The Isle News

[h2]Filipe - Lead Programmer[/h2]
Hello everyone. This month I don't have much to say that you guys don't know already. For the most part, it was a busy Hordetesting month. If you have been following you know we released a lot of bug fixes and quality of life changes. We also managed to stress test the server and noticed some performance caused by the nuances of some AI’s logic and the navmesh. The good news is that when testing only player capabilities, we managed to reach 140/150 slots with a stable server, no hitches and no rubberbanding, which is great even without AI. It means we are doing it right and all the changes and improvements being implemented so far are giving us results and we can continue working more on that front.

Besides all that, work continued as normal with several tests and experimentations on the burrowing side. I know I mentioned this before, but this stage of deciding what to do and how to burrow is important. There are pros and cons in all systems that we tried, but we need to be sure what is going to be done in regards to scalability of the system, how fun it is, replication and of course, performance on both client and server.

There has also been lots of progress on the Tyrannosaurus, especially the crush ability and all the possible situations it can trigger. Hopefully that will be finished soon so I can move to the next mechanics designed for it.

Migrations. The current method known as “Species Migration” calls all players of a species to a specific zone and will be reduced in frequency. There will be a rare “Mass Migration” event which is similar to species migration, but this affects an entire server. There are also individual “Patrols” which more commonly affect individual players and their groups to keep players moving around organically. This should allow for better interactions, more time for exploration, and server configurations. This will have server config tweaking (or you can turn the whole system off).

Work continues as normal. Stay safe!


[h2]Ariel - Programmer[/h2]
This month I kept working on diablo, which mostly involved bug fixes and some background changes to make the sparring interactions more stable across clients. I also added a slightly different version of the primary attack that is triggered when standing in place, looking downwards and pressing LMB.

I also made some progress on the stego’s power swing ability. One of the hurdles I ran into was the tail swing, for example making contact with another dinosaur’s tail before hitting its body. This would result in dealing damage based on only the tail hit, which of course had to be fixed. I looked at a few different approaches, but in the end found one that gives the result you’d expect and can be applied to other attacks as well. The carno’s charge had some similar issues in the past, but now I was able to apply the new system to improve it. Some other abilities might benefit as well, but it’s generally not as noticeable on most of them. All in all the ability is coming along nicely, just needs some finishing touches, testing and balancing and it should be good to go.

I’ve also been hard at work fixing various bugs, both for the upcoming update and smaller ones that will make their way on the live branch later so they have time to be tested to make sure they don’t break something else. One more change I’ve managed is setting up the moving scent for the herbivores. Their animations had to be set up and we took this opportunity to also change the animation system a little to prevent some of the odd head bobbing they were doing. That’s really it for this month, I hope all of you are enjoying the game while we’re wrapping this update up.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
This month was adjusting some performance issues on older props. These are mostly quality of life improvements and carefully curated changes to the props and in a few rare cases, a recreation. There is also the addition of three new pieces to the environment, some of which will begin referencing some of the more obscure props that have been made primarily for lore.

First was the weapons locker built around the weapons you can find on the island. It’s a simple half-modular system that has been a blast to make. Unfortunately, no guns can be found in them yet.



The new buoy will soon be dotting along the bays and other areas of the island, solar powered but most definitely not transmitting anything. In fact, forget they were there at all.



Many of Apollo’s machines run on fuel. These gas pumps can be found in all refueling areas. Make sure that you have your keycard or the system won’t work.



That is it for now, see you next month!


[h2]Frederic - 2D/3D Artist[/h2]
Long time no see. I hope you’ve been enjoying the skin system because we’ve been cooking up some more that you’ll all be able to have fun with soon. We’ve been working for a while now on making tertiary skins to add to our playable roster, trying to make new and exciting patterns for you to bedazzle and show off to your groupmates, enemies, and other island inhabitants. And by we, I mean not just Tapwing and I, but we also recently brought back some previous talent to help with all these skins: The vastly talented artist, Marty.

We hope you enjoy the sneak peek to some of the tertiary patterns below:



Bonus:
“It's great to be back painting new patterns for people to enjoy in game. It was a lot of fun back then and it's just as much fun now to see others put their own spin on them with the color system.” – Marty


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
This month QA’s focus has once again been on bug testing the QoL patch, making use of all of the community bug reports that have been sent in so far. Thank you very much to those of you who have been providing those and feedback on our horde testing branch!

That being said, when we have been testing the new content for our upcoming Diabloceratops update, we have been running into some very strange issues. You may have remembered from my last post about the stretching Psittacosaurus - well, please give a warm welcome to the stretching deer!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Seriously though, it seems that AI has moved on from flying and stretching is the new thing… because the boar did it too.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We found that it’s possible to cling to a rabbit until it enters a burrow. We also found out that it is a mistake:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Beipiaosaurus has developed quite a rash since the last update. Zombie dinosaurs are not a thing.



And Diabloceratops was throwing people around with its mind for a while there:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thankfully, I can confirm that all of the aforementioned issues were fixed and since then we’ve made some really great progress towards this update. Diabloceratops’ sparring mechanic is still undergoing some fairly large work including animation and stat refinements. Once that is complete then we’ll be able to get it into your hands.

I wanted to take the rest of this blog to cover some of the larger gameplay concerns that haven’t been addressed for a little while and to quickly go over some other information.

• We are aware that a large majority of Gateway is still under-utilized by players and looking at solutions for this. Filipe’s section covers the expansion of the migration system which should help in that regard, but it should also be noted that some of these areas have been internally dedicated as being more human-focused and purposely left untouched for now.
  
