The Isle News

[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
I’ve been working on various tasks related to nesting. Hatching works differently for different nests. If the eggs are exposed then you will be able to see your dinosaur hatch from the egg directly, but for other nests the eggs are covered with debris so you will only see the dinosaur climb out from the pile.

I also set up the feeding system for hatchlings. They will not be able to eat directly with the exception of the Deinosuchus, instead they will have to beg for food by holding E. At this time the parents can approach them and press E to regurgitate some of their food to provide the babies with food, water and nutrients.

We want reproduction to require at least some minimal effort from both parents so the number and quality of the eggs will be affected by their diets. You will be able to have an offspring if you have at least one nutrient, but a better diet will let you have more. Your eggs can now also become rotten if you don’t manage the nest temperature properly.


[h2]Amar0k - Programmer[/h2]
Lately I’ve been working on some additional backend for our build/deploy environment and integrating some critical SDKs so we no longer rely on third party frameworks. I have also been slowly getting back into AI development as the Carno has begun testing alongside the new workflow that has been designed for how we develop and release AI. We are expecting some big things to happen in the AI space as more has gone into their interactions and behavior.


[h2]Tapwing - 2D Artist[/h2]


Stout and very grouchy, here we have the isles Diabloceratops.

Some loose mixes of wild bovine and wildebeest served as inspiration for these guys. The idea was they’d travel the island bullying others off of vegetation and almost always in herds. Though it shouldn’t be able to run down most other dinosaurs, it’s still going to need to be able to stand its ground against a variety of predators. You’ll very well want to watch out for those horns.


[h2]Baardo - 3D Artist[/h2]
This month I got to work on the assets for the nesting system. We’ve had nest assets before but the newer and more dynamic system required a rethink of the feature set for how nests were designed and implemented. One of the new features is a series of morph targets that will animate as the nest is built up. These morphs took special consideration so that they played well with the topology and textures of the model but also the animation associated with the nest building.

In addition we have a new kind of nest, the debris nest, which requires its own materials and workflow. You can see some examples of these down below, I am quite pleased with the result and look forward to seeing them functioning in the game!




[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist [/h2]
This month has been all about the dockyard, and so we are here a few steps closer to gaining more details and buildings to it.

I’ve managed to crack some issues with the Triplanar now being able to project seamlessly almost across the buildings, alongside the interior damage textures. Besides that we have 2 smaller, and one normal hangar ready to ship and be in the game.



Alongside that, I’ve constructed a StepWalkway kit that can be both used both for the interior and the exterior. It's a very versatile kit, having mostly all dimensions and sizes, alongside the damage variants.



Thirdly, the Monorail has begun its humble start, this is heavily WIP and only the main segment is “done”:



Lastly, a lot of minor fixes to the Dockyard tower, which now features a see through texture, so you can see if something awaits you before you go down, and the first type of variant for buildings for the interior. :D




[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month I wrapped up working on the Pterodactylus vocal sounds, as well as the eating vocalizations for the Ceratosaurus heard in Seiza’s trail cam video. I also spent time working on creating all hatchling begging vocalizations for the current roster, working with KissenKitten on reiterating to get an interesting take on these sounds and animations for each animal and focusing on synching together the two components of this mechanic as closely as possible.

On the back end of this month I’ve started designing ambience to fit with changes in the weather, with a focus on achieving a strong survival horror aesthetic to the atmosphere – the current ambiences in EVRIMA work well for clear and sunny weather and will still be used in that circumstance, but these new ambiences will override as the default soundscape. Jumping off from this ambient work I’ve started conceptualizing some exciting unique sound sequences bringing something very different to the ambient audio cycle of The Isle.


[h2]Hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
As some of you may already know, QA has been undergoing a massive restructuring as of late. The main reason for this is that we have now reached a point where the amount of content to test while we develop the game has scaled so much that a small team of volunteer testers is simply not enough to cover every mechanic that needs to be checked before each update. This problem would only become worse with each new feature added, potentially causing older mechanics to break and slip through the cracks.

To rectify this issue, I have decided that alongside running QA, I would bring in a large group of community volunteers (eventually 200+), composed of current and former QA, content creators, and skilled fighters to form a new Stress Testing team. The idea behind this team is to act as a safety net between the QA team and the public branch, to catch any particularly nasty bugs that don’t rear their heads until they reach an abundance of players, such as the group name tag issue we had to deal with recently. Due to the amount of people joining, we will also be able to host full server playtests, which wasn’t possible with the QA team prior.

This team will also be involved in playtesting any new mechanics coming to the game first and giving feedback on character balancing. If the idea of this team interests you, why not consider applying? https://forms.gle/42pHQHVhsL2s2e4Y9

Besides that, the QA team has been hard at work continuing with testing the upcoming Skin Customizer and Nesting Systems:

A 3D Background has been created by our Level Designer Jace to give a better idea of how your skins will look in our environments. This background can be toggled.



