Hey everyone! This release brings major improvements to creature building, as well as modified and new/added controls. We need your feedback on these changes! Please tell us what you like and what still needs improvement in this forum thread. (And don’t worry if the new controls take some getting used to. They did for us, too!)
There are also some other neat things to play with in this update, like axe tossing and enrage potions and mounted attacks… just to name a few. (Pro tip: combine them all for a fun rampage.) Here are the patch notes!
Patch Notes
New Features:
Creature Building Improvements:
The camera has been updated to make it much easier to see what you’re building!
Camera now orbits the creature itself for a better 360° view
Pivot around by using the [WASD] keys, or by holding your right mouse button and panning
Camera pivot point can be changed by clicking [Mouse Button 3]
Zoom in and out using the scroll wheel on your mouse, or by pressing the [+] and [-] keys
Get a full view of your creature by rotating around it.
The mouse cursor is now unlocked during creature building for faster block placement and selection!
Select a Life Block by clicking on it in your hotbar
Then just point and click where you want the block to go on your creature!
Now use your mouse pointer to place blocks.
Use [E] to quickly toggle between Add Block and Remove Block modes
Added a new toolbar at the top of the screen with quick buttons for easy access to the various controls if you prefer using the mouse: building modes (add & remove), camera focus & reset, zooming, grid mode toggle (smart, small, off), creature name, and exiting build mode
New Control Scheme: controls throughout the game are now easier to use
Right-Click will now always use the off-hand item (Left-Click is still your main hand action)
Throwing actions moved to a new key (default [Mouse Button 3] or [X].
Contextual interactions like petting and feeding have moved to the interaction key [E]. In cases where multiple interaction are present holding interaction key will reveal a radial.
Several items had their default actions modified to fit this scheme
Removed the whistle item and changed it to be always available via key press (default [Q])
Changed radial menu to be active as long as a button is held and dismiss on button release. Command is issued on key press up.
You can turn on the display (in the options menu) to see a helpful list of controls while you play.
All items are now throwable! And any weapons you hurl will deal damage when they hit their targets.
Just be sure to pick your targets wisely.
Updated on-boarding in all modes for new control scheme/creature building
Additional improvements to creature animation:
Creature bodies will now naturally bend when turning
Creature’s root block will now be recalculated based off of its actual center to create more realistic animations
New feature: Remote Control!
Use the Remote Control to directly control tamed/bonded creatures via mind control
This Beetledodo is now yours to control! Muaa haa haaaa!
Automatically places a mind control hat on a creature. Destroying the hovering hat will release the controlled creature.
Left click does light attacks (bites) and right click does special attacks (charge, fire breathing, etc) if a creature has that ability. Tapping shift will cause creature to dash.
If a creature goes out of range, the connection is lost and control is returned back to the player. Interact key [E] will also exit control at any time.
Life and hunger bars swap to reflect the controlled creature.
When controlling a creature, the player is idle and vulnerable so be careful!
Changed poachers to use new remote mechanic instead of mind control hat. (Poachers will now drop the Remote Control as loot instead of the hat.)
Improved Saddle Riding:
The first person camera is now smoother
Improved chase (third-person) camera placement
Mounted creatures will now show alongside other bonded creatures in the party UI
Added player controlled creature combat while mounted:
Two modes: indirect control (default) and direct control
Indirect control: Set the direction and speed and your creature will navigate on its own from there, leaving you free to look around, use items, and even attack while mounted. (Tap the forward [W]/back [S] keys to increase/decrease speed.)
Let your creature do the driving while you attack!
Direct control: You have full control of the creature (but can’t use items this way). Use [WASD] to move, Left-Click to bite, and Right-Click for any special attacks the creature has. Dash by tapping shift.
Take direct control of your creature while mounted to control its attacks.
Change modes by pressing R by default
Tapping [E] will pet or feed the creature
Holding [E] will dismount
Improved Pathfinding (Creature Navigation):
Pathfinding now creates multiple navmeshes of different sizes. This allows creatures to more accurately transverse the environment.
Creatures should clip through objects less often and should no longer get stuck on top of fences.
New Potions: Antidote and Enrage!
Antidote potion: cures all ailments! Drink it, toss it, or feed it to a creature.
Enrage potion: causes a creature to temporarily go berserk and attack anything in range, even friends! Drink it yourself to get a damage buff for a short duration.
