We wanted to give you a bit of insight to what we’ve been working on these past few weeks, so lets get started.
Since the groundwork update, we’ve been working on fixing some of the major bugs found in the game, while also implementing our new skin method which allows for more details to be visible for our dinosaurs. This includes new skins for the remaining unique AIs.
We did come across a bit of hurdle when implementing this new method for some of our dinosaurs, though in the end we’ve managed to implement this new method to all of our dinosaurs nonetheless.
With the skins updated and most of the major bugs fixed, we’ve decided to take the next step and work on something that would make the groundwork update live up to its name.
The first major step that we’re currently taking is adding and improving the biomes currently in the map. Doing this enables us to further diversify the locations within the map while also making each biome more pronounced.
There are still a few more biomes currently in the works and we’d hope to showcase them in future devlogs.
Aside from visuals, this will also affect the distribution of resources, mainly edible plants, in the game. By having edible resources tied with biomes in the game, each biome will not only offer unique challenges, but also enable players to pinpoint which resources exist where.
One of the biggest challenge aside from the creation of the biomes themselves is performance. Having a variety of objects, especially in a dense environment would greatly impact the performance of the game. This is something we’ve taken into account and is also one of the reasons why it takes a bit more time for us to do each biome.
This is ultimately the reason why we’ve decided to bundle the patch for the groundwork update with the next major update. We feel its better to tackle much of these issues in one fell swoop rather than separate them into multiple patches. Doing this would help us focus more on developing the game further while simultaneously fixing known problems.
Because of this it will take some time until the next major update is live for the public, however, we can certainly say that this next major update is going to be huge.
More updates coming soon.
Groundwork Update (V.0.5.5.0) LIVE!
Hi everyone, The Groundwork Update (V.0.5.5.0) is finally here!
This update brings a bunch of new features and overhaul to the game, as always, we’re only going to highlight the general elements so lets get started.
Added:
Unique AIs. Unique AIs are ultra rare variants of their native counterparts and can only be found in specific locations. A total of 6 unique AIs have been added to the game.
Unique locations. 5 new unique locations have been added to the game, these locations serve as “Lairs” for the unique AIs and are accessible based on the player dinosaur’s growth stage.
Abilities system. An ability system has been added to the game for the Campaign mode. There are 8 abilities in total, 3 are Tyrannosaurus exclusive, 3 Triceratops exclusive, and 2 are general abilities. Abilities are unlocked by killing unique AIs or by feasting on rare resources.
Crouching. Players can now crouch by pressing the Left CTRL button.
Quick control viewer. A quick control viewer has been added to the Campaign mode.
Instinct base skins. 4 additional skins have been added to the game for the Campaign mode, 2 skins are for Tyrannosaurus and 2 skins for Triceratops. These skins can be assigned in the Campaign Character Selection scene.
Abilities and skin unlock notifiers.
Overhaul
AI system. The AI system has been overhauled, enabling them to respond differently based on the player dinosaur’s growth stages.
Animation. Animation has been overhauled, making the dinosaur’s movement much more fluid.
AI and Resources UI. AIs and Resources now have a new UI.
Fixed
Image effect. Image effect will now produce a more balanced tone and is more optimized.
Footsteps SFX overlapping.
AI stats and navigation, AIs are now more balanced.
Navigation area.
Remove
Heavy attack. Clicking the right mouse button will now activate an active ability instead.
Tutorial. Tutorial has been removed and will be replaced by a new system in newer versions.
That’s currently it for now. A new devlog is also on the way and will give further details about the current update, the current state of the game, and upcoming features.
More updates coming soon!
Devlog 16
Hi everyone,
Over the past few weeks we’ve been working on a bunch of stuff. With our recently overhauled AI, we are able to explore and implement several new elements that would further improve the game. So this is going to be a lengthy post.
The first element that we’ve been working on are active abilities. Active abilities are abilities that players can use during combat or to boost your survival capabilities.
Over the course of developing the game these past few weeks we have successfully implemented several of them, from the one that will boost the player’s attack and movement speed, to the one that gives armor, etc. Here is an example of the “Cause Fear” ability that players can use in the game.