• Comparatively, some areas in Gateway still remain to be hotspots (I’m looking at you East Plains) that will have further adjustments made to deal with their issues.
  
• Mutations are mostly done now and their balance has been adjusted. These will need to be tested in a larger scale environment to get a better idea of how they will play out – I expect this to be introduced in the horde test after the upcoming public patch.
  
• Eating has always been finicky in Evrima due to ragdolls not replicating to each client correctly. There have been some internal discussions on how this can be improved. One idea that we’re considering is allowing more leniency on the area a corpse can be interacted with and even making the player’s character automatically walk over to where the server believes the corpse to be, and begin eating it. With something like this, gone are the days of having to wiggle until you find the sweet spot that lets you eat from a corpse.
  
• Much like how we will be introducing the global growth modifier for server owners, we are currently discussing the possibility of adding other modifiers (such as adjusting health/stamina/nutrient etc) regen rates to further customize your experiences.
  
• Mega/mix packing is something that still unfortunately affects most servers that do not impose rules. We have been discussing a solution internally that can’t quite yet be discussed but should be known is being looked into thoroughly.
  
• There are various minor improvements to existing systems in the works. A fair number of players had difficulties thrashing corpses, so tweaks are in the works for things like that. (Tapping E three times to open the corpse, for example.)
  

Lastly, thank you to those who read my post last month and applied for a position on the QA team. Applications have now been read and those that were successful have been reached out to. If you were not successful this time, please do not hesitate to apply again in the future.


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
Gonna be short and sweet. Thank you to everyone that helped us during hordetesting! I think most of the team has covered the bulk of what we’ve been up to. For myself, while hordetesting has been underway, I’ve been bringing in some new talent. The animation team has grown yet again to more than half a dozen strong now. Which is going to assist greatly in pumping out more playables. Since we all know that’s what everyone really wants. Can’t say I blame you at this point. There are also going to be some map additions added in here and there that you should be looking out for. One area in particular is known to be a breeding ground for a select species. Overall this month has just been a lot of bug fixes and testing. Nothing too exciting by our standards. Mutations, migration expansion, tertiary skins, sound traps, expanded AI creatures, diabloceratops, tyrannosaurus, triceratops, maiasaura, pteranodon, gallimimus, stegosaurus, omniraptor, humans and more are in unequal parts being worked on to provide you with an ever richer experience in the game. I’m very curious to see what server owners do with the expanded controls though. Lets see which of you out there can create the best ecosystems. That’s all for now. Hopefully we’ll do a bit of show and tell soon. No promises though. Be good to each other!

[h2]FTessaro - Lead Programmer[/h2]
This month I've been pretty busy working on several different tasks, discussing changes and what comes next. A lot has been done with internal core code in order to improve server performance and use less data. I don't expect this to suddenly allow for more slots, but it's more like a “drop by drop we may fill a glass” type of thing. Meanwhile I also worked on several quality of life changes and improvements, some of which I will list at the end of my post.

As expected, more work was done on Mutations, with more being implemented and the new design that unified the “lifecycle” and “lifestyle” mutations with the introduction of “unlocking” new mutations depending on what the player does during their life. Once unlocked that mutation can be chosen through the various stages of life.

Rex's ability received more attention and new animations for each stage of life, now it is just a matter of making sure all animations work on all stages with the respective balance values.

I know some of you want news on Dryo´s burrow, but I can't share many details about that right now. We want to expand the design, but for that we need to make sure it will work without causing major problems, such as development delays or server performance issues. So this is being slowly tested as low priority in the background.

I also worked on updating the Weather System with several improvements and bug fixes. Fixed the Physics foliage system that has been broken since we upgraded to Unreal Engine 5, now it works with options in settings to disable it if desired. Pounce improvements and fixes. Dilo Hallucinations AI improvements. Carry/Drag logic and improved the Physics Doors and much more. The list of bugs fixed for the next patch is going to be huge.


List of some QoL things done with even more to come:

• Allow diets to refill closer to full
  
• Serialization of SpecMode data, so it is lighter and doesn't cause server performance issues.
  
• Reduced by half volume and distance for crouched footsteps and fixed a footstep issue causing crouch/walk to sound much louder.
  
• Allow both Herbis and Carnis to be able to scent if walk/trotting
  
• Adjusted eating/drink camera lock angle (from total 40 degrees to 90 degrees, centered)
  
• Anti-Cheat improvements.
  
• Working on an unstuck command for players
  
• Allow pounce from behind
  
• Allow pounce on high pitch angles (slopes)
  
• Add Previous and Next buttons for the "random" skin feature.
  
• Lunge bigger targets if both are swimming (such as adult Stego)
  
• Cancel Carry if using HeadButt while carrying something in your mouth
  
• Give Server owners options to enable/disable mutations - We also added option to enable/disable each mutation as needed and their effect values
  
• Give Server owners options to enable/disable specific AIs
  
• Give Server owners option to enable/disable random Weather
  
• Give Server owners option to increase/decrease general growth rate
  

For now that is all I can talk about. See you!


[h2]Ariel - Programmer[/h2]
This month I’ve been focusing most of my attention on the Diablosaurus, implementing some of its missing or unfinished abilities, fixing bugs and polishing its mechanics and animations. I also made some changes based on our internal testing, like putting them into the locked together sparring position with basically any attack if they hit each other from the front, so players can activate it without having to meet specific conditions. Diablos also have the ability to push each other if they perform a running attack from the side, this was now expanded upon so that players can chain this into a flip attack or the pushed Diablo can also defend itself now. I also added a new attack which can be activated when looking to the side or behind you in sparring mode. This works similarly to directional attacks, hitting in the direction of the camera and quickly turning the character that way.

