DevBlog #51

This month I have been mostly focused on the new features for pounce and finishing up some systems before moving on to the new playables. As for pounce, the new slot swap system is finished which allows players to manually swap slots when latched to a target by spending some stamina. It can be used to better coordinate with other pouncers or simply be used to avoid being knocked down when the target uses nearby trees or objects.

Along with that, pounce now has some incoming manual control to attack while latching. Latching on to players only causes a small amount of consistent damage, but allows players to tap/hold the primary attack button to do extra raw damage, or also tap/hold the secondary attack button to deal no raw damage, but high bleeding damage. Both actions spend stamina, but allows for more dynamic combat giving players more control over what type of damage they’re dealing to pounced victims. With this bucking has become significantly more important for the victim and it has received some major attention to prevent it being an unfun war of attrition.

Lastly, some additional adjustments were made to the patrol zones that should help encourage players to explore the map and should be featured in the upcoming hordetest.

Most of my work this month was done on the maiasaura. The dinosaur will have the ability to switch between bipedal and quadrupedal stances, which affects its movement in different ways. The most time consuming part however was setting up all the different interactions to support both stances. I also had to reorganize some existing data, but on the plus side this also opens up the door to new mechanics such as sprinting while crouching. The maiasaura will also have different attacks depending on its stance which I will be working on next.

Other than that it’s mostly been the usual bug fixes, but there were some quite significant balance changes as well. For one, the carnotaurus has been made slightly smaller which has an effect on its weight which should feel more appropriately located within the roster while its speed is still being evaluated. I also updated the ceratosaurus’s bacterial bite, which now takes into account the relative size of the two dinosaurs and also how much bacteria you have available. This has made it extremely effective against small target animals near its weight class, which has led to some interesting new space for the ceratosaurus.

Focus for me this month has been moving some of our smaller scavengers to a more robust and visually appealing system that allows more complex interactions. There are some new interactions coming to the world that involve this system, including some sound traps that will give away careless players.

Psittacosaurus has received a few behavioral changes and bug fixing based on QA testing with the hope to include it in the upcoming hordetest. They have a few burrowing locations throughout a few biomes, but can also be found in some sanctuaries.

Lastly, I’ve made a new RCON tool for internal use and hope to get that into public hands once it’s been evaluated and tested.

This month I’ve been working more on refining the tyrannosaurus sounds. A lot of the sound palette of the calls has been changed, namely a lot of the source sounds being used for the core elements; instead of relying almost solely on animal sounds I started working with recording and processing new source from non-literal sounds – recording metal screeches and groans, glass squeals and moans etc. This took a fair bit of experimenting to find the right source, which once found is then blended with the animal elements to help these sources sound more organic as well as additional processing to give them a vocal quality such as modulated resonant filtering and tremolo.

Specifically for each call these are the main changes that have been made:
Injected more dynamics and movement into the broadcast so it has more inconsistencies and is not just a flat note as well as improved the mix of the different layers.
Mix improvements and more variations of the alternate broadcast
Adding a distinct core to the generic call over the chunky gurgles and groans that it solely consisted of previously
Reworked the danger call – reducing the amount of noise that was cluttering the mix from breath and roar layers as well as creating a more unique core to the sound which will be easily identifiable.
Worked on blending the layers of the attract call better.Additionally some of its attacks and idles have also had edits made, making them tighter and removing undesirable elements and more adjustments have been made to the attenuations; refining how they travel and checking at various distance ranges to make sure it sounds appropriate. A custom attenuation setup has been added for the broadcast which has a separate power layer to help give a terrifying impact and crunch even at distance without other breathy and growly elements being audible at distance.

Other tasks I have also worked on this month:
Worked on an ambient cue for troodon’s venom that will spawn randomized vocal sounds during its new envenomation setup, same as for the dilophosaurus’ which has now also been implemented.
Improved the timings of herrerasaurus’ pounce attack vocal and foley sounds
Fixed gallimimus’ mobilize call, dryosaurus’ dodge vocal and deinosuchus’ lunge vocal (in water) not playing
Started some early concepting on updating maiasaura’s calls to be in line with the sonic aesthetics.

This month I got to work on some edits for the elder diabloceratops, beipiaosaurus and the juvenile/hatchling concepts for austroraptor. The direction for the little austros was to go in the opposite direction of the long and sleek adults (Design wise) and make the younger versions progressively rounder and fluffier the closer to hatchling you get. Needless to say baby birds were a big inspiration, mainly that of fowls as well as some songbirds.