Players are also able to toggle the gliding animation for any species that can fly.


We’ve also been testing the refined selection of colors on the new secondary patterns, ensuring that they look just as good as they do on their primary patterns. Here are a few examples, let us know what you think!




[h2]Bryan - Animator[/h2]
It’s been a good month for animation over here, no pun intended but we’ve been getting our ducks in a row creating the 200+ animations needed for Beipiaosaurus. In terms of workload it’s a bit like making another Deinosuchus.

We’ve also been getting Gallimimus prepared for it’s eventual return, but don’t worry, you’re not likely to be spam kicked to death ever again unless you decide to try to AFK grow and a Galli finds your hiding bush. It’s now got a full suite of directional attack animations like the other EVRIMA animals and will have some other quirks to make it far less likely to be seen as a troll Dinosaur like it was in Legacy.

We’ve also been dealing with Hypsilophodon’s juvenile morph, a complicated project because of its eyebrows and tail feathers, which it does not have as a juvenile. There were a lot of morph and skeletal related bugs we had to deal with to get this thing working, I hope it’s well appreciated what dmIV had to go through to get that thing working.


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
As you’ve read above, things are going rather well and we’re moving ever closer towards release. I’m very proud of the work everyone has been doing and look forward to you all experiencing the fresh take on nesting and skins. However, while it’s usually my style to keep things light in these devblogs, circumstances would see that change for this post.

This month on April 2, 2022 at 7:26am we lost our friend and colleague Brandon “Foszor” Gandy to brain cancer. I’ll admit, there’s still a great deal of shock and grief we’re dealing with in varying degrees as a team and as individuals. Some of us knew him better than others but I would be remiss if I didn’t count myself among the profoundly affected. Brandon was kind, creative and funny. Definitely one of the goofiest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. With an exceptionally ridiculous sense of humor. He always had a joke in the chamber or something ambitious he wanted to do. I remember the two of us sitting in call together hammering out what would become the infamous burrowing system for the Psittacosaurus just as a personal challenge. We were both curious if we could make it work with what we had. I knocked out some animations and he prototyped the system in what felt like 30 mins. After showing it off to the team, it was too good to be for AI alone and that’s how the Dryosaurus got burrowing. Just like that. Such a talented individual. I know this entry isn’t likely what was expected but neither was how things ended up. We often talked about the things we wanted to accomplish with this project and what we were going to do in the future. But now we’ll have to continue this journey without him. Carrying along his memory with us. Brandon loved his family, his friends, this project and living life to the fullest. We miss him. I miss him. But we’ve all been made better for having known him.

Rest in peace Foszor. We’ll never forget you.

If you would like to support his family, you can do so at the following link
https://www.gofundme.com/f/cvwpu-foszor-fights-brain-cancer

[h2]FTessaro - Lead Programmer[/h2]
I spent most of this month developing the Skin System, we tested a wide variety of different designs to find which one was best and then we started to add the swatches that each animal can access, for each customizable part of the body. We even tried an eyedrop color picker system, but in the end we decided it is best to have a chosen list of swatches that we can expand overtime. Below is an updated image of the main panel. Keep in mind it is work in progress and more colors, options or features can be added as we move forward in development:



Some QOL were added, such as being able to pause animations (Ptera also has an option to toggle Standing or Gliding animations). See growth previews in real time, rotate in any direction and a very useful button to randomise your skin. In addition to the random button, players are also able to lock each Section, such as Male Display, Markings, etc. That should not be modified by the random button. Not only that, players can also lock the individual colors of each Section, as shown below:



By right mouse button clicking at a color will paint it in black, locking it from the random generator, allowing to have more control of what colors the random generator should use. Then using the brightness and saturation sliders players can have more control of how the Dino will look like.

Another nice feature added is the ability to Share skins with anyone. By clicking the “Export” button, a code will be generated for the current skin of that animal. Copy it by clicking the code and send it to your friends or anybody, they can just click the “Import” button, paste the code and boom! Save it and it is yours!



Players can also choose different Patterns for that animal and we can add and expand that as we please in the future. Besides the skin system, as always, I have been working on bug fixes and improvements to several mechanics of the game. Thanks and see you next time!


[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
I continued my work on nesting this month. First of all there is a new temperature system, which plays a role in the incubation of the eggs. Temperature decreases gradually on its own and you have different ways to increase it. In the case of mound nests where the eggs are exposed you have to sit on the eggs to warm them up. Debris nests have good insulation and don’t require much maintenance, but if the temperature becomes too low you will have to add more debris to the nest to warm the eggs back up.