I made good progress on sparring as well. The previous setup had some issues if both players were trying to move, so I came up with a solution that improves their movement by taking into account the input of both players. In a networked environment this can be difficult, but I was able to make it work while using very little additional data. I also set up some new animations to make the mechanic more visually interesting and also set up the stamina system. So for example if both players are trying to push each other with equal force they will stay in place, but play animations that show them struggling and their stamina will also drop gradually.


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

Time to revisit another dino that missed out on getting a sketch sheet. Stegosaurus!

The goal with this one was to showcase some of the new animations that’s being worked on for stegosaurus, hence the ‘dragged down and ripped up’/‘pounced to pinned’ scene and the tail up attack stance that’ll make that tail swing feel extra mean.

The other scenes are more atmospheric than anything, the slow n steady travel or just sunning when you have some calm in your life.

Stego’s life is a slower paced one with high tension moments when tenacious hunters find your group.
Also, something that I didn't initially plan while editing the nature sketches rough draft but was a happy accident I then leaned into is, if you put the scenes in the right order, you get a little stego story.
Besides the nature sketches, I've been reworking the ‘cloning tank’ promotional art that was painted some time back. The tanks themselves got some proper 3D models made with design improvements and it was my job to then integrate those models into the poster art and give them a good paint-over to blend them into the original painting.

It’s an improvement from the first draft for sure. Now all it needs is something in the tank.


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month my main focus has been creating new designs for Tyrannosaurus calls. This had proved a challenge in relation to respecting both the ‘legacy’ of the sounds created for this creature (across all Dino media) and finding my own take, whilst also reaching a contemporary level of quality and realism for this animal.

I’ve been experimenting with various sources and approaches to the sound and have landed on a good base for the elements that make up the body of its sounds in terms of its growls, roars and bellows etc. - i.e the foundation. I’m now working on finding the right sound for the high end, the element that makes up the quintessential T Rex roar that we all recognize, without resorting to the path most traveled.

Aside from the Rex I also created a new sound for Dryo’s basic attack, previously it was using the same sound as the pain, and with my attention very rarely being put towards Dryo had gone untouched. The new sound now better represents the closed mouth motion of its peck like basic attack.

I have also edited and implemented new sounds for the baby variants of boar, goat and deer, including calls to locate them, and pain, death and pinned screams/vocals.

The rest of the past month has been spent on investigating issues related to audio stuttering from voice limits being reached and other general audio bug fixes to come with the impending patch. One that I think many will be glad to hear and has plagued me for months (perhaps years!) is finally finding a fix to a bug related to medium sized Dinosaur footsteps being unreliably inaudible as the listener (being heard as walk instead of sprint by other players).

[h2]Seiza - Video Editor[/h2]
My focus in the last few weeks has been on two video projects.

A trailcam project showing an upcoming species in its natural behavior, the Diabloceratops.

This project also includes one of my most complex scenes so far in terms of filming effort. Most people who read my blog entries know that I record 95% of the scenes in the UE sequencer. There I move the actors, add the animations (or animate small parts myself with control rigs) and adjust the camera settings.

In this project you will see a scene that is very dynamic and works with many spar animations of the Diablo. It should represent both the hectic process that we know from the in-game experiences, but still look natural. I hope we have achieved the goal in this project!

The second project is currently in the filming phase, it is a cinematic trailer about all the new content that has been added since the last trailer. As mentioned in the last blog entry, we wanted to gather enough content to create a bigger trailer and now it's time! The trailer introduces the map Gateway, the new species and explains the mechanics roughly as usual. This will be the first cinematic project on Gateway and you will notice that. I'm still early in the filming phase, but I'd like to give you a little insight into what I mean by that:






[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
QA’s full focus for March has been exclusively on bug testing new additions. While the next patch will be focused only on the QoL changes Filipe mentioned in his post and bug fixes, a lot of other features are being tested behind the scenes. Given that I do not have much to discuss regarding these just yet, I thought I’d take this moment to share some of the funnier bugs that QA have run into this month.
Amarok has been working on introducing the Psittacosaurus to Evrima in the form of AI. Much like how it could in Legacy, this animal is capable of burrowing underground to escape from predators. This has, of course, introduced lots of wacky interactions that could not have been expected. For example, pinning a Psittacosaurus as it begins to dig underground results in a burrow that never stops growing and (I guess) would end up swallowing the entire server and world as we know it:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Psittacosaurus AI has also unintentionally gained the ability to stretch like a Fantastic Four member. We will be working on compressing them back into their correct proportions:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Omniraptors have been feeling threatened as of late by all of the larger species being introduced to the island. In an attempt to prepare against the looming apex threat, they have learned how to blow themselves up like pufferfish:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

That’s all from me for now! I’m expecting that next time I’ll have more to discuss about upcoming features. I would also like to take this time to mention that I’m looking for additional QA testers. If you are interested in bug testing or you would like to learn more about joining, please do not hesitate to contact me on Discord via direct message. Thanks for reading!


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
The team has been steady cooking up some QOL content and bug fixes interspersed with the daily do.

