DevBlog #54

At the beginning of this month, I focused on fixing crashes and various bugs for the latest public patch while simultaneously working on the Allosaurus and its unique mechanics. Most of its basic systems are already functional, though some key animations, particularly those tied to its special ability, are still in production.

We also made notable progress on the Tyrannosaurus, mostly visual fixes and enhancements. This includes smoother animation blending and better integration with its mechanics to help translate visuals due to its size.

Additionally, fruit trees themselves will now be edible, not just their individual fruits. This provides a more practical food source for larger creatures at the cost. Consuming the tree significantly reduces future food availability, as a tree is necessary for fruit to grow back.

Finally, I added the gastrolith system. All playables can now consume gastroliths, which decrease the food contents of your stomach at a faster rate so that you can better manage your nutrition and diet combinations.

This month my main focus was the maiasaura. The animal is getting close to completion and it’s in full QA testing now, so new issues kept popping up for me to fix. Luckily nothing major was broken and we were also able to set up its stats now that everything is in place. Overall I feel satisfied with how the dinosaur turned out. Originally I was a bit wary of how we were going to support the two different stances, but it worked out quite well.

When not working on the maiasaura or bug fixes I had some time to start looking at my next task, which involves the pteranodon. I always enjoy working on the more agile animals, so I was quite excited about it. This won’t be part of the upcoming update as it’s in early stages, but you can expect some nice little additions.

This month I’ve been making my way through a large majority of adult Maia’s supplementary vocal sounds with only its pounced, pinned, blind and female court vocal sounds remaining. After these are complete, I will be altering these vocals for its juvenile stage. I’ve also done another pass on the adult animations adding short vocal sounds where necessary as well as more breath and foley sounds.

I’ve overhauled and simplified the way we handle reverb for calls at a distance, providing more accurate control on the amount of reverb the sound is sent to over distance. Within this overhaul I made changes to the reverb effect, adjusting decay rates, dampening etc. affecting how it sounds for each size category to be more appropriate and more importantly prominent. I also added an additional send to a multitap delay effect to simulate echo as it gets further away. The combination of all these changes should have a significant effect on making vocals more accurate and help the player identify the distance from a sound source.

I’ve also replaced the distant stomp layer of large footstep sounds and made some adjustments to attenuation and volume balance for the large footsteps.

This month has been all about the guts. Well not those guts, but the G.U.T.S. Most of my month has been focusing on the new shader Ikarop did and putting it to its true test with a big variation of materials, and applying them all to our new G.U.T.S, ranging from the already seen HUB#1 and a big variation of tunnel types that will be used with it.

I’ve started from the entrance towards the inner pieces, which are semi modular due to the PLA system. You’ll see variants as you go through them so it’s not bland or repetitive.

I tried to keep it clean so Jace, or anyone that wants to build on top of the system, can do so with ease. Creators can not only change what is in said tunnels, but can easily make their own path and storylines within by just changing a kit’s piece from dead-ends to further tunnels and room connections. Overall the direction grants us a really nice structure for expanding the tunnels, (literally) in every way.

To top it off here are some development images for you to look at. Till next month. Cheers.

We wanted to give two of the most famous dinosaurs their own spotlight piece of a 1-on-1 encounter. They were designed to mirror each-other and reflect the opposite outcome of a brutal fight where neither escapes unscathed.

Posing both animals was an interesting challenge with the Trike victory painting, because in early versions, the trike looked as if it were guarding the Tyrannosaurus body as opposed to standing on top of its attacker after finally bringing it down. Changing the arm position to be less possessive looking, sprawled out overtone the rex and adding a little more fear to the triceratops face helped bring the tone back to where it should be.

The Rex victory version of the painting had its own hurdle to work through. With the overlapping nature of the pose, lighting was going to need extra attention to make sure the outline of the Rex head didn’t disappear into the shadows.

For fellow illustrators: Plan out your lighting thoroughly in advance, you’ll save yourself a lot of headache and course corrections down the line!

This month QA has been focused almost entirely on Maiasaura, ensuring that it works with all of our existing systems. As we add more species to the game, as does the number of possible issues between them, so it was important for us this month to check it against absolutely everything. I can say with confidence now that we’ve checked it against all abilities in the game and they all work as intended. Deinosuchus can lunge and drown it, Ceratosaurus bite applies bacteria correctly, Dilophosaurus hallucinations can spawn and attack the Maiasaura, etc.

As you can see, the number of tests quickly stack up as we add new species; so, we’ve been working on streamlining this process within QA to make it much more efficient in the future.

To give you a video example of an interaction that was bugged with the Maiasaura, here’s what happened when an Omniraptor was bucked off of one:

In case it wasn’t obvious from the video, the Omniraptor would shrink dramatically in size each time they were bucked off! This wasn’t as straightforward as that though, as this issue only showed on the Omniraptor’s client, causing them to “jitter” for all other players.

As well as interactions with other species, the Maiasaura also of course came with a plethora of its own problems. Here’s how it looked if it grazed while turning:

We have also been testing the other new additions to the game. For example, Gastroliths are being introduced in the next update, allowing users to reduce their hunger faster.

I’d like to give a big thank you to all of those that have been continuing to report issues to our community bug report form (https://forms.gle/ufXDnxNfhRhZ7CCi8). Without them, we wouldn’t catch a lot of the problems that exist in the game. One report that we did come across from a report a while back was the aptly named “fish prison” issue – players that were swallowed by an elite fish would sometimes never be allowed to respawn, becoming stuck following the fish until forced to relog:

Lastly, QA has been playtesting the Maiasaura to make sure it feels fun to play as. We’re aiming for it to be a fairly tanky, swift animal that deals moderate damage in favour of better crowd control capabilities. The growth is set up in a way so that it quickly grows to its subadult stage, then slows down as it progresses towards a full adult. It is also able to quickly switch stances between being quadruped and biped, allowing it to adapt to various circumstances. My favourite ability is the “Shove”, which can be used while sprinting, allowing you to send smaller characters flying. I’m very much looking forward to getting this character into your hands very soon with a horde test, which we are aiming to push out within the next week.