Offset camera in chase cam slightly to the side when in locked mode to make it easier to see
Optimizations:
AI optimizations: FPS improvement in scenes with many active objects
Smoother frame rates by reducing GC allocations (60fps on recommended spec machines, 30fps on minimum spec machines)
Reduced FPS drop when loading new creatures
Added item rotting and a max number of active items per chunk to improve performance (rotted items will not reload after leaving and then returning to a chunk)
Bug fixes:
Fixed creatures juggling their food instead of eating
Fixed herbivores not eating fruits (Herbivores will also now eat plants that do not contain fruits.)
Fixed bonded creatures freezing after teleporting
Fixed a bug that prevented unsummoning a bonded creature in networked games
Fixed a bug that prevented scenario spawning from working
Fixed backward-facing darts when fired or thrown
Fixed a bug where blowpipe darts failed to do damage
Fixed various null exceptions that cause all sorts of unpredictable game errors
Action button descriptions now use the bound keys (even if you’ve changed them from the defaults)
Fixed several item hand alignments
Fixed immortal poachers
Improved chase camera crosshair raycasting
Improved character look direction
Fixed a bug where statuses (slowed, fire, etc) would not be removed correctly if loaded from a saved game
Fixed issues with the dialog box
Modified creature collision detection to allow bites on larger creatures
Fixed bugs in sensing that prevented creatures from seeing other creatures
Improved bonded creature teleportation to happen less often
Next Up!
While we wait for your feedback on this release, we’ve already started on the next one! Here’s a bit of what’s coming in the next release:
New Adventure Mode starting zone story, progression, and content: First 2 new biomes with new look and feel for environments and starter creatures, plus new lore and characters will unlock features and items for you as you progress.
New creature skills/abilities: Select certain blocks and combine them for special abilities, like a chain of blocks with spikes on the end for a hammer slam, or add a shield of turtle shell blocks to deflect attacks.
AI updates for new behaviors: creatures will play with each other, chase sticks, have more personality.
On-going: performance improvements and updates based on your feedback!
In the meantime, we’ll be putting out an interim update with controller support. Keep an eye out for that if you’ve been waiting to use a controller in CHKN!
Until then, check out our Roadmap to see what we’re working on. Sign up to be the first to get CHKN developer news.
Updated animations (like this chicken reaching down for food in a more life-like way) are new, too!
It’s patch day! We’ve got some major overhauls to creature AI and the animation system, to make creatures more intelligent. We’ve set the foundations for matching gameplay to our big vision for CHKN - make the world really come to life. We want to give players full control of their creativity to build anything they want and discover new behaviors and abilities along the way based on YOUR choices of which Life Blocks you use and how you put them together. A chickpigocrab will cluck, eat anything, and have dangerous pincers to protect itself, exactly how you imagine it would. Today, with this update, creatures are smarter, more responsive to you (the player) and the world around them, and look more life-like.
The full patch notes are just below. We’ve also got details on what’s next on our roadmap at the bottom of this post!
Patch Notes
Animation System Improvements:
Tween-based animation added: Animations are smoother, more life-like, and better portray a creature’s behaviors and emotions.
Since the animations are tied to the AI, this helps differentiate a creature’s behaviors so you can more easily make sense of its intentions. Is it curious about a sound it just heard that needs investigating? Or is it angry and about to charge and attack? These are good things to know when you’re trying to survive!
To start, creatures will now strike and flinch, which are responses to anger and fear. They can also kneel to reach food or go to sleep (which is super cute, btw). Future animations are now easier to add so more animations, including part-specific ones like pinching crab claws, are on the way!
Creatures now have different ways to orientate their necks. They can position them up right and face what they are looking at or move them in closely to reach. They will use the reach mode to eat food and to get close to things like the player as they approach.
Spines and other connected blocks will now move more naturally and react with the feet. Feet are also now better connect to the ground, making walking animations look much more natural.
Flinching, better neck movement, and threat assessment… all new in this update!
Independent “chain” control: Chains are a row of blocks linked together, like in a neck for example. Each chain can now move independently, so chains with eyes on the end will look while chains with mouths will eat and strike. This means even individual blocks with eyes attached can now rotate and look around, making it much easier for you to tell what your creature is paying attention to!
Initial posturing added: This is a fancy way of saying that creatures look and move at different speeds if they are relaxed compared to alert. A creature wary of nearby enemies will look around more quickly in an alert state compared to a mellow creature snacking on a burger.
New Creature AI:
New & Improved Sensing System:
Hearing added! Creatures can now hear and react to sounds, like other creatures coming up behind them or rocks thrown to distract them while you sneak by. Shhh…
Before: The creature has no idea what might be going on behind it.
After: “I HEARD SOMETHING DELICIOUS!”