The psittacosaurus will be making a return at last. Siren singing you towards a taco lunch with their iconic vocals. They should be a bit more dynamic than they were before. Catch them before they dig away and watch out cause they may bite. There’s also additional AI that will slowly be skittering into the game including but not limited to rats, crabs (better ones), snails, clams, insects and more. They will be found in various places around the island opening up more opportunities to find food, get nutrients, unlock mutations and more. The island should start feeling more and more alive as time goes on and juvies are gonna have more on their level to interact with so that stage of life doesn’t have to feel so rushed, out of necessity.

There are QOL animation adjustments/updates to omniraptor, gallimimus, stegosaurus etc. Also more work was done for diabloceratops’ sparring. Keep in mind diabloceratops sparring is going to set the foundations for ALL sparring creatures in the game so we’re really being careful with how we set it up, so in the future (mods?) Other animals outfitted with the right animation sets can be slotted in and will function as intended.

The tyrannosaurus and triceratops are still waiting on sparring finalization, which shouldn’t be too far off. The goal is to have dynamic combat interaction between the rex and its classic adversary, triceratops. We’re trying our best to leave tail riding behind for all parties. So if you’re victorious against an equally powerful creature, it will be because you played better and not because you’re smaller and have a better turn radius. While the feature is a large undertaking we don’t generally shy away from a challenge so if we nail it, it’s going to blow your cap back. Diablo testing has been promising so I’m actually starting to get excited for you guys to try it and I never get excited. So that’s saying something.

The good mother lizard (Maiasaura) is also in full swing now that its features have been approved. I’ll provide some examples fresh off the presses.











The pteranodon will also be getting some QOL adjustments as we work our way through the current set. There are also some new skins in the works as well as some new models and redesigns for upcoming animals. The map has also been getting more adjustments to make it feel more lived in and provide more places to discover and explore.

Another month down. Hug your loved ones. Catch ya next time!

[h2]Filipe - Lead Programmer[/h2]
It’s mostly been a continuation of last month’s work, with the exception of several changes and bug fixes for the latest patch.

In regards to what I’ve been working on;

- More Burrow internal tests and prototypes, there are several concerns about the scalability and performance of this system, so we are experimenting. Not much to say about this one yet.

- Continued working on Rex Crush ability, which is a variation of Deino´s Lunge. Gameplay wise they are very different, but the code part is mostly shared. We have a functional system already and the work now is mostly making all animations to look as desired, besides balancing it.

- Several design meetings and more to come to make final decisions of several systems and future developments, including Migration, that still needs it´s second half (when no Mass Migration) is active. Currently the system is only half done, which is the “Mass Migration” happening one after the other.

- Besides that there was a lot of work on bug fixes, system improvements and Engine Update.
That is all for now.


[h2]Ariel - Programmer[/h2]
This month I had two bigger tasks to work on. First of all, a new attack for the stegosaurus. It is a different kind of tail swing attack that deals more damage, but requires more consideration to use. The attack has to be prepared by holding the right mouse button, which visually lifts up the dinosaur’s tail, also serving as a warning to other players. Then players can use the left mouse button to perform the attack, which is slightly different if someone is looking up, down or horizontally. This allows for hitting specific areas of others, but also means that one needs to be more careful with it to avoid swinging above smaller targets for example. There is a second version of the swing that can be performed while sprinting, this one hits in a wide arc in front of the dinosaur that really opens up new possibilities in combat. I also added support for attacks hitting obstacles like trees or rocks and being canceled. This is currently only in use for this attack, but could potentially be extended to others later.

I also worked on the new camera system that some of you might have seen already as a concept. The plan is to bring the player’s perspective closer to that of the dinosaur and provide a better sense of scale. I experimented with different setups to have all the functionality we need while keeping it easy to configure and smooth to use. In the end I got the general system working, but it still needs to be set up for each dinosaur and some of their unique mechanics as well.

Other than that I made some smaller visual improvements to the herrerasaurus. There is now some variation in its bite attack animation in certain directions, as well as a slightly different idle posture when standing on branches. I also set up the sliding down audio loop on the programming side.


[h2]amar0k - Programmer[/h2]
The past month has been mostly about the latest update for me with lots of performance and reliability testing and fixes.

I made some improvements to the queueing system and re-added the server list character display along with fixing all of the server list filters and setting up a new pagination system for how servers are searched and displayed.



Worked on a bunch of back-end server related analytics and management tools like automated server restarts with RCON announcements, Easy Anti Cheat updates and our build deployment pipelines.

Various on-going changes to AI spawning and behavior, How AI spawn is still something we are working on and will be refining over time. I guess I could say the same about AI in general; it has been through a few iterations of designs from both a technical and gameplay standpoint. Performance being a priority and having the AI function how we want has been a long road and I think we have finally found a workflow that will allow us to get things moving.

I have also been working on scavenger AI being presented by niagara particle systems as there are some interesting things we can do with this along with the performance improvements and client side visual benefits.

I also finished off a developer tool we use to map player activity on Gateway. Here is a picture of around 2 hours of gameplay data for all classes on NA1 and EU1.



This has many use cases for mappers and helping with gameplay design decisions.

Started working on the Psittacosaurus as a new AI dino to be introduced soon.



Finally, backlog bug fixing and an engine update.


[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
Beginning of February I finished any outstanding work needed to complete Diabloceratops’ vocal sounds, mostly on the remaining juvenile vocalizations. I also did more work improving and finalizing Herrera’s climbing sounds, trying to get them to feel as they should with minor tweaks to the sounds. Once these tasks were considered complete enough to move on, I took the opportunity to replace some of the placeholder vocal sounds on Dryosaurus directional attacks as well as add in Psittacosaurus’ legacy sounds until a time comes where they can be revisited. This includes its calls, attack, pain and death sounds; enough sounds for the necessary functionality as an AI creature at a rudimentary level.