[previewyoutube="w1WBqSDb_1E;full"]
The Cause Fear ability makes opponents run away for a short period of time, this ability really shines when the player is facing multiple enemies, giving the player the ability to control the flow of combat and be given a fighting chance.
Unlike skills, active abilities would need to be unlocked, and this ties in with our second element that we’ve been working on, and that is unique AIs.
For those of you who have followed us since the beginning you may remember that we’ve previously implemented and discarded unique AIs. In general Unique AIs are extremely rare variants of AIs in the game, they have a unique look compared to their native counterparts while also being more powerful.
Native Acrocanthosaurus
Unique Acrocanthosaurus
Unique AIs are tied with active abilities as they are part of the requirement to unlock an ability. Because of this players would need to either hunt or acquire resources guarded by them to unlock an ability.
We have also made several changes compared to how we previously implement unique AIs. Unlike before where unique AIs can be found roaming the map, this time they can only be found in a specific region special to them. These “Lairs” are scattered throughout the main map and players would need to explore the main map in order to find them. We have also made some of these lairs look different compared to the biomes in the main map, giving them that unique and special look.
The picture above shows an in engine render of unique Acrocanthosaurus in its Lair which is a semi mountainous grassland.
We do this to not only make exploration more interesting and rewarding, but also to make unique AIs feel more like mini bosses in the game.
Aside from active abilities and unique AIs, we’ve also wanted to increase the variety of rewards players would be able to achieve from overcoming challenges. Which is why we have implemented trait based skins for our dinosaurs, in particularly for our campaign dinosaurs.
Trait based skins are skins that players can unlock when a dinosaur’s instinct has reached 100%. These skins are for cosmetic purposes only and does not affect the dinosaur’s ability in any way. These skins can be assigned in the character selection. Here is a comparison between the different skins for our Tyrannosaurus.
Native Tyrannosaurus
Hunter Tyrannosaurus
Scavenger Tyrannosaurus
While in the topic of skins, we’ve also successfully developed a new method to texturing our dinosaurs.
This method has allowed us to not only decrease the amount of time to texture our dinosaur, but to also make details of our dinosaurs more visible without having to significantly increase our texture size, making them having more details in a relatively low file size. Doubling down on this we’ve also implemented micro details to our normal map, which in turn makes the skin look less smooth and more realistic. Here is a comparison between our old texture and new textures for our Tyrannosaurus.
Tyrannosaurus using Old texturing method
Tyrannosaurus using New texturing method
We’re using Marmoset Toolbag to capture these images so that the details would be vividly shown.
That’s currently it for this devlog. Aside from the things mentioned in this devlog, we’re also working on plenty of other things from fixing our animations, sound and sound synchronization, UI layout and optimization, game balancing, etc. All in all we’re focusing our effort to wrapping up all of these features so that we could deliver this in our next update. If all goes well the next update should go live on late of next month or early January, and we can certainly say that this update will be a huge one.
More updates coming soon.
Devlog 15
Hi everyone,
We wanted to give a bit of insight on the things we’ve been working on so this is going to be a lengthy post.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been working on our AI system. Upon working on it we’ve discovered that our old AI system was performance intensive and extremely limiting, which made it difficult for us to add new functionalities to the system. After having a few test runs its clear that we would need to overhaul our AI system so that new functionalities could be added.
So far, we’re happy to report that we’ve successfully overhauled our core AI system. With this newly overhauled core system, we now have a solid ground to stand on when building our AI. At this moment, the AI has already been able to behave much like how it behaves normally in the game but with better performance and stability. Here are screenshots comparing the performance of our old AI system and new AI system.
A bit of side note before we get to the explanation of things, we’ve previously decided to record a video to compare the two systems, however, our screen recorder has given a significant impact to performance. Because of this, we’ve used screenshots instead so that we could show the actual numbers with less interference.
Both the old and new system were tested in our laptop with each been given an empty scene with 30 AIs simultaneously activated at Ultra quality settings. From the screenshots it is clear that the new system has greatly increased the performance of the game, making it jump from less than 10 FPS in our our old system to a whopping 150 FPS in our new system.