Sight has been greatly improved, now taking into account exposure, lighting, and movement. Some creatures have a harder time seeing at night, while others like the cat, will have better vision at night. This new sight system also makes it possible to do things like hide from aggressive creatures in tall grasses under the right circumstances. Sneaky!
What a dragon’s senses look like to developers! The yellow “cone” is the dragon following us with his eyes as we move.
Improved creature decision making:
Creatures take in all that new sensing info to recognize more of what’s happening around them and react to it intelligently (or not; some creatures will be smarter than others!).
This means better, more precise interactions with the world, objects, and other creatures!
This will also allow us to add more intelligent (and surprising) behaviors in the future! An elephant will see a fire, recognize that it’s dangerous, and then react on its own to put it out without needing your command.
Instead of limited, hard-coded behaviors, creatures now have brains and make their own decisions.
New pathfinding system: This improves creature navigation as well as performance throughout the game. They can follow you and find their way around terrain more easily!
<*>Smarter Creature Attacks + Player Dodge = Improved Combat:
Creature striking added: leveraging the power of the new animation system, creatures will now prime (pull back slightly) and then strike to attack!
Added creature flinching: Dealing enough damage in a single attack will cause a creature to flinch. Flinching will interrupt a creature’s attack!
He really, really didn’t expect you to interrupt his attack.
Dodge player ability added: Now that creatures can strike, it’s only right that you be able to avoid it... if you time things right. ;) Tap the Sprint key ([SHIFT] by default) to roll in the direction you’re moving and avoid damage.
Or dodge fire. Dodging the fire is always a good idea.
Added creature-to-creature collision: Creatures will push each other around based on their mass. You might want to strategize if your smaller creatures are going up against a larger one!
Added attack knockback: Based off the amount of damage done, a creature can now be staggered into a direction.
Added creature dashing: Creatures can now dash forward or back in order to get into a good attack position or avoid an incoming attack. Beware!
Dash and dodge.
Updated creature damage detection: This is now physically accurate and takes other things (besides the target) into account, so objects like trees and other creatures can get in the way of an incoming attack. Run for cover behind your creature to shield yourself from damage!
Third-person camera improvements: The camera is now locked in the direction you’re facing when in combat, making it easier to keep your eye on enemy creatures and any incoming attacks. This also improves aiming with ranged weapons. (The camera remains in free orbit as usual when out of combat.)
<*>Multiplayer Improvements (Live for Testing):
You can now turn “tethering” off in the options menu! When turned off, multiplayer clients can roam away from the host and wander the world. This is one of the biggest requests we’ve gotten so we’ve done some research and optimization to allow this option.
Warning: You may experience FPS drops and lag when traveling far from friends, especially flying around in Creative Mode. Please send us your feedback! We will continue to improve performance in the next update.
If you have any framerate issues or you just like keeping everyone together, you can turn this back on whenever you like in the options menu.
Increased tether range when active
Updated to latest version of multiplayer framework to improve stability
Players’ heads will now rotate in the direction that they are looking
Reduced max players to 4 to help improve performance
Added support for multiple saddle riding on one creature!
Dragon riding is better with friends.
<*>Performance Optimizations:
Additional chunk loading optimization
Cached terrain detail optimizations
<*>Bug Fixes:
Fix to relic floating: it will no longer get stuck in the air or underground if built over
Fix to a bug that prevented resurrecting creatures in beams in some cases
Fix to “unlimited items” crafting bug after canceling an item’s progress mid-craft
Fix to mono runtime, which would cause game to crash when a chunk unloads
Fix to angler fish lure’s dynamic physics
Fix to removing structures by nuke for clients
Fix to placeable entities not appearing for clients
Coming Soon on Our Roadmap!
Now that creatures are more intelligent and the animation system is ready, we can add more variety and creature enhancements. Our next task will be giving all 140+ current Life Blocks unique tuning stats and hidden abilities, while keeping recognizable traits from their inspirational animals, so you can experiment and find meaningful combinations. Then we’ll add EVEN MORE Life Blocks and creatures. We also want to focus on Adventure Mode and the overall look & feel of the game.
Some big updates coming this year:
Creature Intelligence: New creature behaviors will take the experience to a full ecosystem.
More animated behaviors, and skills (stealth and camouflage top the list thanks to your feedback, plus unique creature skills like dogs hearing really well and spiders shooting webs, etc.)
Player Controls: New intuitive controls and UI will improve usability.
