The Isle News

[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.

Hey Islanders,

We're deploying a small patch aimed at addressing various issues, while also implementing some adjustments related to stamina regeneration. Please note; You may need to restart your Steam client if you find that the patch is not immediately available to download.


0.13.26.10

Added stamina regeneration during movement states based off of current stamina.

Updated stamina regen values for all species
Improved AI animals attenuation volume/filter/reverb curves and falloff ranges
Made adult and juvenile deinosuchus have the same NV fog values underwater
Reduced dilophosaurus' hallucination recovery cooldown from 5mins to 1min
Increased footprints default despawn time from 1min to 5min
Reduced food proportion of schooling fishes

Fixed a server hitch during player connections
Fixed some server crashes
Fixed Pteranodon corpses not rotting
Fixed eat hint showing for herbivores near plants while carrying something
Fixed fruits despawning
Fixed wounds and low stamina not affecting final damage output
Fixed vocals not working on replays

Hey Islanders,

Due to the holiday season we will not be providing a devblog over the new year. However, in the spirit of moving forward with presentable content, we are releasing a new patch that will be delivered straight to evrima as opposed to the standard hordetesting branch. The inclusion of herrerasaurus and dilophosaurus has come early, however there are certain quirks both visually and mechanically for each of them that will be adjusted after the holidays. Continue using the bug report functionality regardless, as we will continue to refine content as much as possible in the coming days before holiday break. I hope you find the new additions to the roster as fun as we do.

Please note; you may need to restart your Steam client if the update is not immediately available to download.

[h3]0.13.18.17[/h3]

Additions
Added dilophosaurus as a playable class
Added herrerasaurus as a playable class
Added the ability to scent when crouched or resting
Added dryosaurus directional attacks
Added new AI world spawner
Added replay focus and hotkeys to adjust playback speed
Added zoom function to replays
Added new hypsilophodon grab animation
Added input release to digging to interrupt it early
Added an additional effect for sting stage for sanctuary bees
Added a warning pulse effect and sound for agitated sanctuary bees
Added "wounded" as a status report and calculation for bite force
Added condition for pounce hit to check front and back of a big target
Added giant wax palms to Gateway
Added a NV brightness curve for all species, separate from range
Added new lunge swimming animations for deinosuchus
Added new water sense effect for deinosuchus
Added deflect animations for omniraptor and troodon when pouncing from the front or behind targets


Enhancements
Carnotaurus now requires a "run up" in order to charge
Ceratosaurus stability is increased when chuffing around corpses
Smoothing adjustments to animal head tracking
Smoothing adjustments to pounce latch translation/rotation and pouncer´s camera
Adjusted boar carry position
Reduced dirt vfx amount when digging
Improved trying to rest from sliding
Adjusted hypsilophodon and stegosaurus footprint sizes
Enabled swallowing while latching
Removed schooling fish from the gallimimus diet
Shortened stegosaurus knockdown duration
Migration zones now display immediately when scenting
Allowed corpses to update locational effects
Improvements to large call attenuations
Disabled chuffing while swimming
Hatchlings are now added to their parents' group regardless of size limit
Updated friends session finder
Made pounce and headbutt to ignore alt attacks
Weather sounds are now filtered when a player's camera is underwater
Increased ceratosaurus scent range
Players can no longer pick things up if they are charging as carnotaurus
Increased pachycephalosaurus bleed resistance
Setup new threshold values for bees attacks and juvenile diet swap
Updated admin panel event to match new input name
Adjusted nutrients prortions for sanctuary mushrooms
Updated deinosuchus underwater vision
Removed initial bleed damage from target when an animal pounces them
Increased pachycephalosaurus intake values when eating or drinking
Nutrient decay rates have been slightly lowered
Adjusted ceratosaurus animation swallow curves
Adjusted gallimimus, hypsilophodon, beipiaosaurus, dryosaurus, pachycephalosaurus, and troodon knockdown times
Restored minimum sprint duration/distance before sliding can activate
Ceratosaurus charged bites now force the player out of crouching
Added a stability multiplier to tenotosaurus when attacking behind itself
Removed impact sound from death screen
Adjusted pachycephalosaurus ram downwards activation angle
Slightly shortened recoil and stagger animations
Organs should now properly reflect food values based on the size of the animal they are taken from
Pachycephalosaurus headbutt can now properly hit swimming targets
Edits to nv underwater values
Updated balance values for pounce (stamina cost/damage)
Updated headbutt balance values (stamina cost/damage)
Updated all bucking stamina damage values
Increased the diet boost values to scent and NV ranges
Fast transitions from sitting to standing no longer cost stamina