Although there are still room for improvement, the results given by our new system have made us confident enough to take this system forward and build functionalities for our AI. One of the new functionalities we’ve managed to integrate is the perception functionality. The perception functionality enables AIs to define if others are dangerous or not. Unlike basic behaviors where AIs have a blanket reaction towards their opponents, the perception functionality allows AIs to be more sophisticated and consider which opponent they should face, stay passive, or run away.
[previewyoutube="qTt9OqoQNt0;full"]
The video shows how the perception functionality plays out in the game. It can be seen from the video that the Triceratops AI reacts differently when faced against a Nanotyrannus and a Tyrannosaurus. This is because it perceives the Nanotyrannus to not be dangerous, hence it keeps on wandering, while the Tyrannosaurus to be dangerous, which makes it run away.
The video shown is only a sample of the perception functionality, as when coupled with basic behaviors and our population system, this functionality would become more complex.
Anyways, that’s currently it for this devlog, there’s still plenty of things we’d need to do to further flesh out this system and we will inform you when we’ve made further progress. More updates coming soon.
Performance Update - LIVE! (V.0.2.6.0)
Hi everyone,
Version 0.2.6.0 (Performance Update) is now LIVE! This update mainly focuses on making the game more stable and more optimized than before, therefore there will not be a lot of new content present in this update. As usual we’re only going to list out the major things.
Additions:
Image Effect options has been added which give players the ability to choose the image effect they want to stay active for the game, further improving performance.
Fixes:
AI Floating Fixed, AIs will less likely float in the scene when spawed in
Death notifier UI Anchors Fixed
Notification UI added in Campaign Character Selection Scene
Quality settings fixed, the game will now look and perform much better at lower quality settings.
Raptor and Anky feasting fixed, raptor and anky will now be able to eat and drink in free roam
Temporary balancing. The game has been temporarily balanced with some dinosaurs being nerfed while some boosted to suit the current elements present in the game until newer mechanics are added later on.
Development note:
Hi everyone, wanted to give you a bit of insight to the current status of development. We’ve previously wanted to include an updated version of our AI to this update. This newer version will make some AIs respond differently towards different growth stages of the player dinosaur. However, this behavior is still unstable, which is why we’ve decided to push this feature forward to future updates. With Version 0.2.6.0 being Live for the public we can finally focus our attention to working on the AI.
Devlog 14
Hi everyone,
Wanted to give you a quick reminder that our game has recently been updated to version 0.2.5.2 (Dinofauna Update).
This update, not only brings the campaign update series to a close, but also brings a bunch of content to the game, from 20 additional dinosaurs to a new gameplay mode such as the free roam mode, while also providing some major improvements to the overall UI and other gameplay elements. All in all, this is probably one of the biggest update we have released so far, and we wanted to make sure you don’t miss out.
Now on to this devlog.
Usually when a devlog is near an update’s release, we posted the devlog first before the update, so that the devlog could further elaborate on the upcoming update. However, with V.0.2.5.2 being a huge milestone, there are multiple things we would like to discuss with this devlog not just in relation to V.0.2.5.2 but also the current state of the game and where we are taking this game forward, so this is going to be a lengthy post.
To start this off, we wanted to elaborate a little bit about the new free roam mode.
At its core, the free roam mode is a mode where players could roam the world without any worry of missions or objectives with the primary goal being the dinosaur’s survival. This is an endless mode made for players who prefer a more serene and survival leaning experience compared to the main campaign, where the survival focus is heavily influenced with RPG elements. This mode also enabled players to play as every dinosaur in the game, with the exception of juvenile and sub-adult variants.
The free roam also comes with an exhibition mode in the form of its character selection scene, which gives players detailed information for every dinosaur in the game.
Upon working on the free roam, we have decided to integrate the exhibition mode with the free roam mode instead of having it as a standalone mode. Aside from saving memory space, the integration of exhibition with the free roam mode also made the flow of the game much smoother as players would be able to obtain information about a particular dinosaur and immediately experience it in the free roam mode to see how the dinosaur fares up with other dinosaurs.