The temperature bar is broken up into four sections. In the ideal range (green) the eggs will incubate properly, while in the neutral range (white) nothing happens to them. If they are too cold (blue) or too hot (red) you will start losing incubation progress. Once your progress goes back to zero your eggs will rot. We left the door open to the temperature possibly being affected by the biome, weather and time of day, but that’s something for the future.

The next bigger task I tackled was hatching from eggs. For this I had to enable hatchlings first. Fortunately they were already set up for the most part, there’s just a few smaller changes and bugs left to fix for them. Then I had to adjust our spawn system to support spawning into a nest and then finally I added the actual hatching mechanic. We want to get the players into the game quickly, so after shaking around in the egg a few times you will see your dinosaur pop out and you can begin your adventure.


[h2]Hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
Just a short post from me this time! Besides the QA team’s constant bug testing on both the skin system and nesting, we’ve been looking at the new server queuing system that Amarok has been developing more recently. This system, as you would expect, allows players to queue up for servers that are at maximum capacity. Excitingly, it also allows for server administrators to skip the queue and even join a server if it’s full, avoiding any instance where they could not enter the server to attend their moderation duties. See the video below for how the queuing system looks in action:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h2]Tapwing - 2D Artist[/h2]
This month I had a few things going on, working on building concepts and getting another set of nature sketches started, but the thing I’ve been most excited to work on this month is testing the skin system. The initial phase was spent zeroing in on what the team wanted the skin system to even look like, do we want swatches? Do we want sliders? How much range do we want to give players and what customization additions could we make in the future?

After some testing, what we’ve got now is a mix of swatches and sliders to allow for more precise color tweaking. Once the UI was brought to a point where it felt good to use, it was on to the fun but somewhat tedious part, color selection! Not only is each dinosaur going to have different colors available to it, each pattern layer will also have its own color selection as well. So that was a few days spent JUST narrowing selections down per category from what I would say was the maximum color range we could potentially use across the roster.

The goal with this idea was to allow as many color choices as we can while still holding players to a mostly natural variance between the same dinosaurs.


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
I’ve been working on sounds for a new AI creature that will be appearing across The Isle in the near future, Pterodactylus. This small scavenging creature’s significant function is to mob and annoy players, eat their food and give away their position. For this reason the main quality of the creature's vocals had to be irritating. To tackle this I am creating an array of distinct and unusual vocalizations, each one unique for the associated action. When a player is mobbed by a group they will hear a chorus of all the various sounds resulting in a cacophony of annoyance. Passive sounds like its idle are low ugly glucking sounds, when hopping around they will produce a playful warble, attacks will sound like an aggressive cackle as if mocking the player and its dying sound consists of a harsh grating screech, mixed with its signature gargle. Among other sounds It will also have a couple of calls which I’m experimenting with to create something unique.

The Pterodactylus, as an AI creature, is intended to be very vocal in order to give away a player location, however thinking about this brought the current situation of idle vocals for our current roster of playables to my attention and the impact they have on maintaining stealth whilst playing. Idle sounds have now been significantly reduced in volume when standing and resting, and totally removed from idle crouch animations; aiming to strike a balance between audio immersion and gameplay functionality.

I’ve also created a suite of egg cracking sounds that will accompany the hatching mechanic with a variety of intensities depending on the size of the egg. I’ve compiled these into two different subsets of sounds, the initial cracking as the egg shakes and the hatchling stresses the outer structure of the shell, and then a more intense and hollow sounding crack that occurs the moment the hatchling quickly bursts out.


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
Another month down and a heap of progress made. The production cycle for Update 5 has mostly been filled with prototyping and tweaking of systems. We hit the ground running with this update so we were able to run a fair amount of tests. We’ve trialed several different iterations of the skin system and nesting system and some other additions that are to come at a later date. With the progress we have made on the update being substantial, we are finally comfortable showing you more of what we’ve been up to and what these systems are going to provide. We’ll also be including a new and unexpected blast from the past, pterodactylus. Who you’re likely to love to hate or hate to love. This entry is going to be short and sweet as we've got all hands on deck to round out a few more finishing touches and tie up some loose ends. But we’ll be dropping some clips for you soon that span Update 5 features and future creatures coming into the game. We know the Skin and Nesting systems have been long awaited and we’re excited to get it into your hands.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hey Islanders,

We've deployed a small hotfix to address a number of issues that were present in the previous version of EVRIMA. You may need to restart Steam if the update does not make itself immediately available for download.




[h2]Enhancements[/h2]

• Readded stamina cost based on growth.
  
• Improved corpse ragdoll performance with a new implementation system for interactions.
  

[h2]Bug fixes[/h2]

• Fixed apply button disappearing after navigating the controls menu.
  