Creature building upgrades: easier life block selection and building, improved camera, more rotation options
Action hot bar replaces item shortcuts
Improved UI for inventory and item storage, toolbox, off-hand items
Full Controller support
New Introduction to Adventure: Story, progression, and content!
The mysteries of CHKN will be illuminated by playing Adventure Mode. New lore and characters will unlock features and items for you as you progress.
First 2 new biomes with new look and feel for environments and starter creatures
New Biome progression and art. Biomes will blend naturally and contain creatures and items that are integral to those environments. (ex: Palm Trees, crabs, and crab hybrids will only be found on beaches.)
On-going: performance improvements and, of course, your feedback! We’re also looking at the Workshop for your ideas and where we can add support for your content creation, too.
We won’t stop there, though. You can see even more of what we have in store for CHKN on our Roadmap. And if there’s anything you’d like to see in the game, please feel free to share it with us! Hearing your feedback and suggestions really helps make CHKN even better.
Don’t forget to join us for this week’s developer live stream over on Twitch on Friday at 1PM EST.
Hey, everyone! We wanted to tell you about CHKN’s next update, coming August 31st. Details below.
Which also means testers wanted! You can preview the update, give us feedback, and hunt for bugs (there's a particularly annoying crash we need your help with!) by getting on the Pre-Release build. Here’s how.
Work in Progress: Creature Intelligence
We want to bring the ecosystem of CHKN to life. Making the world and its inhabitants feel more alive as you explore, discover, and interact is the focus for the upcoming update. Here’s the vision we set for for creatures…
Creatures are aware of the world and can see, hear, and smell what’s happening around them. (If you throw a rock in a temple, you might just trick the mini-boss into investigating the sound long enough for you to sneak in and steal the relic!)
Creatures are life-like, with a full range of motions and realistic behaviors. (Giraffes can use their long necks to eat off the floor or find food high in the air. And it’s pretty obvious that scorpion is about to attack you with its sharp tail.)
Your Life Block combinations matter and creatures behave differently depending on the animal parts you used to build them. (A creature made of dog parts should be dog-like -- e.g. very protective and great at guarding. A chicken should be different and act like a chicken. And a Dogicken should be a bit of both!)
To bring this vision to life -- to make creatures more intelligent and life-like -- we first needed to completely overhaul the AI, including the animation system.
New Creature AI
Here are some sneak peeks of what we’re working on for this month’s update. (Try them out right now on Pre-Release!)
· Creatures can see & hear the world around them. · You’ll notice this the most right now with creatures in combat. They’ll see or hear dangerous creatures approaching and react, or hunt their prey using their new senses. (Wild creatures interact much more now that they’re really aware of each other!) Check out our development testing in the image below. We’re trying to move around the dragon to get out of its line of sight (the yellow) and hide, but you can see it tracking us so we can’t get away.
It’s not that easy to hide from a dragon.
Different eyes and ears have different properties so you’ll need to pay attention to which Life Blocks you put on your creature. Chickens can’t see as far as cats, for example. We’ll be updating and tuning a lot of these senses throughout Pre-Release testing (and beyond) so let us know what you think!
· You can now tell what creatures are seeing & hearing. · Before, when a creature wanted to “look” at something, it would spin its whole body in place. Like a weird, abominable ballerina. Now the creature can turn its head first, and even individual blocks with eyes attached can rotate to look around. This makes it much easier for you to tell what thing your creature is paying attention to… and then decide if that thing should be eaten, tamed, or gotten as far away from as possible as quickly as possible.
I seeee yooouuu...
· Creatures are smart and make decisions. · We went back to the drawing board on AI so that creatures have clear behavior trees and can think for themselves. Instead of odd conflicting behaviors and buggy interactions (like that 1000 yard stare they’d get stuck in, whoops), creatures now make the best decisions based on everything that’s going on, like nearby creatures, how they’re feeling, hunger, health, etc.. If a wild creature is hungry, it’ll go hunting for food. When your creature is full, it’ll ignore food so you don’t waste resources. Creatures don’t get locked into behaviors based off of their emotional state (like OMGSCARY resulting in skittish running back and forth forever). Instead the emotional state is a modifier and they can change behaviors depending on what they’re feeling. This makes creatures much more dynamic and realistic!
The new brain of a GiantKomodo.
· Creature attacks now make sense. · Thanks to the new AI, facing an angry giraffe is now distinct from the stampeding elephant, giving you options when deciding which tactics you want to use. You might try feeding and taming the less aggressive giraffe but you’ll need to strategize to take down an enemy with a size advantage like the elephant (since creatures now have mass and can push your smaller creatures around in combat!). With the new camera in third-person view, you always face your target in a fight so it’s easier to see what’s happening and plan your attacks. And creatures have defined attack animations, so you can figure out their patterns... and then use the new dodge ability to avoid them like a boss.