Bug fixes
Fixed mud not going away if wallowing after a rain event fired
Fixed headbutt slide and animation failing to restart
Fixed pteranodon animation blending when using vocals while flying
Fixed ceratosaurus charged bite tap animation
Fixed wallow adding mud even if raining
Fixed dryosaurus/carnotaurus charge indicator showing for hatchlings
Fixed morphs for animals with a subadult stage
Fixed wrong math on removing source food when removing a chunk
Fixed players occasionally losing their saved skins
Fixed grazing message having priority over eating a specific plant
Fixed bullfrog not being properly listed for omnivores diets
Fixed deinosuchus and ceratosaurus occasionally receiving vomit debuffs
Fixed gore chunks not having correct nutrient proportions from its source
Fixed troodon jump attack sound not crossfading by age
Fixed collision for physics assets against old cliff rocks
Fixed some foliage and rock collisions being inaccurate
Fixed beipiaosaurus upwards swimming animation not playing correctly
Fixed weather sometimes not replicating
Fixed beipiaosaurus vertical swim speed being incorrect
Fixed vomit animation making meat chunks clip through the neck and face
Fixed profile creating sound playing on start up
Fixed pachycephalosaurus juvenile generic call sound clicking
Fixed pteranodon not taking off at low stamina properly
Fixed carnotaurus not sliding after turning from charge
Fixed issue with eating value always being 50
Fixed boar montages
Fixed replay cooldown starting from the start of recording instead of its end
Fixed directional attack being spammable
Fixed wrong values on skin setup for AI spawn
Fixed organs not becoming rotten sometimes
Fixed pieces being interactable after destroy was called on server
Fixed schooling fish scale issue on spawn
Fixed trace attack hitting overlaps
Fixed dryosaurus/carnotaurus cooldown indicator color while the ability is active
Fixed organs weight values sometimes being too heavy
Fixed dryosaurus not biting while holding ALT
Fixed slowdown when landing
Fixed sinking too deep into mud when jumping in
Fixed deinosuchus nose bubbles showing above water
Fixed crouch jittering when stood in water
Fixed some species using diving animation for mud pools
Fixed locked damage not being added on some normal attacks
Fixed skin preview background not having light sometimes
Fixed sickness status on UI disappearing when relogging
Fixed meat chunks occasionally not despawning if eaten fully from swallowing or on the floor
Fixed pachycephalosaurus ram head damage multiplier
Fixed issue of swallow animation on simulated proxies
Fixed drag SFX sometimes playing louder than intended
Fixed certain hints not showing up
Fixed scent bar not being full when inside migration zone
Fixed flung animation repeating
Fixed carnotaurus slide animation after charging
Fixed sanctuary mushrooms being added to adult diet list
Fixed collision of gore pieces during swallow
Fixed swallowing state not applying once swallow animation starts
Fixed "can't swallow" hints not showing up in some circunstances
Fixed organs occasionally becoming stuck to the player's mouth
Fixed AI dinos not updating locational effects
Fixed bees not damaging adult dryosaurus
Fixed bullfrog and deer giving wrong diet nutrients
Fixed issues with drink distance checks
Fixed subadult to adult growth times for dinosaurs without a subadult stage
Fixed dryosaurus juvenile and hypsilophodon grazing/eating sounds not playing
Fixed bleed clogging sometimes not working when wallowing
Fixed vocals ducking venom ambience
Fixed goat, boar and deer sliding animations when sprinting
Fixed juvenile omnivores not getting nutrients from anything besides sanctuary mushroom sources
Fixed fall damage not being calculated when quicklogging
Fixed lunge sprint boost after leaving water to land during lunge
Fixed crouched scent animations clipping through floor
Fixed pawn being destroyed if quick logout after going to Spec mode at least once
Fixed scent blocking other abilities if it was activated when scenting is not possible
Fixed gore been somewhat intertactable after fully eaten
Fixed headtracking jitter
Fixed organs that were thrashed to be thrashed again using original corpse
Fixed pounce camera disalignment
Fixed some debuff values taking too long to disappear
Fixed animal AI not spawning blood pool effects
Fixed corpse flies not despawning
Fixed headtracking facing forward when looking back
Fixed wallow hint showing on blood pools for herbivores
Fixed beipiaosaurus bouncing on water surfaces when out of stamina
Fixed deinosuchus sprint footstep sounds not playing sometimes
Fixed hypsilophodon slide footsteps not spawning
Fixed pteranodon being able to skim above ground
Fixed a latency issue causing the pounce start animation to repeat

[h2]FTessaro - Lead Programmer[/h2]
It’s been another busy month spent working hard to release Gateway, which included several adjustments because some of the new mechanics weren't ready in time, so they had to be removed.