• Fixed wallow lockup if the admin entered spectator mode.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus juvenile Eat Loop Swim animation.
  
• Fixed a pickup crash caused by PhysicX.
  

[h2]Known Major Issues[/h2]

• Characters that have picked something up occasionally cannot eat/drink until safe logging.
  
• Deinosuchus lunge replication issues.
  
• Group leadership does not transfer.
  
• Group leader can occasionally lose kick permissions.
  
• Level may take a long time to load/never load.
  
• Characters sometimes fail to save correctly.
  
• Players may be stuck looking at their corpse unable to respawn.
  

Hey Islanders,

We're releasing a small patch to address a number of issues that were present in the previous version of EVRIMA, as well as implementing a number of balance & map changes based on the data we gathered from our internal heatmaps. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more about our thought & development process for many of the changes/additions you'll see in the patchnotes, be sure to read our latest Development Blog which we've linked below.

Latest DevBlog: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/376210/view/3128317225041424482



[h2]Additions[/h2]

• Setup unique Pachycephalosaurus juvenile locomotion. These animations are much faster than the previous set.
  
• Redistributed all edible plant locations; removed all instances of "All Land Biomes" as a plant location. Every plant now has specific areas (some are shared) that they can be located in. This should encourage herbivores to migrate more often and not be able to attain a perfect diet in the central grassland alone.
  
• Added a new large river to the central grassland of Spiro. This allows semi-aquatics to travel from the East/West sides of the island with ease.
  
• Added a new grassland to the North West of Spiro. Pumpkins and Radish Root are found here.
  
• Added North West as a spawn location.
  
• Added new spawn zone selection map to reflect the new updates.
  
• Added Music Manager. This will be continually worked on over the course of a few patches.
  
• Added new Stegosaurus sniff idle animations.
  
• Added anti-spam to admin commands.
  
• Added new chicken mesh and animations with material variations.
  
• Added new turtle mesh and animations.
  
• Added splash VFX and SFX when falling into water.
  
• Added check to avoid vomiting if trying to swallow gore, fruit or fish that would cause player to vomit. Does not apply to corpses.
  
• Added new frog animations.
  
• Re-added server name filter and improved it.
  
• Added message on disconnect.
  
• Added sensitivity slider to controls.
  
• Added option to invert camera look.
  
• New dirt, mud and grass vfx added.
  
• Added RCON (Documentation to be released at a later date works similar to Source RCON Kick, Ban, Save, Shutdown, Announce).
  

[h2]Enhancements[/h2]

• Adjusted Dusk and Dawn times.
  
• Replaced the Southern Lake with a large mud pool as an attempt to spread out the playerbase, in accordance with the data gathered from our heatmaps.
  
• Replaced the river known as "Shallows" with a long dirt path.
  
• Deepened all rivers on Spiro to allow for Deinosuchus to ambush from almost all water sources.
  
• Updated camera system.
  
• Made Deinosuchus FOV adapt with growth (90 for adult, 100 for juvenile)
  
• Made meat red on herbivore compass.
  
• Setup chicken attack and adjusted move speeds.
  
• Set turtle to only wander around beach locations.
  
• Added new movement for Sea Turtle and added new check for same class behaviors.
  
• Updated damage for Charge vs Ram impact.
  
• Made Lunging, or being lunged not restore or decay stamina overtime.
  
• Updated Herbivores and Plant locations hint.
  
• Removed old palm tree static meshes from Spiro.
  
• Turned off exterior lights in Ranger Station.
  
• Removed timer from applying settings.
  
• Changed turtle swim speeds and fixed ambient fleeing other ambients.
  
• Allowed Hypsilophodon to be able to charge jump while holding something.
  
• Fixed some issues with resetting keybinds.
  
• Increased Pumpkin and Radish spawn amount. Decreased potato spawn amount.
  
• Disabled scenting underwater.
  
• Allow pickup to activate while moving, but ability still forces a movement stop.
  
• Disabled pachy tail physics when sprinting forward.
  
• Increased hint UI priority of head fracture.
  
• Disabled bucking while flying.
  
• Adjusted mud wallow to be more visible.
  
• Improved Lunge visually for the actor being lunged.
  
• Avoid playing pounced recoil anim if resting or sleeping.
  
• Re-enabled kicking of group members by owner.
  
• Ban checks are now completed before the player joins to prevent an exploit.
  
• Official servers now give a 5 minute warning and countdown from 10 before a restart and will world save.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

[h3]Global Mechanics[/h3]

Diets

• All creatures spawn with 15% of all three nutrients.
  

Diets will now impact the following:

Buffs

• Locked Health regen increased by 15%.
  
• Bleed regen increased by 15%.
  
