DevBlog #57

I completed the main setup for Rex montages. The Deinosuchus needs some special treatment due to its morph target setup and animations. The core systems for Rex and Trike are now mostly finished, with the Crush ability undergoing some bug-fixing, leaving sparring as the final step for full release.

I have been working on a variety of systems. There are now interactive foliage sounds which trigger when animals move through larger vegetation. This really helps communicate dinosaur activity to players that they were missing before just because they couldn’t see one another.

Besides that, I also have been working on the Allosaurus, primarily it´s special ability that allows them to pull a victim down or pull themselves on top of it, depending on victim size. The main setup for this is done, allowing for balance to be set up before we move into bugfixes and visuals.

And, some more changes have been done server side to improve its stability and performance with good results so far. Plus several bug fixes in general. See you!

I spent much of the month working on the triceratops, fixing various issues that came up and also making some improvements to sparring in general. The sidestep in particular is more responsive and it is now easier to follow up with other abilities or to disengage. The thrash attack is now activated by double-clicking LMB and can be done from all forms of locomotion. It might take some getting used to at first, but it provides far better control.

I also made various improvements and fixes here and there. Many of the dinosaurs are getting fixed to feel more responsive from how quickly they can move out of their resting states to movements after using certain attacks. I also made the camera movement smoother when sitting down or standing up. Finally I also worked a bit on the hypsilophodon’s climbing feature.

This month has been all about the tunnels, aka GUTS. Who would’ve guessed? This month I’ve built the whole construction to be able to be used mostly with simplicity, while keeping the amount of pieces as low as it can get, to not introduce any unnecessary complexity where we in fact don’t need any.

This does not mean that the tunnels are simple in nature, but rather than its assembly has been brought down to be as simple as it could to assemble, giving Jace, our level designer, a lot of room and freedom to maneuver, while giving him ample time to decorate the actual interior of the GUTS connections.

These models are for now called “corrective pieces” as they make sure that we allow full scale of verticality and horizontality during building, such as various pieces of staircase, diagonal rooms, ramps, etc.

Alongside those, I’ve made short pieces of the tunnels to allow very interesting mixing such as 2 tunnels or even X tunnels side by side, without breaking the grid.

Very simple tunnel layout made in less that 20 min with our pieces:

Some Diagonal Pieces:

New Elevator lobby piece for the tunnels:

And finally I’ve begun work on a massive new HUB which isn’t the industrial one, who, I won’t for now disclose much, and will sadly have to wait for the next dev blog.
I will leave with this though:

That is it for me this month!

This month I have been finishing off Triceratops vocal call sounds, firstly working on final adjustments to the design of the adult vocal sounds and then working on the mixdown for each and ensuring that each call sounds weighty and powerful at both full and out of breath stages.

I have completed both the subadult and juvenile vocals as well, making sure each vocal was both a similar length to match the new animations and the adult vocal as well as carrying the aesthetic design of the adult vocals but reflecting the growth stage for each.

I also finalised the implementation of the vocals, making sure that the vocals both crossfade cleanly across all the growth stages and that pitch modulation for each vocal of the individual growth stages is manipulated so that the transition at each individual growth value is clean, clear and sounds appropriate.

Finally I have now moved on to working on the rest of Trike’s vocal suite starting with its directional attack sounds.Looking forward to working on the rest of its suite and bringing the Trike to life.

This will be short and sweet since the hordetest has been dominating our focus largely. Thanks again for those of you that have participated. We’ve been spending time bug fixing and keeping a watchful eye on how the triceratops is performing. There needs to be some adjustments here and there, like with nightvision but largely with triceratops we are pretty satisfied with how the creature landed. However there is still more work to be done to ensure the triceratops and tyrannosaurus are able to have their epic showdown in a fashion befitting two of the most popular dinosaurs of all time.

So, while all that bug smashing stuff is happening, the rest of the team is working on other things. From knocking out skins for Acrocanthosaurus and Suchomimus, to elder related work on Spinosaurus, Quetzalcoatlus and Parasaurolophus. I have been doing some animation prep work for things like baryonyx’s defensive stance, avaceratops attacks, hypsilophodon climb finalization, dryosaurus springboarding, kentrosaurus defensive stance, parasaurolophus revisiting, omniraptor crouch pursuit, charge jump and more. Austroraptor is rebelling a little bit but nothing we can’t handle. All in all we’re going to be touching up a fair amount of the current roster so they can all nestle into their niches and mechanics for the foreseeable future.

That’s pretty much it for this month. Bugs, changes, tweaks and the steady standard. I’ll drop some pics and clips though. See ya!