The remaining efforts were focused on moving forward with some new additions to the game, but also to have the first post-Gateway patch released as soon as possible. However, some work in progress systems are:.

• Tyrannosaurus crush ability. It would be a mix of Pounce and Lunge, having different behaviors depending on the size of the target.
  
• Burrowing. The mechanic has been updated with proxy meshes for testing and adjustment, some design decisions are to be made, but the mechanic should be finalized as soon as we set the final choices.
  
• Mutations. Mainly the mechanic is done, but not all designed mutations were added, we can do that overtime so we have better balance applied to them. In that regard, we are allowing Server Owners to customize the values of each mutation, also enable/disable them all or just a few, all through server configs.
  
• Pounce has received some updates to the new Grapple system (disabled for release), also some balance changes and an important change: Pouncing the front or the back of a big target won't connect (latch) anymore.Instead the Pouncer will perform a claw attack doing small damage. In order to latch on the target it needs to be attacked on the sides. This change applies to Troodon as well. Latching from the front was initially implemented to assist players having a difficult time landing successful pounces but we feel is not needed.
  
• Balance Updates. In general more balance changes were made to several abilities and mechanics.
  
• Several bugs were fixed including the ones reported by stress testers, not only QA.
  

Thanks everyone!


[h2]Ariel - Programmer[/h2]
I started the month setting up the new migration and sanctuary scent icons. On the topic of scenting, it is now possible to do it when crouching or resting as well. I also did some experimentation on human weapons, but that’s something that will be worked on properly a bit later on.

The diabloceratops also received some improvements to be more reliable and convenient to use. It has a sidestep action when sparring to quickly get around each other which was previously done by tapping a direction key, but we moved it to the spacebar to be more user friendly. I was also able to make the movement faster when locked together so pushing each other worked much better, it was quite challenging in a networked environment. The camera is also locked to the front now, it helps make it more focused on the interaction. I also started working on a new action, running into the side of another diabloceratops lets you push them around a bit differently. That one is still work in progress though.

I also made further progress on the herrerasaurus. The branch snapping system is being improved with more trees being supported and the movement working better in general. The jumping indicator also shows when you would break your legs from jumping now. Fracturing your legs is something you would really want to avoid, so it should be quite useful.


[h2]VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist[/h2]
Humans. Yes. Humans. This month has been on humans and the extension of their presence on the island. Soon you’ll find the new aquatic fences when they are finished up, which will be the start of shaping up aquatic gameplay..

As well to further the future human interaction and gameplay loop, I’ve designed our new keycards. This card is WIP and it might go through some changes.



Earlier this month, I also finished our new door kit, which consists of a wide array of door types, which represent proper indoor and outdoor doors, so you can distinguish them easier, just by their look and bulkiness.



Besides that I’ve been busy with small additions to our human environment which will be revealed as we populate more places with human stuff, so stay tuned for that!

That is it for me this month, see you next month!


[h2]Tapwing - 2D Artist[/h2]
This month (outside of some icon edits) I've been working on designing two types of cloning tanks, one for large to medium specimens, the other for small and some splash art to showcase them. Full on large scale painted illustrations are intensive enough on their own, but these also needed to be layered in a way that different creatures could be easily swapped in and out from the tank without it looking like it was simply dropped on top of the canvas and where the lighting layers would still ‘play nice’ with any newer additions to the painting.

Not just a fun piece to look at but both will be getting their own design sheets as well so they can be turned into a 3d asset for the labs.


[h2]Bryan - Animator[/h2]
Just capping off the last of the monkey gator animations this month before I move on to the next beastie. But in other news, Maiasaura got a nice rig update and we’ll be able to spin up the big cow for some work pretty soon. Always liked working with Hadrosaurs, they’re pretty satisfying to work with so I’m looking forward to that.