• Fracture regen increased by 15%.
  

Debuffs

• Bleed resistance decreased by 25% (only goes down).
  
• Blunt resistance decreased by 25% (only goes down).
  
• Locked Health regen decreased by 25%.
  
• Bleed regen decreased by 25%.
  
• Negative Diet AttackPower debuff reduced from -50% to -25%.
  
• Negative Diet scent range debuff removed.
  
• Fracture regen decreased by 25%.
  

Fractures

• Minimum blunt damage threshold increased. Future proofing for species being added to the game later on.
  
• Head fracture damage modifier decreased. This was overtuned.
  
• Updated body fracture stamina cost modifier to 2x
  

Locked Health

• Locked HP will not begin regenerating until you have regained all non-locked HP.
  

Wallowing

• Wallow buff persists after taking damage.
  

Vomiting

• Now reduces current nutrients/hunger/thirst by 75% of their current amount.
  

[h3]Carnotaurus[/h3]

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. Fills up on less food.
  

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.
  

Mobility

• Turn in place rate slightly increased. (Turns better).
  
• Sprint Acceleration increased. (Hits top speed faster).
  

Alternate Primary Attack: 360 Bite

• Updated carno alt bite stamina cost to 5%
  
• Turn rate increased to match turn in place rate.
  

Secondary Attack: Charge

• Charge turn radius improved slightly.
  
• Charge still deals damage even when no cc is caused.
  

[h3]Deinosuchus[/h3]

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).
  

[h3]Dryosaurus[/h3]

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).
  

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.
  

[h3]Hypsilophodon[/h3]

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).
  

[h3]Pachycephalosaurus[/h3]

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).
  

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.
  

Secondary Attack: Ram

• Special exception for tap ram on Carnotaurus removed.
  
• Ram self stagger threshold when tapped increased.
  
• Ram self stagger threshold when held increased.
  
• Turns slower while holding a ram attack.
  
• Ram still deals damage/fracture even when no cc is caused.
  

[h3]Pteranodon[/h3]

Diet

• Nutrient group changed from Three dots to Two lines.
  
• Rabbit replaced with Chicken.
  

Mass

• Starting mass reduced.
  
• Adult mass reduced.
  

Health

• Starting health reduced.
  
• Adult health reduced.
  

Blood Pool

• Starting blood pool reduced.
  
• Adult blood pool reduced.
  

Food Value

• Starting Food Value reduced.
  
• Adult Food Value reduced.
  

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).
  

[h3]Stegosaurus[/h3]

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced. (Fills up on less food).
  

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.
  

[h3]Tenontosaurus[/h3]

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced.
  

Secondary Attack: Rear Kick

• Bleed enabled.
  
• Damage increased.
  
• Increased animation speed.
  

Alternate Secondary Attack: Tail Slam

• Damage reduced.
  

[h3]Utahraptor[/h3]

Diet

• Chicken replaced with Rabbit.
  
• Deinosuchus replaced with Pteranodon.
  

Hunger Intake

• Mass removed per tick reduced.
  

Thirst Duration

• Thirst duration increased.
  

[h2]Bug fixes[/h2]

• Fixed Fish AI not fleeing appropriately.
  
• Fixed Alt Attacks causing input lock if used right before being pounced.
  
• Fixed fresh spawn Pachycephalosaurus causing Stagger on adult Carnotaurus.
  
• Fixed eating animation being activated when pickup animations are about to start.
  
• Fixed not able to jump while carrying something.
  
• Fixed Diet meter not reseting after vomiting.
  
• Fixed water trace collision issues.
  
• Fixed carried meat giving infinite food if eaten by others.
  
• Fixed scale issues when using Grow admin command.
  
• Fixed coconut not updating the mesh.
  
• Fixed being lunged while knocked down not working properly.
  
• Fixed scent while fast swimming.
  
• Fixed Tenontosaurus tail phyisics for secondary attacks while moving.
  
• Fixed ambient AI not respawning.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus and Utahraptor stagger times.
  
• Fixed characters being pushed up too much after hitting the bottom of water when sinking.
  
• Fixed different mesh from root plant and its piece.
  
• Fixed client getting stuck after releasing a carried fish underwater.
  
• Fixed eating animation clientside sometimes not playing after digging roots.
  
• Fixed eventual input locks with Ram and Pounce caused by latency.
  
• Fixed Pachycephalosaurus slide when landing.
  
• Fixed Pachycephalosaurus land animation.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon alt attack not consuming stamina.
  
• Fixed drag location for Deinosuchus, mostly during lunge.
  
• Fixed a swallowing issue.
  
• Fixed weird behavior when juvenile Utahraptor pounces an adult Pteranodon.
  
