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FTessaro - Lead Programmer[/h2]
Who stole January and February?
It’s been a very busy month of developing creative solutions for all-manner of things. Much of the month has been intense bug fixing, improvements, balance changes and performance work. On that topic, I’ve partially reworked the swallowing ability so that it functions properly with the new fish and all sorts of upcoming/future content (yeah, diets). It was primarily conflicting with our code so it had to be rewritten and expanded, which brought with it a few additional bugs that were easily tracked down by our awesome Quality Assurance team in no time at all.
With the help of our QA team we reworked a lot of the math behind the eating ability in general, in regards to how much food you need from a corpse or bush, as an example. We also encountered some major issues relating to animations and seamless growth, I’m afraid I can’t go into details about that, but it consumed a significant chunk of time and creative thinking to get the solution that works in any and all situations. I won’t mention everything we worked on this month, because that would enormously inflate the DevBlog and bore you all to tears.
Besides bug-fixing, the Deinosuchus and it’s widely anticipated lunge ability found itself at the forefront of my tasklist this month. And I can say without a doubt that the Deinosuchus is one of the most unique and mechanically intricate animals we’ve ever designed. It’s been a truly arduous process of tweaking and reiterating based on early and frequent feedback, which is of the utmost importance as we save ourselves from falling victim to the curse of wasted time.
To round off my post I’ll list a few of the less eye-catching things that I’ve worked on this month. Such as changes to replication, water post processing, bleeding (which has bleeding resistance now), carcass material parameters, ambient zones and vocals.
See you next time!
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dmIV - Programmer[/h2]
One of my more significant changes was reworking the fall damage. The original system was made based on just 2 - 3 playables and didn’t scale well with the much smaller (Hypsilophodon/Pteranodon) or larger (Stegosaurus/Deinosuchus) animals. I went back to the drawing board and came up with a solution that is more easily configurable and straightforward. In short, we have a curve that associates weight values with a lethal fall height. The damage for anything below that is calculated proportionally.
Another addition is the Pteranodon now crashing into the ground when not landing carefully. This prevents movement for some time, so you are more inclined to use the air brake. It’s also really funny seeing a Pteranodon dive headfirst into the ground and turning into a pancake. With the new playables getting more and more complete we are able to have more playtests, more feedback and in turn more balance changes. This includes speeds, stats or minor changes to mechanics. Fortunately we are able to go through these quickly.
A more recent change I worked on is overhauling the oxygen system. Oxygen is now drained every time when the character is underwater and at an accelerated rate too. Running out of stamina while swimming makes your character sink, causing oxygen loss, so the old behaviour still exists in a different way. Be careful when swimming, because if your oxygen hits 0 it means you are dead in the water.
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VisualTech48 - 3D Environment Artist[/h2]
This month has been a continuation of last month’s Fence bonanza, it’s been extensive work to patch them and add a lot of new variants, like drainage, bent, etc., and test them out to the fullest extent. Alongside a lot of broken variants, which were semi simulated so we can get an extent on how it is broken, to be as real as it can.
This alongside a very neat and detailed prop-making, like the new but damaged Power Generator, which has been a really detailed galore making, especially the texturing part.
As well I’ve been fixing a bunch of bugs, and doing some new zones for the Humans, the Ranger Fencing and doing small additions to the prop work so we can populate it a lot lot smoother and better.
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Jake - 3D artist[/h2]
The last few months I've been staying busy doing all these dinosaur revamps. For example I just wrapped up this Albertosaurus sculpt and began work on the Baryonyx. This month though I'm taking a temporary break from this type of work and moving onto some environment assets.
Dondi requested some meshes to help embellish the edges of slopes and cliffs. For this asset we wanted something that looked a little more like exposed dirt rather than a rocky cliff. A lot of the finishing touches on this will be done in-engine with the detail textures that will help blend it into the terrain and add the high frequency noise that you need to sell the material type.
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Seiza - Video Editor[/h2]
My first few weeks went well, I got to know the team and familiarized myself with the workflow and the tasks ahead. Most of all, I spent a lot of time planning my first big project, the trailer for Update 3. In this case, planning means writing a storyboard. I had a lot of ideas and had to try to adapt them to the project. I tested what's possible and what not and that involves a lot of improvisation. My goal is to present Update 3 cinematically, the majestic side of the game, but also the horror side. Ultimately, I managed to write a storyboard that depicts both parts of the game and mostly relates to Update 3.
After the planning was done, I started on the practical part of my work. I have two options for that: I can film together in-game with the help of the QA team as dino-actors or create my own scenes directly in the UE4 sequencer.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages, a mix of both variants will bring the best result.
I can't wait to show you the final version when it's done. Here is a little sneak peek from a couple of the scenes I’ve already filmed:
At this point, a big thank you to everyone for the nice feedback on the "blood" Trailer, that gave me a lot of courage to take this step.
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Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month has consisted of a lot of improving audio and systems introduced in the previous months, as well as creating any outstanding audio missing from the Deinosuchus and accompanying mechanics. Heartbeat sounds were created to accompany the rework to the oxygen system, through the use of two sound cues which coordinate with the separate in and out beats, rate at which the heartbeat plays can be dynamically controlled according to the oxygen levels, ramping up the pressure when clinging on for dear life. A water vibrate sound was created, emulating the same effect that is created by crocodilians bellowing in water accompanying the newly implemented water broadcast.