On the flip end of cute fluffy dinos, I’ve been doing some additional work for the Gen1 customization, including some close ups and extra detailing of the alternate head variations to get the monstrous humanoid ready for the horror side of the isle.

Another busy month of animation. Been hard at work on a number of dinosaurs. Triceratops sparring is really coming along, I recently completed the horn locking and it really is impressive how solidly two triceratops lock together when sparring as opposed to how freely a diabloceratops could move.

Also been working on getting austroraptor finalized and ready for animation. Its rig has a lot of moving parts but it’s all come together and a few people on the animation team are already working with it to get its list of animations done. A few of the other animals we’ve been working on, like triceratops, maiasaura or diabloceratops have been in legacy and had some animations we could reuse, but austroraptor is different in that it has a whole new skeleton and everything has to be remade from scratch.

Lastly, tyrannosaurus has been featured heavily in my current workload while getting its more advanced locomotion animations completed as we continue to polish the sparring and life stages.

QA has been spending a good amount of time on balance testing over the past month. Below are just some of the many areas we’ve been looking at:

One of our main focuses was testing the new pounce changes. Being able to switch between pounce “slots” while holding onto your target has been proving extremely useful in combat, allowing the user to avoid having to leap off of a cliff because your target positioned themselves on the edge of one. Having the ability to also pick between raw damage or more bleed with the different mouse buttons has also expanded the utility of the attack. Need to bring something around your size down faster? Focus on the raw damage attack. Target too big to bring down quickly? Focus on using the bleed attack to keep the pressure up with your pack.

Ceratosaurus now takes into account its own and its target’s weights when applying bacteria through its bite. This change alone has shaken up its combat prowess, allowing it to more quickly cause smaller species to vomit while larger ones take additional bites. This change will be even more obvious when we get our apexes in, as the ceratosaurus won’t be able to make them vomit in a few bites, solidifying its place in the ecosystem. Ultimately it is still one of the smaller carnivores on the roster.

Tacking onto Will’s highlight of the new environmental and attack sounds for dilophosaurus and troodon, their envenomation mechanic has also received their suite of sounds, including ambient vocals from hallucinations. This gives the effect a whole new intensity as the player now feels like they’re constantly surrounded, even when they’re not. This has been very enjoyable to witness in playtesting, as people are now much more paranoid than before.

Night vision has been very well received by the QA team and is undoubtedly the best iteration we’ve had so far. I believe this new system will finally put an end to the case of people playing with NV on constantly, as having it enabled during the day doesn’t give the player any advantage while still giving them a massive advantage at night. As well as this, I’ve tested it against gamma to see the difference, and the results have been very promising—I believe players won’t even feel the need to increase their gamma anymore because of how well it works. QA has been running combat tests at night, and the new system makes the difference between a nocturnal and diurnal creature that much more apparent while still giving all playables an enjoyable playing experience.

For the past few months, QA has also been hard at work cracking down on bug finding, which has led to the discovery of some very strange issues:

Pteranodon AI have decided that the most efficient way to take off is by burrowing their way through a tree first:

The animal AI seem to have grown tired of being endlessly hunted and are rising up against dinosaur players. Be on the lookout for each other:

Beware! The infamous land croc returns with its new dodge ability:

Last but not least, here’s one for the maiasaura:

Yet another month that has zipped on by. There’s so much going on right now I don’t know where to begin. Since I’ve got a maiasaura trying to kick me in the face at the moment, I’ll drop some content instead of writing a lengthy post.

The animation team has been hard at work cranking out these animals that you should start seeing more of in the not so distant future. There’s a lot of change incoming. Changes to pretty much every species in the game. Changes to the environment, changes to nightvision, changes to abilities etc. There’s also going to be some animation blending changes that may not make it into the next Hordetest but will likely make an appearance shortly thereafter.

Here’s a sampling of some of the skin work that’s been done for the animals including the tertiary skin for tenontosaurus. The other tertiary skins have been created and should be making their way to you.

Additionally here’s some animations for the austroraptor as the animation team starts knocking it out. You can expect it to be every bit as energetic as some of you may remember it being from legacy but in a fully realized fashion. This is an omniraptor in sport mode, but be careful since it’s also more delicate.

Rounding out, here are some animations for trike and rex

There’s still so much work left to do but we’re getting ever closer to our goal. We set out to improve upon the concepts present in the legacy version of the game and those planted seeds are bearing fruit. More work is being done on the humans as well to get them to a place that will allow them to fully function in the game concretely. As always, be good to one another and see you next month!