My next task was to design new breath sounds to replace the ones heard currently when sniffing and panting. I opted for a more natural and generic quality to these sounds to cover all animals of their respective size group without coloring them too much. Subsequently they can be used as modularly as they are currently and still work for most contexts. They can then be supplemented by idle and filler vocal sound, blending the breaths into the individual creatures' bespoke sound pallets.

Finally I’ve been working on completing our suite of horn foley sounds, designing the same sounds for small and large size categories as were already made for medium sized. I also have created a gore sound for situations where a creature is impaled by a horn to finish off the set of sounds necessary for ceratopsian combat.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
The Crane month as I’d like to call it. This month is all about the 2 new cranes, a lot of behind the scenes stuff for the shaders for our future buildings™.

You'll soon be able to see completed and vast docks, with the new addition to our arsenal with 2 new cranes, which are as large as a location, and fully traversable. I’ve made a lot of changes to our walkway kit that benefit from the Cranes as well. These are massive objects in the world, as you will soon see.





And the small crane, with a few variations, to wrap up the Docks.




[h2]Bryan - Dinosaur Supervisor[/h2]
Been a busy month as usual and hot out of the cloning tanks are… some rats? Who wrote this?
Anyway, yeah a species of rat, a lizard, some insects and a crab. I’ll have to ask about getting some lemon trees to go with the crab.



Also got some new trot animations coming in for the Pachycephalosaurus and Gallimimus.


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
For the majority of February, QA has been focused solely on bug testing. This is because not only have we upgraded the engine to 5.3.2 but also because we merged all of the balance changes/bug fixes from the latest evrima version into a “master branch” that also introduces all of the content that was being developed alongside our latest patches, including the Diabloceratops, Mutations, Ceratosaurus Manual Vomit and other various tweaks and bug fixes.

Mutations
QA have access to a large pool of mutations that are available for testing. We have already identified issues with the current selection, the majority being that the mutations in question were too weak to justify selecting them (given that the player can only select 4 in one life presently). Due to the nature of the mutation system locking them permanently once selected, we want to ensure that all of the choices are just as valuable as the other and to incentivize players to choose more than damage oriented boosts. With that in mind, most of the damage boosting mutations are relatively weak compared to the others, such as those that increase survivability (whether it be healing/stamina regen boosts or slowing down hunger drain).

Whatever the outcome, we’re going to try to make all of the mutations feel like good choices, on their own or when combined and create a way to define your characters/playstyle better. Perhaps one of your group members is an expert nocturnal hunter that takes the lead during night ambushes? Maybe your character is a natural herd leader and can allow for increased group sizes? You can even become a cannibal and avoid suffering the usual consequences of eating your own species. I know I’ll personally be very interested to see what types of characters and combinations players can create with this system.

Ceratosaurus Manual Vomit
This one is a relatively new ability for QA to start testing – it only just had new sounds made for it! From our initial tests, the ceratosaurus’ ability to purposely vomit on a corpse to decompose it faster has really brought out the identity that it was missing. Not only is it now able to bully other species off a corpse but it can now also “steal” them, forcing them to move on and look for a different meal. We do need to test this further to get a better feel for the mechanic and tweak various things with it, but so far so good. As well as this, we’re currently toying with the idea of increasing the buff that ceratosaurus receives around corpses even further if it is rotting, which I think would synergise quite well with its new ability.

Miscellaneous
Dilophosaurus players rejoice! Your hallucinations will now work on AI characters instead of just other players.

We’re reintroducing the up/down attacks for omniraptor and troodon after fixing some issues with them
Dawn/dusk times are being adjusted so that the sun rises a lot sooner and sets a lot later in the day. This will result in slightly longer days and shorter nights as they were intended, without artificially speeding up time.

While this bug is unintentional and caused by work that was being done on the Tyrannosaurus crush ability, this type of “gore while still alive” is something we want to look at doing in the future:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Lastly, I just wanted to give a quick shoutout to our volunteer QA team for finding over 200 unique issues since the beginning of this month. 😊


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
Let's see. This month has been so busy it feels like a blur. The team has covered most of what you can expect to see coming. Now that we have largely got things relatively stable, we can focus on preparing all the stuff we’ve been working on in the background. Like random events out in the world, diabloceratops, sparring, additional/omitted playable features etc.

The jump to UE5 blew our kneecaps out in regards to Gateway so we can finally mend those wounds and get more playable and interesting areas back onto the map that you never got to experience. Such are the risks. Anyway, places like the dockyard for instance. I bet I can guess which species I’ll find there. There will be new gametrails coming so even in the darkest deepest jungle, you can find a path that will lead you out. This allows us to create pockets of jungle that may get exceptionally more dense but will always be navigable, reducing the chances of you ever getting lost without a way out. Pro tip: The denser the jungle, the larger the animals that can hide there.

There’s been some promising developments on the new camera work. We can bring the perspective in even more than initially anticipated so we can really slip you into the skin of your animal. Your feet are going to be touching the ground now which should create a much more immersive experience. Ambushes can be set up more reliably and encounters get the heart pumping since you’ll practically feel the creatures barreling down on you. The Isle is going to start delving deeper into horror elements now that many of our core foundations have been set for the animals. Expect more screams and more blood. And you thought getting a drink couldn’t get any scarier?