TUCK AND ROLL!
· You can now recognize creature intentions. · Until now, creatures’ gestures and movements all looked relatively the same. You couldn’t tell if a creature was eating or attacking, which is a pretty important distinction when you’re trying to survive in the wild! In addition to being able to tell where creatures are looking (see note above), you can also now distinguish if a creature is eating, curious about something, or is about to bite your face.
Pigtower STRIKE!
· You can build creatures with more life-like movement. · With the animation improvements, creatures are closer to being living beings with range of motion and emotion! Walking looks more natural now that feet connect to the ground better, and you can add limbs and tails to your creatures that more realistically bend and sway. They can even have arms now! Arms!
In the future, this lets us add new part-specific animations. Crab claws will pinch! Scorpion tails will sting! Horns will charge! All on our list to come.
· Creatures are better behaved. (aka AI & pathfinding fixes!) · We heard a lot from you guys about how creatures would push you around the map when they were overly excited, or how they’d ignore fences so they could chase you down. Not any more. :)
Shh… don’t tell him he could just destroy the fence with fire.
There’s a whole new pathfinding solution, actually, which is much faster and improves performance.
· Creatures will have more skills. · We asked you about skills and abilities in our recent survey and things like stealth and camouflage topped the list, so we’re making sure to get those in first. We also have unique skills planned for all the creature types, like dogs hearing really well and spiders shooting webs. Thank you to everyone that voted!
Major Multiplayer Improvements Under Construction
With all the creature changes, multiplayer is getting optimized too. We also got a lot of feedback about how being tethered to the host of a multiplayer game is pretty annoying, and we agree. So, if you play on Pre-Release, you’ll notice that the tethering is now gone and you can roam freely. However, be warned, there will be lag and performance issues in multiplayer games, especially as you add more players to a game, while we’re working on it.
Help Us Test on Pre-Release
We really appreciate any bug reports and feedback you send our way to help us test all these new systems. As we’ve mentioned, the update is available now on Pre-Release! (Here’s how to get it.) We’ll be updating regularly as we add more improvements and fix any bugs you help us find before the release on August 31st.
Speaking of bugs, there's a crash we need help chasing down! If you experience the crash on Pre-Release, it would help immensely if you could tell us where you were on the island when it happened and what events happened leading up to it. We’re collecting data in this thread. Thanks in advance!
Don’t forget to join us on YouTube and Twitch for our dev streams. The next one is this Friday, Aug 18th, at 1PM EST, where we’ll be showing off the new animations, updated combat moves, and other improvements we hope you’ll like.
If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out our last developer live stream too. Greg and John talked a lot about the upcoming release and answered some great questions from CHKN fans. (Also, spoilers, Greg gets scared out of his wits by a snake.) You can watch the full stream or check out the handy 15-minute edited version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfcDxPTiD0s
You can also sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know about upcoming updates, sneak peeks, live streams, and other super secret CHKN news. 👀
Thanks for reading. We’ll get back to work so we can get this update out to you on the 31st.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
- Team CHKN
http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN
[Patch v0.4.0] Bonding + Building Improvements
Creature Bonding is here! This new system lets you easily manage, store, and even revive your bonded creatures. Plus we’ve got some big improvements to structure and creature building (see our note below about old structure overlap in saved games!), resource and hunger balancing, bug fixes, and more. Thanks again to all our Pre-Release testers for your help! Please share your feedback with us on the forums! We’d love to know what you think.
Patch Notes
New Features
Added Creature Bonding: Easily manage your closest companions by bonding with them to unlock new features!
Once a creature is Tamed and 100% happy, hearts will appear over its head and the option to Bond will unlock in the interaction menu.
Press (B) to manage your Bonded creatures.
Store and summon your creatures from this menu whenever you want (like on a looong journey across the desert where food is scarce).
Newly created creatures are automatically Bonded if there is an available slot. Otherwise, they default to Tamed.
In Adventure Mode, obtaining more life shaper relics unlocks additional Bonded creature slots, from 2 active up to 4 active and from 2 stored up to 8 stored
Never adventure alone again! Bonded creatures will always follow their owner, won’t go wild if hungry or unhappy, and will be automatically stored when incapacitated.
Revive an incapacitated creature by feeding it Life Blocks through the Bonding screen, or head to a temple beam to revive for free with no resource cost (once you’ve obtained that temple's artifact).