• Fixed issue with fall damage when ramming.
  
• Fixed some collisions on logs not affecting physics actors.
  
• Fixed sprinting stamina cost when carrying for Carnotaurus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus and Tenontosaurus.
  
• Fixed fall damage not applying when being lunged.
  
• Fixed auto fall Coconuts, Oranges and Mangos over time.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus vocals not cancelling when diving.
  
• Fixed an issue with Ram when hitting fruits.
  
• Fixed sunchoke and potato roots diet type.
  
• Fixed bush asset cancelling pounce.
  
• Fixed stamina regen while bucking.
  
• Fixed birds not flying from trees after broadcasting.
  
• Fixed open coconut hint for herbivores that don't eat coconut.
  
• Fixed juvenile camera issues when too close to objects.
  
• Fixed audio stopping if volume was set to 0 in audio settings.
  
• Fixed Rabbit cancelling burrow if being attacked.
  
• Fixed eating/swallowing not working immediately after skimming.
  
• Fixed stamina cost for alt attacks and swimming attack if body fractured.
  
• Fixed stamina cost when body fractured for Stegosaurus tail attack, Tenotosaurus kick and tail slam.
  
• Fixed Pachycephalosaurus headbutt downwards stamina cost being the same as hold instead of tap.
  
• Fixed issue of faction selection not appearing sometimes after death.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus being able to drop meat or corpses under the landscape.
  
• Fixed lunged target sometimes being dropped under landscape.
  
• Fixed headbutt causing ragdoll issues if the target died immediately from it.
  
• Fixed being able to use the admin character swap if in spectator mode.
  
• Fixed losing edible food when carrying and overlapping other intereactable sources.
  
• Fixed the knockdown getup being triggered twice sometimes.
  
• Fixed up/down keys and tab affecting UI navigation.
  
• Fixed some button and text issues on the Admin Panel.
  
• Fixed servers dissapearing when selecting a server in the list.
  
• Fixed issues with sorting by name, ping, players.
  
• Fixed some issues with the admin announcement text field on the admin panel.
  
• Fixed Compsognathus not spawning correctly sometimes.
  
• Fixed Hypsilophodon jump stamina cost with body fracture.
  
• Fixed charging not draining increased stamina with body fracture.
  
• Fixed juvenile Deinosuchus bite in water audio.
  
• Fixed footsteps audio being cut off.
  
• Fixed incorrect vocal audio when stamina drained.
  
• Fixed Carnotaurus charge stamina drain.
  
• Fixed stamina cost not properly updating with growth.
  
• Fixed Tenotosaurus claw stamina cost not being affected by body fracture.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon running takeoff animation not playing with leg/body fracture.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon's running takeoff stamina decay with a body fracture.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon's stationary takeoff stamina decay with body fracture.
  
• Fixed scent blocking other abilities incorrectly.
  
• Fixed character scale affecting sinking speed.
  
• Fixed elite fish wrong mouth position server side when carried.
  
• Fixed allowing multiple controls to be set at the same time.
  
• Fixed teleport issue bringing a carried corpse with it.
  
• Fixed Mesh collision inconsistencies causing issues with corpse detection.
  
• Fixed pickup not firing if holding shift while stationary.
  
• Fixed fractures not reinitializing when load game.
  
• Fixed mud not being remove when swimming.
  
• Fixed Eating/Swallow issues if Swallow is activated before finish picking up.
  
• Fixed Dino FOV when growing affecting other clients.
  
• Fixed Deinosuchus fractured body animations.
  
• Fixed Pteranodon running takeoff stamina drain.
  
• Fixed some Effects and Sounds when dead.
  
• Fixed pounce canceling rest on release.
  
• Fixed pouncer affecting overlap adjustment.
  
• Fixed bleeding not loading values correctly.
  
• Fixed Tenontosaurus low End animation causing slide when eating stops.
  
• Fixed ceiba tree collision.
  
• Fixed damage problems when staggered from ram.
  
• Fixed MainMenu being intereactive if settings panel is open.
  
• Fixed rabbit in burrow getting rammed causing its corpse to fall under the level.
  
• Fixed windowed mode not showing decoration bar.
  
• Fixed enable/disable group invite toggle.
  
• Fixed Goat AI responses.
  
• Removed duplicate controls and fixed keybind reset.
  
• Fixed RadishFlower not having root piece.
  
• Fixed Easy Anti Cheat sometimes not initializing properly.
  
• Fixed Easy Anti Cheat sometimes not kick/banning player on violation.
  
• Fixed fruits resetting position client side on relog.
  