On the animations side (which is always my favorite) the team has been motoring. There’s a variety of different AI types we’ll be working on to assist in fleshing out the ecosystem. The boar got a tiny spot of love, the chickens did too. They should be easier to spot and chase now. We’re bringing back some golden oldies like the psittacosaurus but we’re also adding rats, varying crab types, insects, clams etc which you’ll be able to find out in the world and fill a niche that’s been needed for smaller animals. Do keep in mind that some may only be detectable based on your species/size. An adult rex won’t see the insects the same way a hatchling will, if they see them at all. This should open the door to our juvenile carnivores finding more than possible players in sanctuaries, around human structures, in open fields etc as well as allow for more foraging opportunities for omnivores and semi-aquatics.

The rex, trike and maia are also coming along nicely. Here are some examples. These animations may or may not be indicative of their final iterations.




















We’ve got some new animations for the gallimimus to smooth out its aim-offsets during different states of motion. Gallimimus is also the first long necked animal being tested with the newest camera changes. This will help guide future camera work of other animals such as sauropods, which are right down the street from us now.

The stegosaurus has a new swing to make it more dangerous and combat capable against the incoming large carnivores while also having a new grappled state that kicks the door open to them being vulnerable to pack animals like omniraptor.

Ceratosaurus is going to be projectile vomiting to corrupt the meals of other predators and ensuring they live up to their purpose as garbage disposals. This keeps ceratosaurus relevant to other carnivores regardless of size or strength. You may be the first ceratosaurus group to steal a corpse from an adult rex, but good luck getting away with it.

There’s also some new animations for various species across the roster as a whole. Maybe you’ll be able to spot them all. There’s more but I don’t want this to be a novel. See ya next time. Be good to each other.

Hey Islanders,

A new patch is now available on the Evrima Public Branch. Thank you to all the active participants that helped us fine-tune this release via the hordetesting branch. Please note; You may need to restart your Steam client if the download is not immediately available.

All community servers must wipe their migration save data to be compatible with the latest version.



[h2]Additions[/h2]

• Added new diet tiers and adjusted existing diet bonuses
  
• Replaced northern plains spawn with northern jungle spawn
  

[h2]Enhancements[/h2]

• Growth, stamina, hunger, and thirst have appropriate values for the scale of Gateway
  
• Added goat to ceratosaurus diet
  
• Adjusted stamina regeneration thresholds
  
• Altered growth patterns of dinosaurs to grow faster through juveniles stages and slower at subadult stages
  
• Slightly reduced the timer to auto swap migration zones if there isn't enough players to eat the food there
  
• Hatchlings inherit parent skin colors once again
  
• Adjustments to post-processing effects on angled water sources.
  
• Increased herrerasaurus' drop attack damage and bleed
  
• Herrerasaurus no longer falls over if it lands a successful drop attack from a bone breaking height
  
• General pounce and ram mechanic improvements
  
• Increased troodon durability
  
• Increased dilophosaurus swim speed
  
• Adjusted all basic attack cooldowns
  
• Allowed admins in spectator mode to see all ingame chat messages
  
• Slightly increased food and nutrient amount from schooling fish
  
• Reduced waterfall sound concurrency
  
• Various server performance improvements
  

[h2]Bug fixes[/h2]

• Fixed a issue that was inverting the stamina costs of pteranodon take-off
  
• Fixed herrerasaurus drop attacks locking herrerasaurus in place
  
• Fixed ceratosaurus not receiving nutrients from bones
  
• Fixed quicklog failures
  
• Fixed herrerasaurus knocking each other out of a latch when climbing
  
• Fixed a couple of rare server crashes
  
• Fixed players being randomly kicked from servers
  
• Fixed several faults that resulted in player kicks
  
• Fixed replay feature sometimes displaying only a black screen
  
• Fixed various audio cues not ending properly
  
• Fixed additional saving issues
  
• Fixed persistent fog lighting issue
  
• Fixed skin creator lighting
  
• Fixed additional server side issues
  
• Fixed character display in server list showing incorrect growth
  
• Fixed various issues with the server queue system
  

[h2]FTessaro - Lead Programmer[/h2]
After a quick break we started working on fixing the main issues present in the latest patch, but that didn't stop us from working towards overall progress of the game, below are some of the main things that I worked on this month:

• Skin Creator has been updated with a new UI design to provide more room for the new rendering camera. This new camera isn't based on a 2D texture anymore, allowing it to look and perform better:
  
  
  
  
• In addition I also added access to the Skin Creator from the Main Menu so you can create your skins freely without having to log onto a server first:
  
  
  
  
• Global chat will be brought in as an optional setting for community servers. This won't be enabled on officials, but server owners now will be able to turn it on.
  
  For server Owners:
  bEnableGlobalChat=true
  
  It is disabled by default, so in order for it to be enabled it needs to be added to the TIGameSession within the Game.ini file of the server.
  
  
• Several balance changes with the introduction of the new stamina regen system, but more to come such as new diets combinations, new growth times, hunger and thirst decay adjustments, migration and food availability.
  
  
• Overall progress on some new dinosaurs like Triceratops and T-Rex.
  
  
• Overall progress on the latest burrowing prototype.
  
  
• Bug fixes
  
  
• Pounce to pin is still WIP, requires several new animations and extensive balance tests.
  

Those were the main topics excluding a few small things. See you next time.


[h2]Ariel - Programmer[/h2]
I started the month focusing on fixing bugs that came up during the break. Some of the most important ones include the one where players lost the ability to rest and had to reconnect to fix it and hypsilophodon’s blind effect not being clearable if they applied it again while it was being cleared. I also prevented herrerasaurus from being stuck latched to the air when there is some lag, it should not find the wall it was supposed to latch on to. It can also die from falling now, we wanted it to survive falling from higher than normal, but it accidentally went a bit too far.