Quickly see the status of all Bonded creatures at a glance in the main HUD.
Bonded creatures will only obey orders from their owner’s whistle when in multiplayer.
In multiplayer Adventure Mode, only the owner can edit a Bonded creature. Once a creature is in edit mode, party members can join in to add/remove blocks.
Tamed creatures are now your workforce!
They can be assigned tasks and won’t abandon those tasks to follow you when you leave the area (like a Bonded creature would)
You can have as many tamed creatures as you can handle! Just remember, they’ll go wild if not properly taken care of.
Since you aren’t best buds with Tamed creatures, they won’t follow your whistle commands, but they can still be tethered with leashes
TIP: Bonded creatures will always be with you and can be revived so they make great adventuring companions! Tamed creatures are great at working around your homestead, like powering Treadmills.
Improvements
Structures:
Updated casting system for easier placement of blocks and faster building (no longer requires fracturing of blocks)
Optimized structure blocks for improved performance
Added building sounds and particle effects
Added door opening/closing sounds
Doors and gates now always open away from the player
SAVED STRUCTURES NOTE: Structures in saved games and Workshop Worlds prior to this patch will be shifted and de-fractured after updating to the new system. This may (almost definitely) cause overlapping, floating blocks, and other impossible or odd behavior. Converted structures may also not fall apart correctly when dismantled. It’s updated in this way to ensure you don’t lose any blocks! They can be removed and replaced in the new system properly. If you have a game saved to Workshop Worlds, you can save it again after you’ve updated.
Creature building:
Updated highlight system: Bad placements are now displayed with red highlighting, just like with structure blocks
Added smart grid system to automatically align similar sized blocks
Exposed grid toggle (Z) to allow switching between grids
Smart grid: Snaps blocks at their centers for easy alignment and quick placement
Small grid: Snaps blocks on a smaller grid for a bit more refinement
No grid: The grid is turned off (no snapping); completely free placement for fine tuning!
Rebuilt wild creatures affected by recent Life Block improvements
Updated tree drop rates: All blocks now drop when a tree is broken; rebalanced log yield and burning times to reflect change
Updated Life Block drops: Reduced creature Life Block drops on death; added a new smoke particle when remaining, un-dropped Life Blocks turn to dust
Reduced tamed creature memory decay by half
Reduced tamed creature hunger rate
Increased crab leg size 3x
Added new sounds for material based hits
Temple beam boss creatures will now defend the magical eggs
Magical eggs now drop the boss creature's Life Blocks
Beta branches now use their own save directory (more info in the Pre-Release FAQ!)
The stat bar shown when hovering over a creature now stays on screen when looking at larger creatures
Added a confirm dialog when deleting saved games
Tweaked day/night cycle so night is shorter
Greg built this huge mansion in 30 minutes. He’s very proud. Get it in the Workshop!
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that made it difficult to get milk from udders
Fix to destroying pooled objects which caused unpredictable errors
Tamed creatures will no longer attack hatchery eggs automatically
Items creatures are holding are now saved when saving and exiting a game
Fixed rare issue when reloading a game right after exiting which could cause saved game to corrupt
Minor tweaks on all lifeblock visuals (offsets, materials, animation speeds, missing mouth animations, bounding boxes)
Minor visual tweaks to various items
Fixed issue where fire would deal damage but not display
Fixed missing colliders on tree tops
Fixed issue where clients did not get correct tree information synced
What do you think of Bonding?
Your feedback on new systems like this helps us determine what changes and improvements we make. Please let us know your comments and suggestions. Post your thoughts once you’ve given Bonding (and everything else) a try!
Vote for Creature Abilities!
What’s next for creatures? Stealthy camouflage? Spider web traps? Healing auras? Laser beam eyes!? DANCE PARTY!? Help us design creature abilities for a future release. VOTE FOR NEW ABILITIES!
We were selected for the IndieCade Showcase @ E3! How cool is that? We got to show off CHKN to tons of gamers from all over the world.
Here’s John showing off CHKN and wishing he, too, had a Mario Odyssey visor.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth to say hi and give us feedback, and to IndieCade for having us. They are the coolest group of folks and we really appreciate all the time and effort they put into the show and helping indie games like us.
Hey, everyone! Creature Bonding is now up on Pre-Release and we could really use your help testing this new feature to work out all the kinks. We also wanted to tell you about some hotfixes we’ve made thanks to your bug reports and feedback. Read on for all the info!