[h2]Filipe - Lead Programmer[/h2]
Hey everyone, this month I spent the majority of my time on two things. Firstly, a small patch contains an enormous amount of bug fixes. Many of those bugs caused issues to various basic interaction mechanics such as eating, drinking, as well as inconsistencies in certain abilities. Then I’ve also been working on the Skin System which is slated to debut as part of Update #5, which is going great, but we’re still testing and deciding ways to grant players the most amount of customization options without causing unexpected results.

Lastly I’ve also dedicated some time to a Music Manager system, which should be integrated as part of the soon-to-be deployed as part of the small patch. Keep in mind that it will still be changed in the near future, so the system itself will improve and have different outcomes as we move forward in development.


[h2]dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
I’ve spent much of the month working on Update #5’s nesting mechanic. There will be at least two types in the update. Mound nests are easier to construct, but require more maintenance once you are incubating the eggs. Debris nests are constructed from materials you will have to find, but they keep the eggs warm for you. I feel like that ended up being a fun little mini game. I had various other tasks related to them like saving or setting up a UI indicator too.

Naturally we always have bugs to fix and balance changes to make, you’ll learn more about that in Hypno’s post somewhere further down the blog. I also ended up making some significant changes to the charge mechanic in the background. You should be able to hit your targets more reliably from now on.


[h2]Hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
Around the end of last month I had been working with some of QA to streamline our bug testing processes, more specifically how we approach our “adhoc” testing. For those unfamiliar with this process, it is the act of testing something without much planning to see if any defects have appeared with each build. Before the changes, we were doing more work than what is necessary, which resulted in the process taking longer than it should have. This issue has since been resolved as we now have an “intended behavior” section that each tester can simply mark whether the behavior ingame matches what we have on the sheet. Adhoc testing is now a much simpler process and has allowed us to cover a lot more ground on bugs, so hopefully the change should reflect in the quality of the upcoming patch.



The above is just a glimpse into the many sheets that we cover in QA, specifically how meat chunks can be interacted with. To cover from the left-most column to the right, we start with a query (e.g. what happens if I “Try to grab more than one meat chunk”?). We compare the results of the query ingame to the intended behavior on the sheet. If it’s working as intended, we mark the query green, if it has a defect then the query is marked red. We open a report on our internal issue tracker, link it to the sheet and then update the “Last Version Checked”. This process has to be repeated for every mechanic, for every species in the game and kept up-to-date as much as possible, due to changes/bug fixes causing unforeseen circumstances - even things that you would typically think are unrelated can break each other! Just because a mechanic works in one build doesn’t mean it will work as intended in the next.

Moving on from QA’s processes, I’ve been spending the rest of this month ensuring that the upcoming patch to EVRIMA will improve the gameplay experience while we pursue Update 5. Firstly, the balance changes:

• All plant locations have been redistributed and we’ve removed all instances of "All Land Biomes" as a plant location. Every plant now has specific areas (some are shared) that they can be located in. This should encourage herbivores to migrate more often and not be able to attain a perfect diet in the central grassland alone.
  
  
• Diet will now affect more statistics. Heals bleed, locked health, fractures and more much faster/slower with a good/bad diet.
  
  
• Food intake for almost all species has been increased. This means you can fill up on less food, which was especially an issue for characters such as the Carnotaurus, which would gain barely any hunger from eating its preferred diet.
  
  
• Carnotaurus mobility slightly improved when moving slower. Hits top speed faster. Vastly improved reliability for its charge attack, as mentioned in dmIV’s post.
  
  
• Pachycephalosaurus cannot turn as quickly whilst holding a ram attack but its juvenile moves much more quickly now.
  
  
• Tenontosaurus’ kick attack has been brought more in line with its tail slam. It applies bleed to opponents and hits faster.
  
  
• And much more that you’ll see in the patch notes!
  

Secondly, I’ve been working more closely with Jace on some essential map changes to further encourage players to move around more, using the data we gathered from Amarok’s heatmaps:



Commonly referred to as “Oasis” in the community has proven to be an issue throughout the public quality assurance testing and in evrima. This area seems to be a huge draw for players of all species due to it having almost every resource surrounding it. It was decided the best course of action was to remove the water and turn it entirely into a mud pool, ensuring players are distributed across the entirety of the map.



A new river has been added to the central grassland. This is the “buff” for Deinosuchus that I teased in the public Discord last week. It has allowed semi-aquatics to traverse with ease from the East/West sides of the map and opened up a lot of new space for them to ambush from.



Another area that we found problematic. Experienced players will know the community name for this river as “Shallows” due to its significant lack of deep water. It was decided that, due to it not having much space to ambush from and a new river being added, that it no longer had a purpose as a river. Almost all of it is now a dirt path that terrestrials should consider using to avoid being spotted in the grasslands when crossing the island.