I also designed Juvenile variations of all supplementary vocal sounds for the Deinosuchus (alongside an improvement to the quality of the calls at younger growth) and more underwater sounds including bite and struggling sounds. The underwater struggle sounds were created to be heard from all creatures becoming prey to Deino's lunge ability, complimenting last month’s rework of underwater audio. These reactions have also slightly been improved by trying to add more variation to the vocalisations when lunged, however this brought my attention to an issue where the vocals could still be heard when the underwater sound mix was not in effect, which was resolved by creating new occlusion settings for all attenuations so that when underwater (or generally obstructed) the audio is filtered. For now this serves as a suitable fix however this will likely need to be readdressed when tackling interior environments where a more comprehensive solution for partial audio occlusion will need to be considered.
My focus has now been turned towards the audio used in the ambient zones around the map, the current sounds lack a sense of dynamism and are often a bit of an auditory assault of unrelenting wildlife sounds. The current sounds that randomly spawn around the player will stay largely the same, with the addition of some more sounds. However I am replacing the bulk of the bedding underlying these random sounds, with a much larger variety of ambient loops that will ebb and flow in intensity, creating a more varied and dynamic experience. Currently I am reworking the Swamp biome after which Jungle, Plains and Beach environments will all follow suit.
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Tapwing - Concept Artist[/h2]
I’d say this Bary was a bit of a chimera of designs. After exploring some wildly different ideas that didn’t fit the bill, we looked back to what we liked about the old model. It had interesting textures we liked all in all, but we wanted to try a more pulled back version of those ideas.
We salvaged the tail and merged the animals’ overall build with another bulkier concept of ours inspired by the ‘Jaguar Bary’ idea that’s been floating around and a rendition of Baryonyx that Dondi was quite fond of
The last two design features were elongated claws for fishing/general weaponry and lips. Something purely for variety in aesthetics I wanted to try, having seen the idea around in spinosaurus depictions.
We did have a lipless version around as backup just in case the idea didn’t work, but so far it’s looking pretty damn good on the model.
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hypno - QA Lead [/h2]
QA has been busy working in numerous areas over the course of this month. The bulk of our work this time around has been focused mostly on performance testing and playtesting, ensuring that our server can maintain our recommended player cap. The results of the performance changes from our programmers has been very promising, running 40 QA testers with ease. I fully expect our servers to be capable of running even more players, which will be one of the many reasons for the upcoming beta.
Playtesting continues to prove most useful to us. Not only can we record performance, but we can also see which parts of the game are enjoyable and which parts are not. Once again, we’ve gathered valuable data from these tests and have balanced our characters accordingly, fine tuning our statistics to account for the latest additions to the roster. Expect the following:
Locational hitboxes have been improved across the board. Stegosaurus will not take damage if bitten on its tail spikes (thagomizers). Players can also now, generally speaking, target a character’s neck to deal more damage than they would towards the torso. This is also future proofing us for playables later on, such as Ceratopsians that would have much thicker skulls (and therefore take less damage to their heads), while they may have an increased modifier towards their neck.
Terrestrials are not as efficient in the water as they once were. Heavier animals will swim slower now and attempting to swim faster will cause your stamina to deplete very quickly. Depleting your stamina will cause you to drown or worse, leave you struggling to escape the jaws of a very large crocodilian.
While actively grazing, hunger drain is paused. This encourages the use of the graze mechanic when herbivores migrate across the map. This will be subject to change, pertaining to the later Diet System.
Carnotaurus charge doesn’t knock people down when hitting the tail anymore… Because that wasn’t fun. The carnotaurus will also turn a bit slower when sprinting to encourage the use of the charge ability more - no more carelessly running up to other players and spam biting.
The Deinosuchus and Pteranodon have also been carefully balanced, as to not feel too over/underpowered compared with the rest of our roster. The Pteranodon underwent a few iterations of flight duration/costs throughout its growth in order to feel like the player is “learning” to fly as you play it. The Deinosuchus will not immediately be able to easily kill other players - it starts off by having to exclusively catch and eat fish before it can eventually grow to its apex-killing capabilities.
And much more!
With just a few more high priority bugs being fixed (of which some you may have noticed in Filipe’s recent stream) we’ll be opening the floodgates for the beta in no time! Thank you all for your patience.
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KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
So much to do stacked upon our precious plans. However, everyone has been no less productive. Quite the contrary. Everyone has been making magic happen behind the scenes. Pulling rabbits out of hats even. The animation team has been mostly polishing some of the final animations for the ptera and Deinosuchus. Making sure as much of the flow we want is established. We always keep a list of things to go back to and improve in the future, so quality will always go up. I can’t say it hasn’t had its high points but the animation team is definitely ready to get the Ptera and deino off our plates so we can start working on new stuff. Be on the lookout for the public test soon. The animation team has also been prototyping some new ways to raise our bar a little higher behind the scenes. A lot of the other creatures on the roadmap have already been rigged and are ready to be animated, if we haven’t started them already. So we are very anxious to move forward.
The team has spent a fair amount of March trying to reestablish the look we want for everything. From the top to the bottom. So expect some shifts here and there with the overall tone of the game’s visuals. We’ve also been trucking along with production of our humans. Our Gen 2s are in peak condition and currently going through bootcamp to prepare for the war ahead. More to share on that soon. Until next time...
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Closing Remarks[/h2]
As you can see it’s been an incredibly busy March. We’ve added a couple of new and extremely talented individuals to our development team and continue to plow through the final stretch of Update #3. Before I end this blog however, I’ll share a few additional images below...
As you can see, Dondi has been quite busy working on the new environments that you’ll all get to explore in the coming update. We’re all so incredibly excited and can’t wait to see you all delve into the depths and soar through the skies.
We'll see you next time Islanders! -
Punchpacket.