[h2]Wedge - Sound Designer[/h2]
This month the majority of my focus was on sounds for Dilophosaurus’ venom mechanic.
After concepting a few ideas for both the ambience and the sound to go with a hallucination dissolve visual effect, I compounded what worked into a singular design for both sounds. With the sounds designed, a large portion of the work was how the ambience was to be implemented. The ambience is split up into layers which are either introduced or removed as the victim progresses through stages of envenomation, becoming more claustrophobic as it reaches stage 3. The existing natural ambience is effected to compliment this feeling, with some ambience sounds still audible at stage 1 and slowly being removed until none of the original ambience remains at the final stage. Audio effects were set up, blending existing sounds such as the original ambience as well as vocals that occur while envenomated into the new venom ambience, helping along the spooky atmosphere created. To cap it off a sound which plays a random selection from an array of Dilo’s vocals, mostly choosing from its shorter gurgles, hisses and coos as well as its distinct venom laugh, to replace the ambient one shots. These are processed with slightly different effects to sell the ethereal nature, blend with the final soundscape, and confuse its victim in turn ramping up the tension.

After finishing the venom ambience I moved on to Herrera vocals, where I have the majority of its pain reaction and attack sounds done as well as a few other supplementary vocals. Designing as much of its sound palette as possible will be carried forward into December as my sole priority.

Aside from my main two tasks this month I also managed to work on a few smaller improvements and additions. I did another design pass on Diablos threaten call, improving all the vocal layers as well as adding in an impactful snap of its beaks. Sounds were added to Dryosaurus’ new directional attacks; however its vocal sound is likely a placeholder until a bespoke sound can be designed. The pulsing bees sound I made a few months ago have also been added in, initiating when dangers to animals that have taken sanctuary are near. Finally I also made use of the system that changes footstep sounds based on terrain to also do the same for body impacts, this not only applies to body falls from knockdowns but also landing from jumps or falls as well. And of course plenty of bug fixes to go along with all this too.


[h2]hypno - QA Lead[/h2]
This month QA have been hard at work continuing to test Diabloceratops, Dilophosaurus, and Herrerasaurus. The latter two are nearing completion. All we need to do is a bit of balance testing, add a few assets and fix any lingering major issues, then they’ll be prepped for release.

One of the more interesting bugs that has occurred is the dilophosaurus’ head growing to a massive size when dragging a corpse. Here’s what that looked like…



Herrerasaurus seemed to be very keen on throwing itself head first into the mud pits until recently as well…
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Diabloceratops definitely needs to work on its cardio…
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h2]KissenKitten - Producer[/h2]
Hmm, mostly been bug fixing, polishing some outdated concepts/content and a ton of reviews. Stegosaurus mechanics got approved so that’s nice. Grapple has a framework. I think we touched on it before but the TLDR is size doesn’t mean everything.

We’re glad to see how you all are taking to migrations and sanctuaries as a whole. Which largely has been accomplishing their intended goals. Expect to see more sanctuaries as we planned way more than what we released with. The concentrated sanctuaries as a test have yielded valuable information. Naturally, the features we release will require edits and review as we continue fleshing out the experiences we want players to have. There have been some changes to stamina that you’ll hopefully be seeing soon. But don’t get too excited. While the stamina regen is indeed heaving hitting, as was intended and although we will be making adjustments to it, stamina is going to remain an important resource in The Isle that needs to be managed well. Sprinting everywhere is not what we want. These changes have slowed things a bit and we are pleased with that aspect but still need to work on finding the sweet spot.

The herrerasaurus and dilophosaurus are shaping up nicely for their eventual release. Just needing some polish in a few places to get them fully tested and play ready. The herrera may get a few placeholder sounds if it ends up running too long production wise. So glad for big features to be less common all at once.

For myself I have enjoyed being able to work on ironing out some animation inconsistencies that have been long standing to help improve the smoothness and feel of the characters. I’ve been working on some ground based locomotion for the pteranodon in preparation for some changes it’s likely going to undergo playstyle and overall thematic wise. Pteranodons were supposed to be dogfighting and stealing from each other originally. Among other things.

The deinosuchus has also needed some love. The swimming is not nearly as smooth as I find acceptable so I’ve also been able to touch on some of that. It has been a long time coming for me to personally have time to devote to those kinds of additions/changes so I am just glad to be entering into more of a polishing era for once rather than plowing through a stack of animation sets across the roster. So expect to see some things altered, smoothed out or replaced entirely.