A large portion of the North West of the map was completely made of jungle and not much else. According to our heatmaps, this area was barely visited by players. We’ve cleared a lot of the jungle out and moved some of the herbivore food out there to, once again, encourage players to distribute across the island more.

As always, please leave us feedback in our public Discord so that we can continue to address any issues and make the gameplay experience as fun as possible. Thanks for reading!


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month I’ve mostly been focused on vocal designs in various forms. I started off with completing the courtship vocals for our current roster, some of which you have already heard. My attention is now focused onto the next vocal calls that will be making their way into the game. Firstly I have been cleaning, mixing as well as minor tweaks and additions where possible to the already existing vocal sets of Legacy creatures, bringing the fidelity up as much as possible whilst maintaining the sonic identity already established. Once complete I will be moving on to creating new supplementary sounds for these creatures to expand on their identity.

Secondly I have been designing the unique set of vocal calls that the Beipiaosaurus will emit when underwater. This allowed for some experimentation and deviation from the standard calls, introducing some new sources alongside ones already used and also having a bit more freedom to play with the processing used based on function and the otherworldly aesthetic that is inherent in underwater vocalizations.

Additionally I addressed the issue of footstep audio dropping out and have begun some preliminary planning and testing for a complete overhaul on the vocal attenuations starting from the ground up. I will be continuing this over the coming months with the hope that it will make its way into update 5 and bring an improved experience to what the vocal calls bring to both gameplay and ambient immersion.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental 3D Artist[/h2]
This month has been focused on making variants, and new buildings which would fill up the Dockyard main infrastructure, regarding Storage. More remains to be made, but it's going ahead with full blast, especially the larger storage facilities.

Main concept of a single storage building has been converted to 4 ingame variants, based on size and what they store, and we might make for each type of these building, into variants of how the interior is sorted out.



Keep in mind these are WIP images, lightning and exterior is not final. The process consists of a lot of technical difficulties that I’ve encountered, but have been all sorted out. It is just time consuming, and I’m taking a lot of time as well to make it as optimized as we can, as with the new advanced shader system (that makes exterior of buildings look unique, not only with damage, but color id and a leak/dirt system), we needed a way to heavily optimize them.
Eg. Massive Storage facility:



This came along with a heavy design of a system that would support it and it will surely advance even more with future buildings as we go. The first issue was tackling the shaders themselves, and making sure we can bake out a building and from a distance that no noticeable change would be seen visually, but would be performant wise.

And I have achieved that, as seen in the following images, from x materials (usually ranging from 4-8), we have at almost very close proximity, to get to 1, and that the vertex and triangle count is cut more than half.



Besides that I’ve been working heavily on adding crucial key structures that are simply made out of metal or variants that fill the dockyard. This month the Helipad has come to fruition:



And lastly every building that has been added and has gone to the finilization stage, has been tackled to a performant, yet good distance configuration for all of the meshes that are inside the mentioned buildings.



That is it for me this month, cheers!


[h2]Tapwing - 2D Artist[/h2]


It's time for the mid tier fisher of the isle.

With some of the gameplay ideas the team’s been working on, we took inspiration from jaguars and bears for this version of Baryonyx. Setting it up as a more ‘stand your ground’ type of creature ready to give attackers a swat they’ll remember. Fishing for the most part with some alternative sneak-attack hunting when the opportunity arises. It’s at home both in and out of the water, so you’ll wish to tread carefully by the riverside.


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
That’s February down and we are making our way through Update 5. We’ve “laid” (teehee)sufficient groundwork on nesting, courting and the skin system. For courting you’ll be finding someone you can trust (hopefully) to go on the familial adventure of rearing young with you. Work together to find a safe space to construct your nest and begin laying eggs. Nesting will come with differing engagements based on the type of nest your species builds. There’s more than one way to build a nest and a few different types of nests to build as well as differing egg types, all based on species. Care for and defend your nest until your eggs are ready to hatch then invite your friends to experience just how good of a parent you are or aren’t. Their precious lives are squarely in your claws/hooves, so make wise decisions. Or don’t, and be bad at parenting, it’s your journey. We’ll be sharing some clips of how nesting works in the coming weeks so you can have a more well-rounded idea of how it functions

The skin system is also moving along quite nicely with pleasant results thus far. As we’ve mentioned previously, we are dedicated to allowing you the flexibility to express your creativity and create amazing combinations without sacrificing the visual fidelity of the game. Expect to be able to show off your individuality in a greater way than Legacy provided but still within the margins of acceptability. We are pleased with how things are shaping up so far and with a few rounds of trying to make the most hideous combinations imaginable, we’ll settle on what is a customization win for the game.

We’ll be showing off some of the work mentioned above as it becomes ready and include some sneak peeks at some ongoing content we’ve worked on in tandem so stay tuned.