I also made various background improvements like reorganizing some of the damage dealing system to combat some of the hacking issues that have been popping up, hopefully that will make the game more fun for everyone. I looked at some saving related bugs as well and reduced some hitches caused by loading on the server. It’s difficult to track down issues where saves are lost, as I can’t just go back and look at what happened exactly after it already happened, but I found some cases that should be handled now.

Later in the month I moved on to the newer mechanics and dinosaurs. I improved the alignment of the diabloceratops while sparring, which can be a challenge to line up in a multiplayer environment. Then I made some visual and polish improvements to herrerasaurus that I didn’t have time for last year, these are mostly visual ones for a bit of extra polish. I’m currently working on a new, powerful attack coming to the stegosaurus, but it’s in quite early stages so I cannot get into the details for now.



[h2]Bryan - Animator[/h2]
Trike has been a pretty good way to get started in 2024, just got the first round of locomotion for the adult and juvenile Triceratops out the door today and now it’s on to the injuries. I always forget how much longer quadrupeds take to do for all the left/right plus the body, leg and combination thereof variants, it’ll be nice to move on to something with just two legs again.

Once this guy makes it out to a build you’ll find the run to be very familiar, it’s essentially a remastered version of the run from Legacy. On the other hand the walk and trot are all new and convey Triceratops’ unique swagger a bit better than they did before.














[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month my first focus was designing outstanding sounds for Herrerasaurus that did not make it into this public release for this creature.

Firstly, I designed vocal sounds that were missing for both its adult and juvenile stages including mechanics such as pinned, pounced, eating, wallowing, resting, blinded and the hatchling beg vocal. After implementing the rest of Herrera’s vocal sounds my time has been spent updating the climbing foley sounds to encompass dirt, rock and metal surfaces and sounds for its slide mechanic that is performed by holding ctrl. With the addition of the slide loop, the implementation and design for the placeholder latch sound will be altered (a pain point I’ve noticed from the community in relation to this creature), improving this creatures stealth capabilities whilst still giving a realistic sound representation and opportunity to be caught out if not choosing your jumps carefully!

Finally, I’ve returned to working on Diabloceratops’ audio, with a priority of working through vocals for the juvenile stage. I initially did a pass over its adult stage vocals as it had been some time since working on this creature, familiarizing myself with its sonic palette and ensuring all sounds are up to a completed and presentable standard. Then I started altering these vocals to work for its younger growth stage, pitching them up and then altering, removing and/or adding new layers to create an appropriate design and sound aesthetic for this animal at its smaller growth. I’ve completed over half of the vocal sounds needed for the juvenile Diablo and will be continuing the work on this creature as we move into February.


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
QA has been focused on playtesting this month in order to verify some of the more consistent problematic behaviors for each species. While the following will not be a full list of everything we have planned to address, this should give you some insight into what they’ve been looking at recently and which areas we’re looking into adjusting and/or monitoring over the next few updates:

General

• It is unsurprising that the majority of players exist in the north east migration zone right now due to the number of species that it was assigned and a spawn zone overlap. Some species have been unassigned from this migration and the spawning zone has been moved into the jungle.
  
  
• The stamina changes that have been made are still a large focus for all species. Time spent resting is still within acceptable range, but we are looking to further reduce the stamina costs of actions and the ability to regenerate stamina during certain states of locomotion based off of a player’s current stamina.
  
  
• Hunger and thirst times were not adjusted for Gateway to see how they would fare with Spiro values. As expected, these needed to be increased due to the larger map size and has been done so accordingly – these will be in the next update. Players will now be able to more comfortably traverse the map for their needs without feeling undue pressure.
  
  
• Growth times were adjusted across the board in accordance with the new hunger/thirst times and diet system changes. All times were made longer but the bonus from each of the diet tiers was also increased, to further discourage players from becoming malnourished. This should allow players appropriate time for foraging and hunting with a noticeable payoff for maintaining diets.
  
  
• The diet system has been adjusted to include new “tiers”. We believe that the system was far too lenient on players that would fill their diet slots with just one type of nutrient, and not adequately rewarding players who had two or three nutrients of their preferred diet. Without revealing the raw numbers, having a mixed diet will now yield the best bonuses and possessing all three nutrients will greatly increase growth speed as well as wield the bonuses from other dietary combinations. There have also been additional considerations on how this can be applied to older dinosaurs when the elder and mutation systems arrive.
  
  
• We’re currently working on a way for players to manually alter which nutrient slots are being filled as we know it can be annoying for them to fill a slot you did not want to.
  
  
• Health regeneration seems quite slow as a whole at the moment which requires further investigation.
  
  
• Smaller characters have difficulty with visibility in even the normal grass. We’re currently looking into adjusting the grass so that this is less of an issue.
  
  
• Various issues with fog result in player visibility becoming too difficult to navigate and affecting other systems such as envenomation highlights. Fixing the fog has been a big priority as of late.
  

Otherwise, I just wanted to post a quick bulletin of some of the problem areas currently under investigation for each of the species we have focused on so far:

Carnotaurus

• Lipid options for the carnotaurus do not feel adequate.
  
  
• Charging as a mechanic can feel a bit clunky due to how it’s currently set up.
  

Ceratosaurus

• The ceratosaurus is currently in a weird spot where it cannot receive nutrients outside of its diet unless the corpse is rotting. While this is currently intended, we are aware that it falls short of a fully enjoyable experience and often is poorly impacted by players awkwardly waiting for corpses to rot.
  