Help Us Test Creature Bonding
Creature Bonding is the new system we’re adding based on your feedback that lets you store, resurrect, and manage your creatures much more easily. Before we release it next week, we really need your help finding bugs and letting us know what you think to make sure it’s ready!
Bonding. <3
The first version is currently up on Pre-Release. We’ll be updating it throughout the next week, including adding the structure optimizations and some big structure building improvements tonight and tomorrow. To help us out, switch over to that build (info & instructions) to give it a try, then report any bugs and share your feedback with us on the Pre-Release forum. Thank you!
We’ve also made Pre-Release saves separate so that you can test without worrying about corrupting your main saves! So if you switch to Pre-Release and don’t see your saves, fear not. They’ll still be there when you switch back to the main branch. (If you want to copy saves over to Pre-Release for testing, the FAQ has you covered!)
Hotfixes
The feedback and bug reports you guys send our way really help us stay prioritized and provide a lot of great information so thank you! Here’s a list of all the hotfixes that have been added based on your reports over the past few weeks.
Fixed multiplayer desync issues (caused by creature building errors)
Fix to structures that were breaking some saved games
Altered highlight visuals on creature editing to be more obvious
Fixed colliders for world items (both physical and pick-up)
Life Blocks being previewed no longer collide/interact with the casting player
Shifted equipped item visuals to appear more in the player's hand
Fixed creature bodies not bending
Many tweaks and fixes to Life Block visuals/colliders/connections
Fix to item scaling
Fix to dart gun projectiles damage
Fix to beetle armor right hand mounting point
Fix to breakable object positions for clients
Fix to network error on requesting health for tree blocks
Fix to error when despawning sacks
Fix to first-person items disappearing
Fix to item logic that caused errors such as removing a Life Block after placing
Fix to saddle riding in first-person mode
Creature Bonding Live Stream
Join us for our live stream tomorrow (Friday, June 9) at 1pm EST on Twitch or YouTube where we’ll be showing off Creature Bonding. Check out the new features, chat with us, or ask us any questions you have. (You guys always have awesome questions.) See you then!
We’re also in design on creature abilities for a future release, so if you have ideas for things you’d like to see and have not shared them yet, head over to this post! We’d love to hear them.
That’s all for now.
- Team CHKN
http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN/
[Patch] v0.3.4 FPS Stutter & Optimization Fixes
Speed loading game objects! Hooray for optimization!
Happy patch day! We’ve been hammering away to improve performance and framerate, speed up loading times, and lower memory usage so the game runs more smoothly for everyone. Plus, that annoying FPS stutter/freeze every 30 seconds or so is fixed. *fist pump* (Thanks for your reports on this!) Try out your multiplayer adventures, fruit farming, and crazy creature hatching with better, stutter-free performance!
Here are the full patch notes with all the optimizations we’ve done...
Patch Notes
Completely overhauled the pooling system and related subsystems to greatly optimize game performance
Gameobject count has been reduced by 93%! This means better memory usage and 13x faster garbage collection performance (which was causing the main large stutter while moving through world).
Note: Really large buildings with lots of blocks may still cause some framerate stuttering. We’ll have a small patch coming out soon to fix this!
Optimized code that was allocating too much memory per frame, which would cause stutters even when not moving through world
Optimized world assembly routines to keep framerate more consistent
Removed an error log message from networking that was crippling framerate
Optimized art assets to increase graphics-related performance
Refactored asset pipeline to easily allow bringing in future content
We’re working on a system to easily manage all your creatures. You’ll be able to do things like more easily control individual creatures in groups and multiplayer parties, keep track of creatures at a glance, and resurrect bonded creatures after they die. (It lives! Never go creature-less again!)
What do you want to see in this new creature management system? We have our own list but we’d love to hear your suggestions or requests! Please feel free to share them with us on the forums.
We estimate this new system will be ready to release in the latter part of June. We’ll keep you posted!
Community Spotlight
Check out a few of the awesome things created by the community recently! We love sharing these so keep ‘em coming.
SpyCakes and Beautiful O.B go on a hilarious dragon hunting adventure together in multiplayer! Spoilers: FIRE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHYZwngk2Y4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrwz4BAVKa4
HollyHuntress heroically takes on the Arena Battle challenge in Workshop Worlds. Creature Building Skills: Level Up!
To keep up with all the latest CHKN news, don’t forget to sign up for our Newsletter! You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitch. We regularly show off what we’re working on during our live streams. Let us know what you’d like to see!
Until next time.
- Team CHKN
http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN/
Hide Your Carrots… the Bunny is Here!
