troodon for Update 6.5. We can confirm that the Troodon is feature complete now, while balance and QA testing are still pending since QA is currently focused on helping with the stress testing.
Besides that, there are some cool systems that I have been working on in the background, such as prototype concepts for the burrowing mechanic and a fully dynamic scar system, that doesn't have a release update yet, but should be able to give players the desired “permanent scars” feature.
For now that is all I can talk about, see you next month!
[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
Most of the month was spent fixing bugs and adding some finishing touches before the update goes out. We have gotten a lot of useful feedback from our stress test which you may have seen some videos from already. Some of the more important changes include making the nest widget less obtrusive, it now scales down with distance and fades out when there’s nothing important going on like bad temperature or invites. Nest placement has also been improved to work on steeper surfaces. Hatchlings now automatically join the parents’ group, but they will also be removed automatically if the group is over the standard limit when they hit juvenile.
Originally all of the nesting system required both parents to be alive. During actual gameplay however this turned out to be quite limiting due to one of the parents often dying or having to log out. So I ended up making some changes to make single parents a possibility.
I also had time to work on something that will be coming after this update. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but it has to do with the movement of a dinosaur you might have seen some teasers for on our Discord server.
[h2]VisualTech48 - 3D Environment Artist[/h2]
There is a reason I’ve missed the last months DevBlog is that I’ve been working on items such as rocks, which have been ported to the game to be fully usable and customizable to our needs. This means pretty much last month I’ve been making those rocks proper and optimized.
We now have heavily detailed cliffs, large rock formations and proper detailing kit with them for the environment. I won’t go into more detail with them, but hopefully you will see them soon enough.
Besides that, I’ve been working heavily on set dressing for the flooring, aka. Base plan foundations, of various locations which Jace has been crafting.
As well, I’ve made a few large prop set pieces for the Dockyard, such as two variations of silos and one fuel silo:
In addition I’ve worked on the monorail base, so we can incorporate it in the map, which features more detail and changes to the mesh itself:
And lastly, I want to showcase, the Aviary. Which will be soon featured in the game.
[h2]Tapwing - 2D Artist[/h2]
Shantungosaurus
Return of a titan. I didn’t get to see it much in it’s heyday, but whenever I did see them they always looked like a force to be reckoned with. Which made me eager to put it’s full size to work.
A major source of inspiration were moose and other sizeable ungulates. With the idea of it being a fickle animal, ranging from benign to knocking your lights out without a moment’s notice. We were leaning toward abilities where it could throw it’s weight around, from knocking others down, crushing the air out of them and of course it’s notable stomp. While you may think they’re relatively safe to be around, you’d be taking a big risk getting too comfortable with this hadrosaur.
Ankylosaurus
Normally you’re always going to have to worry about the bigger creatures on the isle, ankylosaurus might be the opposite of that.
Borrowing inspiration from armadillos and some lizards, we very much wanted to keep the ‘anky doesn’t care’ tone with this animal. Hunkering down and shrugging off attacks from larger predators, but needing to exercise a little more strategy against smaller foe, leaning towards attackers to hide the sides of its underbelly from smaller predators that can nip away at it’s soft spots. Some other idea’s we’re playing with are: it’s heaviness, allowing it to walk under water rather than swim to cross rivers, along with the ability to use it’s tail to get at foods some other animals might not be able to reach. And of course it wouldn’t be anky if it couldn’t crack some bones.
[h2]Hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
QA has been busy this month validating/invalidating all of the bug reports submitted by our new Stress Testing team. With these two teams working in conjunction, you should expect the playing experience for future updates to be a lot smoother than previous iterations, as performance and mechanics working currently under higher load is of utmost importance during these sessions. In the month of June alone we've validated a whopping 300 unique issues since stress testing began, so hopefully we'll have caught any glaring issues from the last update that were causing you headaches! You'll be happy to know that the areas you can drink through the ground are now a thing of the past. No more escaping the wrath of the Deinosuchus!
Besides bug validating, I've been keeping a close eye on feedback during this time and looking for trends amongst the stress testers. They've been very useful in pinpointing areas where balance has been suffering or where new mechanics aren't living up to expectations. To give a few examples without spoiling everything:
- Nesting grounds give nests increased incubation speed, reduced temperature decay, increased nest health and a growth speed boost to hatchlings.
- Knockdowns do not last as long as they did before, making them less of a death sentence across the board.
- Juvenile mobility has been improved. They accelerate faster than their adult counterparts, gradually slowing down to their regular acceleration rates.
- Tails now receive less damage when hit.
- Carnotaurus is now more susceptible to bleed.
- Deinosuchus receives the "S" nutrient from cannibalizing, instead of sharing the same nutrient with fish. (More incentive to cannibalize)
- Deinosuchus can regenerate its oxygen faster by resting/scenting.
- Dryosaurus dodge had its cost removed and controls reworked. Just tap A/D to determine dodge direction.
- Various other diet changes.
- Utahraptor bite damage buff.
And much, much more!
[h2]Jake - 3D Artist[/h2]
These last few months I’ve been doing a lot of vegetation overhauls, we won’t be going over that today. (but they look dope and should be revealed soon) Instead we’ll go over another collection of assets I made that will serve a gameplay purpose for the juveniles. These ones take the form of various shapes of cycads. The asset was actually prototyped a few months ago but now I’ve gone and refined its visual appearance. Pretty straight forward on a technical level, just lots of texture work to make sure it looks its best.
[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
I’ve been gradually making progress on sounds for Troodon. With each new mechanic added more sounds are necessary to be made, so the list of supplementary sounds needed for each creature is now pretty extensive. Troodons attack vocals will contrast its colourful signature sounds that will be used throughout the rest of the vocals for the troodon, using gnarly aggressive sounds starting with a sharp attack to give it that fearsome snap that will alarm the unsuspecting. The sound for Troodon’s unique ability will be a mixture of these two sound styles.
I’ve also created a vocal sound for each playable when feeding their hatchlings, and a wet squishy foley sounds to accompany the regurgitation visual. Some final additions this month are missing foley and dinosaur specific sounds on all nesting animations and adjusting the tap-hold modulation on the threaten vocals so that the difference is more apparent.
[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
A big thank you to all of those that diligently participated in the Stress Test. The feedback was quite valuable and put to good use. It has been an uphill battle getting the creature foundations into a mechanically comfortable state but we’re finally almost there. With the general framework and foundations set for the animals once the gore update launches, we can move production away from such heavy-hitting mechanics for the animals and focus on bringing in new playables. Which may have unique features and abilities but not much that would cause roster-wide changes which is very good. Some of the new editions will include Beipiaosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Gallimimus and Herrerasaurus. As well as a few we’ll be getting to after those like Diabloceratops, Dilophosaurus, Baryonyx, Oviraptor, Austroraptor and more. Not necessarily in that order and perhaps with a surprise twist here or there.
On the human front, the framework for our Gen 2s has been established and will be making its way to the design team for fleshing out. We’ll finally start showing a little bit more of the development the Gen2s have been undergoing. But I digress. Update 6 will be introducing gore as mentioned before. We have some prototypes we’ll start showing off here within the next few weeks pending some art so you’ll get a rough idea of what to expect. Filipe has been hard at work on various prototypes actually.
Additionally, alongside Update 6 we’ll be including the features omitted from the initial implementation of diets as well as the accompanying migration system. If all goes well, we may also include a previously unannounced feature intended to make juvenile gameplay more fun and engaging. Be good to each other!