Aside from giving information for each dinosaur in relation to the game world, we wanted the exhibition to be somewhat informative in relation to the real world. Because of this we’ve decided to add a source of reference for the information given for every dinosaur.
It must be noted that the information given mainly came from books and information from the web that we think are relevant as opposed to recent studies or scientific papers, as the purpose of this is only to share some light and interesting information to give players a chance to speculate further on the information rather than giving a heavily science based fact.
The next topic we would like to discuss is the omission of the Adventure mode.
For some of you who have followed us since the Version 0.1.0.2 (Rhino Update), the game has included an adventure mode, which is a linear based experience focusing on missions and objectives. This mode was originally built for us to test our new (now current) models and animations. Seeing how massive the campaign world is, the adventure mode gave us a chance to iterate much quicker and more focused, hence enabling us to give massive overhauls such as Version 0.1.1.0 (Super Model Update) back in December of 2018 and the recent Version 0.2.5.2 possible at a relatively shorter period of time than originally anticipated.
However, upon further development, having a mode that focuses on a linear based experience became more unlikely for us to develop properly as our focus has slowly shifted towards making a survival based experience in an open world setting, which has significant elements that are somewhat contradictory if they were to be integrated to a linear setting and would require us to create an essentially new approach towards the overall design.
Because of this, we have decided to omit the adventure mode and replace it with the free roam mode, which is an endless mode focusing on survival in an open world setting.
The last thing we would like to discuss is the current state of the game and where we’re taking it forward.
With all modes finally in the game, we are now ready to enter the polishing stage of development. In this stage of development we will not be focusing on adding major features but to improve those that are already in the game. This includes game balancing, major bug fixes, optimization, and basically everything required to flesh out this game.
Aside from polishing, we will also overhaul our tutorial scene. With all gameplay elements included and a finalized HUD, we can finally overhaul our extremely outdated tutorial so that it can justifiably represent gameplay elements included in the game, so that players could experience everything that this game has to offer.
With the free roam mode being added and the exhibition being integrated to it, the game now has every mode that was planned for its final release.
That’s currently it for this devlog, and more updates coming soon.
Dinofauna Update - LIVE! (V.0.2.5.2)
Hi everyone,
Version 0.2.5.2 (Dinofauna Update) is now LIVE! This update not only brings the main campaign update series to a close, but also brings a bunch of additional contents to the game, from 20 additional dinosaurs, massive HUD overhaul, to a brand new mode, the free roam mode into the game.
As usual, due to the amount of things being added and improved, we will only be listing the major elements.
Additions:
20 new dinosaurs have been added to the game.
Free roam mode has been added to the game. This is an endless mode that focuses on survival where players will be able to play as every dinosaur in the game.
An exhibition mode, in the form of character selection for the free roam mode, has been added to the game. This mode gives information in relation to the real world and game world for every dinosaur.
Quick trait viewer. This quick viewer makes it easier for players to keep track of which traits have been unlocked and the level of each trait in the main campaign mode.
Trait unlock notifier. A trait unlock notifier UI has been added to notify the player when a new trait has been unlocked in the main campaign mode.
Additional Notifier UIs.
Improved:
Population report has been redesigned and adjusted to show all dinosaurs.
Player HUD has been redesigned to become more relevant with the overall UI theme.
Skill Tree Viewer has been redesigned and overhauled.
Current Notifier UIs have been redesigned.
AI UI have been redesigned and improved.
AI Cower behavior has been improved.
AI Spawner has been adjusted to be compatible with additional AI dinosaurs.
Fixed:
Dinosaur stats will no longer refill when opening up the skills menu.
Map borders have been fixed.
Image effects are now more optimized, giving improved overall performance.
Removed:
Adventure mode has been replaced by the Free Roam mode (Read the upcoming Devlog 14 for more information regarding this decision)
Note: This build uses a new compression method, because of this save files from older versions may not work properly
Devlog 13
Hi everyone,
Wanted to give you a brief update to what we’ve been working on these past few weeks.