The Easter Bunny has come to CHKN! He didn’t leave us any chocolate but he did leave some Life Blocks to use in Creative Mode. ;)
Bunny Body
Bunny Neck
Bunny Mouth
Bunny Eye
Bunny Ear
Bunny Leg
Bunny Tail
Build an adorable bunny friend or add them to your own abominations for extra cuteness.
Daaaawwww.
Make sure to download the latest patch to access them. And share screenshots of your bunny creatures! We love seeing your creations.
Happy Thursday! Today’s patch has multiplayer, creature building, and performance improvements; a Workshop update; and some bug fixes. We’ll get right to the notes so you can see what’s new...
NEW FEATURES:
Multiplayer Party System!
Form parties with friends in multiplayer to create CO-OP or PVP teams
Creatures will be shared with other party members. No more accidental creature fights!
Friends in your party will not take damage from your fists/weapons. No more friendly fire! Go team! (Careful, though. You can still damage yourself and party creatures.)
Press [P] in a multiplayer game to manage your party and invite others
IMPROVEMENTS:
Creature building now supports attaching to legs and other animated life blocks
Make your abominations even more abominable!
Improved creature head detection
Before and after!
The moon now provides a bit more light during the night
Workshop now features a "Community Nominated" section showcasing our favorite creations
Reeds can now be planted and harvested
All vegetation items can now be fed to creatures by hand
Life blocks can now be fed to creatures by hand
Tuned area outside of starting temple in Adventure Mode to remove herds (so that your creature is less likely to die right away, and it’s not as difficult to acquire more life blocks that early in the game)
Optimized terrain textures to help improve performance
Upgraded to latest version of Unity engine for minor performance improvements and bug fixes
BUG FIXES:
Fixed issue where display of first person items would double in size
Fixed multiplayer issue where clients could not see a player's Steam details
Fixed multiplayer issue where nuke was still being displayed for clients
Tuned pick up radius on various items (should now be easier to pick up non-block items)
If you have any feedback or bugs to report for this patch, please head over to the forums and let us know. The feedback we get from all of you is always a huge help and we really appreciate it!
No particular reason for this image. We just thought it was udderly amazing.
Next up, we’re working on some big optimizations to improve performance even more, as well as doing some design work to improve creature controls and relationships. And bug fixing, as always! In the meantime, we do have plans to release a small patch next week for Easter but… NO SPOILERS. ;p
See you then!
- Team CHKN
http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/
Happy Birthday, CHKN!
April Fool’s! Okay, just kidding. No joke, CHKN really does turn one year old today! Pretty amazing, right?
We just want to say THANKS to all of you. Since we’re building this game with the community, we definitely couldn’t have gotten to this milestone without you. So thank you CHKN players, testers, designers, artists, video creators, streamers, veterans, Workshop-ers, explorers, multiplayers, Tweeters, and sharers. You guys inspire us every day! We collect and watch your videos in our YouTube channel, awe at your creature combinations in the Workshop, love your screenshots and artwork… and we can’t do without your suggestions and bug spotting in the forums. You’re all amazing and we’re very grateful for your support!
To celebrate the occasion, we just released a patch with a quick art update to loot bags. For one day only, during our birthday, sparkly loot bags will become sparkly birthday presents! Whenever you drop one in the game, we hope it’s a fun reminder of how far CHKN has come with all your help.
Thanks for an amazing year! We’ve got lots of new features and content coming up and can’t wait to share it all with you. We’re looking forward to another great year!
- Team CHKN
P.S. If you’re a CHKN supporter, please consider signing up for our newsletter (if you haven’t already). You’ll be the first to hear about CHKN news!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/
Community Workshop Spotlight & SXSW Recap
Community Creatures
We’re super impressed by the creatures you guys have been saving to the Workshop! Here are three of our favorites. Download them to your game to try them out.
We definitely want to keep spotlighting your awesome creatures. If you have any Workshop favorites (your own or made by others), let us know! You can post them in the Workshop forums or even Tweet them to us.
CHKN Run
Roman’s got a new Workshop Worlds example for you to play around with. A platformer! Try to make it to the end without falling to your dooooooom.
SXSW Gaming
HUGE thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth at SXSW Gaming last weekend! John and Greg had a lot of fun meeting fans in person and introducing new people to CHKN. They also got a ton of great feedback that will really help improve the game as development continues. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun and we’re really glad we got to participate. We hope we can do it again some time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-TBKJj8tBQ
What’s Next?
We’re currently planning our next round of updates based on everyone’s feedback. We’ll be back soon with more info.