  
• Attempting to be stealthy as a juvenile can prove problematic with the auto-chuffing around corpses, oftentimes resulting in the player’s death.
  
  
• Likewise, chuffing at group members is something that is also being considered for removal, for the same reason. This will require further discussion as it was intentional as part of the character’s design.
  
  
• Auto-chuffing can be a nuisance for players that are trying to scent or eat. We will allow players to override the chuff by performing these actions in future.
  
  
• The charged bite controls and auto-slide during attack feel counterintuitive and will be altered.
  

Deinosuchus

• We have altered the deinosuchus growth so that the character starts exceptionally smaller. What was once considered a large hatchling will now be its starting size. Its growth curve as a whole will also feel different as it is no longer linear. Players will reach the physical morph (~80%) of an adult much sooner in their growth than before, which removes the appearance of massive deinosuchus juveniles capable of running down victims on land. There is also an excessive increase in growth time from that point onward as the deinosuchus grows to full size. This will result in a more difficult growth cycle for the character and surviving to adulthood being much less likely.
  
  
  
• Undisclosed solution to remove “stegosaurus fishing” because that’s awful.
  
  
• Schooling fish have appropriate caps for food and size scale and can no longer sustain an average deinosuchus.
  

Dilophosaurus

• For our first pass, dilophosaurus was given its maximum duration that we wanted for the envenomation timer. After playtesting, we found this to be overkill and unnecessary for the character. Instead of the envenomation recovering after 5 minutes, it takes just 1 minute for the cooldown to kick in and start the regeneration process for the prey.
  
  
• Dilophosaurus swim speed seems to be abnormally slow, so we’ll be looking at speeding it up a bit soon.
  
  
• We are aware of player’s exploiting the hallucination ability by standing near water to prevent the AI from spawning. Luckily for us, we never decided that the only hallucination a dilophosaurus could spawn was another dilophosaurus. Standing near water could prove to be far worse than out in the open in future. 😉
  

Herrerasaurus

• The hunger drain for herrerasaurus was dropping far faster than its nutrients did. This has been addressed, so that the player does not find themselves in an awkward position of needing to eat to avoid starving but being forced to take on a nutrient that they did not wish to consume.
  
  
• Herrerasaurus’ mobility in trees feels far too slow for the average player to ambush from. Locomotion adjustments while clinging to a surface are currently underway.
  
  
• There are a number of trees that are deceiving at the moment on whether or not they can be rested on and will be getting updated collision or visuals.
  
  
  
• We have a solution ready for the pterodactylus AI knocking herrerasaurus out of trees that will be implemented in the next update.
  
  
• The “latch” icon when aiming towards a water source causes it to go beneath the water. We will be adjusting it so that the icon collides with the water plane, making it easier for players to aim their drop attack.
  
  
• Herrerasaurus ambush attack animations (and the fallover bug) were causing players to be locked in place, effectively punishing them for playing the herrerasaurus correctly. This has since been resolved.
  
  
• The directional attack currently feels unreliable due to the nature of the animation, causing players to miss smaller targets. We will be looking into adjusting this.
  

[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
It’s good to be back. This month has been heavily focused on bugs, meetings and more bugs. But it has also consisted of a lot of continued R&D and production of new playables and interactions. So far things have been going well on that front but there’s no rest for the weary.

I’ll focus a bit on playables for this devblog. Thus far we’ve been moving along at a nice pace in getting the tyrannosaurus, triceratops and maiasaura functional. Tyrannosaurus and triceratops are on pace with one another development wise. Pretty much being as evenly matched in production as they’re likely to be in-game. Once spar testing for diabloceratops is solid, the giants will get their sparring animations done and then they can battle it out in testing before we unleash them upon you.

For the sake of interest, I’ll explain a bit of how things work when we’re introducing a new playable. Particularly one that is a legacy port. Maiasaura is the first hadrosaur coming to Evrima and due to that, it is likely to set the stage for what to expect out of a hadrosaur. We start with concept art, design discussions and multiple prototypes to get a feel for the character then out of those discussions emerge the core thematics we want to explore.

For example, stances and what they mean for the maiasaura and what they mean, if anything, for the family at large which includes the parasaurolophus, shantungosaurus and eventually corythosaurus. We also need to decide what stances mean for the other playables as well. To understand how they will function if they have stances of their own and understand how they will fare against an opponent that has a stance when they don’t have one.

When a new creature is being worked on, these exploratory discussions and prototypes help us unearth what we can and cannot do as well as what we want to and don’t want to do. Often those are all very different. We also decide how far we plan to push the characterization, gameplay and mechanics forward and how possible it all is with the time and resources we have and also when to execute on them.

Hadrosaurs are largely depicted as little more than walking lunch boxes. Lacking horns, a sharp beak or noteworthy claws. They are pretty much just mass. However, that doesn’t prevent us from delving into abilities that allow these animals to mount a sufficient defense against the other inhabitants on The Isle without them feeling generic or low effort. All animals are interesting and hadrosaurs being one of the most iconic families of all dinosaurs should be no exception.

Here’s an example of what a bipedal stance for maiasaura may look like and what attacks and abilities performed when in this state may be like. Things like flailing kicks, stomps and throwing a little weight around as well as reviving legacy concepts of greater speed during a bipedal stance vs a quadrupedal stance.











Some examples of what the quadrupedal stance may allow us to do. From headbutts, stamps and more.