As was mentioned in our previous devlog, we have decided to add more dinosaurs to the game using the “base and derive” method. This method uses the already existing dinosaurs as bases for the newer ones, which enable us to save time while also retaining quality for the models. To our surprise this method is much more effective than we have originally anticipated, enabling us to add dinosaurs we thought were not possible before. Because of this we managed to increase the number of dinosaurs in the game from 10 to 30. Here is a video showcasing the newly added dinosaurs to the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-gGJG2ZIOo
With the number of dinosaurs in the game finalized and ready, we will now move forward to creating part 3 of our campaign update, which will hopefully be available soon.
More updates coming soon.
Devlog 12
Hi everyone,
it’s been a while since we’ve posted a devlog. This is because we have a few things to say regarding part 3 of our campaign update.
At its core, part 3 was going to be one of the late updates for the campaign mode, introducing major refinements to the overall mode to make it comparable with the final version of the game.Upon working on it we realized that the campaign mode was a bit too empty, and one of the main reason for this is because of the lack of variety of dinosaurs present in the world.
Because of this, we have made the decision to extend our list of dinosaurs present in the game.
However, adding new creatures requires a great amount of time, this is because aside from actually working on making the creatures, we need to integrate them into the game world, which in turn required us to re-balance the game. Couple this with our recently added RPG elements and population system, adding creatures is much more time consuming than before.
Because of this we have come up with a solution and that is to use our pre-existing creatures as “bases” for our newer creatures. This would enable us to save a lot of time modeling and animating creatures from scratch while also having a relatively decent result.
The picture above shows our newly created dinosaur, the Daspletosaurus which is derived from the Tyrannosaurus sub-adult model. The sub-adult Tyrannosaurus had a very similar build to the Daspletosaurus which enable us to use it to create the model.
In order to further contrast between the two models, we have added additional features such as a broader head, more pronounced scales, and new color scheme to the Daspletosaurus to make it more unique.
We are fully aware that creatures created from scratch will always be more unique, however, from our standpoint, creating creatures from scratch at this moment is simply not viable, because of this we will do what we can to get the most out of our current method.
With the main problem discovered and resolved, we are now in full force to getting part 3 in to the public.
It must be noted that although we technically managed to cut development time, there are still plenty of things that needs to be done in terms of getting this update live, with most of that time being used to integrate the creatures and properly balancing the game.
Because of this, part 3 will come at a much later date than anticipated, and if everything goes accordingly, part 3 should be live around June and will come no later than early July.
Thank you so much for your understanding and support. We have come a long way developing this game and we will make sure that this game reach completion.
More updates coming soon.
Campaign Update Part 2 - LIVE! (V.0.1.3.0)
Hi everyone,
Over the past few weeks we have been focusing our efforts on a new RPG element for the game, which is the trait and instincts system. Unlike skills where players would need to manually allocate a skill point every time the dinosaur levels up, traits and instincts will have to be earned and they will be allocated automatically when you earn them. Each trait and instinct have different ways of earning and will give out different effects, for example, a certain trait is earned by doing activities during the night, some requires the player to hunt certain dinosaurs, etc.
Due to the sheer number of things, it’s a bit difficult for us to list every detail that have been added for this system, because of this, we are going to just list out the general outline of this element and let you find out for yourselves in the game.
A bit of side note before we get into the general list of things, with the addition of traits and instincts to the game, we have decided to remove the class system for each dinosaur. We do this because the current functionality has enabled players to earn their way to become whichever class they choose to be based on their playstyle. We feel this is much less restrictive compared to the old method where the dinosaur class has been pre-determined in the character selection.
General outline:
• Added instincts and traits, two instincts and five traits for each playable campaign dinosaurs. Each instinct and trait have different effects and different methods of earning.
• Added new instincts and traits UI to the skills menu to help players keep track of their progression and help explain the different effects and earning methods of each instinct and trait.
• Class system removed. Class is now earned through instincts and traits based on the player’s playstyle.
• Highly toxic edible resources will deplete its nutrition when eaten.
Note:
Much of this functionality is still early and will be balanced later on.