The maiasaura has had some establishing poses made and the animation team is about to begin chipping away at it. I enjoy working with hadrosaurs the most as they are usually by far the easiest to work with and you can’t have a game with dinosaurs and not have a hadrosaur. They really are painless. Hopefully not famous last words because we would like to preserve the biped/quad swap and that may end up being a lot of work. So we’ll see.

The diabloceratops is still in testing. We really want to hit the nail on the head with its mechanics and all the animations it takes to make it pop. Upside being as soon as we do finalize that animation list and the functionality, the triceratops will already have its path laid out. We’re trying to hit multiple ceratopsian birds with one stone.

As a general PSA please keep in mind, room needs to be made to have something to work/build towards. Some baselines are going to feel rough because they are but may have ways of mitigating them through proper gameplay. Building a digital ecosystem is challenging and it takes time to fully see the impacts of sweeping systems. That’s pretty much the month as a whole. I’ll see what I can do as far as getting replay polished up for the next update but don’t hold your breath on that cause we do have a fair amount of bugs to tackle and loose ends to tie up before break. We don’t want to leave you hanging for the holidays if possible. Anyway, that’s all for now. Toodles!

Hey Islanders,

We are now deploying Gateway to the EVRIMA branch. As outlined in our latest DevBlog, our current live version (Spiro, 0.11.59.04) will be moved to its own branch for a limited time. This move is designed to accommodate players who do not want to partake in active development but wish to continue playing the game on the previous stable version. Once Gateway's gameplay loop is assessed internally as stable and within the intended vision, we will drop support for 0.11.59.04 and return to a unified EVRIMA branch. All Official Servers are also transferring over to Gateway.

As always, you may need to restart your Steam client if the update is not immediately available to download.



Server Owners that utilize Gateway will have to make adjustments to their configuration files. Below, you'll find an example illustrating the required format for your Game.ini. Please note; You also have to use the appropriate depot when hosting for a specific map.

spiro0.11.59.04 - Server branch for Spiro
evrima - Server branch for Gateway

[/Script/TheIsle.TIGameSession]
ServerName=Official Evrima - EU 5
MaxPlayerCount=100
MapName=Gateway
bServerFallDamage=true
ServerDayLengthMinutes=45
ServerNightLengthMinutes=25
bServerDynamicWeather=true
bAllowReplay=false
bQueueEnabled=true
bServerPassword=false
ServerPassword=xxxxxxxxxx
bRconEnabled=true
RconPassword=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
bSpawnPlants=true
bServerWhitelist=false

[/Script/Engine.GameSession]
MaxPlayers=100


0.12.51.02

Additions
- Added new map (Gateway)
- Added new mechanic: Migrations
- Added new mechanic: Sanctuaries
- Added new AI: Sanctuary Bees
- Added weather
- Added new environmental material effects to dinosaurs
- Added new UI icons
- Added sanctuary (red) mushroom
- Added AI herds
- Added new edible plants: Jackfruit, Banana, Brazil Nuts, Dulse
- Added pushable gates/doors
- Added config option to toggle AI
- Setup new stamina regen during resting
- Setup damage outputs being modified by a player's health
- Added beipi nest animation
- Added new ram impact foley sound
- Added input release to digging so players can interrupt the ending animation
- Added required restarts to certain graphical options that failed to update without them


Balance Changes
- Slightly lowered carnotaurus attack rotations
- Increased some alt attack trace sizes
- Updated cerato bacteria gain values
- Set stego plates and hypsi eyebrows to not block penetration checks
- Enabled dryo evade when sprinting
- Adjusted charge and headbutt interactions
- Added the weight of all pouncers as a check to be able to sprint when being pounced
- Returned stamina cost for alt bites to all animals, besides deino
- Reduced damage output if a player is out of stamina
- Using direction attacks to substitute movement when bleeding now results in proportional drain to the animal's blood pool
- Adjusted stegosaurus growth times
- Adjusted deinosuchus growth times
- Added 20s cooldown to carnotaurus charge
- Globally reduced stamina costs for attempting to pounce and successful pounce states (latched, pinned)
- Removed initial bleed damage on pounce
- Updated all animals buck stamina damages
- Reduced stamina cost for headbutt and tenonto attacks
- Increased all hatchling/juvenile nightvision ranges
- Removed stamina regen boost from diets
- Adjusted nutrient slot fills so overeating is no longer required
- Adjusted cerato scent ranges
- Reduced stamina cost for bucking off latched players
- Reduced pterodactylus damage
- Increased pachy bleed resists
- Added stenciling effects to deinosuchus's underwater nightvision


Enhancements
- Engine version update
- UI updates
- Landscape shader updates
- Foliage shader updates
- Improvements to pounce animation visuals
- Disabled walking off ledges when standing on foliage
- Vocals and environment sounds improvements
- Updated omniraptor movement animations
- Improved corpse trashing trigger
- Setup day and night lengths to be modified using ini file
- Improvements to pachy ram hit detection
- Vocal calls take several uses before they start to fall in power
- Disabled resting in knee deep water
- Set skin variation to be saved and also exportable/importable
- Improvements to river, lakes and mud pool collisions
- Avoid hit animation when pinned
- Added cooldown colors to charge indicator
- Adjusted crab carry location
- Adjusted sea turtle pounce locations
- Adjusted boar carry position
- Made herbivores and omnivores adjust animation based on its location in relation to the player mesh
- Improvements to fracture animations
- Fixed rotten food not properly giving nutrients
- Updated night vision
- Added brightness curve for night vision
- Reflective eyes added to night vision
- Updates and fixes to fruit math regarding weight
- Fireflies now disappear properly during the day
- Made migration zones show up immediately during scent without having to hold the input
- Reduced intensity of galli feed vocal sound
- Adjusted hypsi footprints size
- Adjusted stego footprints size
- Adjusted organs giving little food/nutrients
- Avoid system spawning plants on big slopes
- Avoid trees being scented, rather than their fruit
- Made debuff nutrients such as cannibal/mushrooms decrease as fast as hunger.
- Block any kind of pickup during charge
- Changed admin panel input name from "Players" to "AdminPanel"
- Increased rate at which pachycephalosaurus eats and drinks


Fixes
- Pounce is no longer interrupted by directional attacks
- Fixed graze still being able to activate while sprinting
- Fixed Ptero using carry and drag anim froms Ptera, causing stretching
- Fixed tenonto default skin
- Fixed some foliage collision
- Fixed galli's environmental alert sounds playing outside of the jungle
- Fixed galli mobilize vocal not having an animation
- Fix to certain diets affecting bleed and health decay
- Fixed not being able to drop a turtle after carrying it
- Fixed deer carry offset
- Vocal sounds will now be heard in replays
- Underwater post process now displays correctly with replays
- Fixed gore scaling in a players mouth if they grew
- Fixed certain blood decay math
- Fix the grab high animation being canceled by certain features
- Fixed galli kick uncrouching when holding something
- Hypsi is now properly set to protein instead of lipids for troodon and ptera
- Fixed tiny footsteps inaudible in deep mud
- Fixed attacks not canceling buck
- Fixed getting interaction hints when latched
- Fix to small deino lunge causing target to be forced out of resting
- Fixed players being able to swallow debris
- Interaction hints do not activate when a player is latched onto a pounce target
- Fixes to blood vfx
- Fixed sliding not working properly
- Fixed ptera not using stamina for takeoffs
- Fixed meat chunks not giving nutrients if a juvenile carnivore swallows them
- Fixed stego 90 degree alt attack resulting in movement lock
- Fixed beipiaosaurus, pachycephalosaurus, and stegosaurus knockdown configuration.
- Fixed swallowed corpses scaling with the player
- Fix to vomit trace
- Fixed input lock if swallowing while vomit sickness is active
- Corpses can no longer be swallowed repeatedly
- Fixed grazing while moving not locking camera
- Fixed crouching deceleration
- Fixed camera lock while grazing causing player to move in circles
- Fixed ptera animation issue when landing
- Fixed not being able to activate hypsi spit while running
- Fixed rotten food not properly giving nutrients
- Fixed ptera vocal blending when flying
- Fixed morphs for dinos with subadult stage
- Fixed troodon jump attack sound not crossfading by age
- Fixed weather desyncs
- Fixed replay cooldown starting from start of recording
- Fixed river spline collision mismatch between server/client
- Fixed certain exploits that allowed spamming of directional attacks
- Fixed organ interaction and rot rate values
- Fixed issue with schooling fish scale increases
- Fixed organ weights being too heavy
- Fixed flung animations getting stuck in a loop
- Fixed carno slide animation after charging
- Fixed water splash VFX scale on tiny creatures
- Fixed boars not attacking