Experimental patch 0.8.0-b2 - Further AI interaction mechanics & Trilobites
Another patch on the experimental branch today. Getting close to releasing it onto the main branch, but would like to improve Dilophosaurus' movement further before it goes to main.
Highlights of this patch are an update to the landscape that should make performance more uniform across the map, the addition of trilobites, and trust gaining mechanics to get juvie AI to pack with you (instructions below).
Here's all the changes, feedback welcome!
Features:
- Juvie AI can now be packed if you gain their trust. Current implementation is intended like this: 1. Drop food when near them 2. Friendly call to invite them over to eat the food 3. Threaten to reject 4. Invite once the food has been eaten - Trilobites have arrived on the island! They can be found on the beach and make for a good snack.
Map:
- Adjusted map landscape, should yield more uniform performance. Note that as a side effect of this change, we still need to do more touch-up still of the landscape blends with detail meshes. - Adjusted various landscape mesh holes - Removed collision from moss around swamp - Adjusted reed spawns around swamp, cloud rainforest lake, and large alpine lake - Improved waterfall look, smearing during rendering is also a bit better but still needs to be fully fixed. - Added another waterfall and small rivers at the cloudrainforest lake. We're still updating the textures and foliage in these areas.
⚠️Heads up: collision with it is also a bit wonk, planned to be fixed shortly. - Updated sound at waterfalls - Updated water and lilies at cloud rainforest - Swamp now spawns random geyser effects
Lighting:
- Adjusted brightness of fog at beach level
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a bug where lower cloud settings would draw through the world - Fixed black squares rendering over water in some places - Fixed ocean rendering holes at large distance - AI that considers you a threat no longer allows packing. - Player's adult animals can now pack with older animals past adult.
Experimental patch 0.8.0-b1 - Dilophosaurus & commandable AI teams!
0.8.0-b1 is now live on the experimental branch!
This is the first in a series of beta patches that focusses on the new movement system. We're deploying the first beta patch onto the experimental branch so we make sure we fix any really important issues that might come up, and soon iterate further on the live branch directly.
Feedback on issues and improvement suggestions would be very welcome!
Keep in mind that the patch now out is a rough preview of the movement and more work remains before it's deemed satisfactory.
Features:
- New playable and early look at new movement system: Dilophosaurus. Expect the animal to not be fully featured yet on initial introduction, its main current goal is to be the dedicated testbed for the character/movement overhaul. Other animals currently still have the old system. - AI can now be packed with. Invite them by walking up to them, and hitting the invite button that pops up. AI will not pack if already in a team, or if they are below your growth stage. - Packed AI can be commanded through the radial menu to follow, roam, guard, or to change their stance, check out the options available!
Changes:
- Turn in place has been removed. It didn't work out the way we'd hoped and became too buggy to support. As movement is being completely rewritten, might come back at some point or in a different form.
Map:
- Added a waterfall to the prairie. Rendering still needs some tweaking, early look.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a bug where meat-chunk couldn't be swallowed - Various fixes for edge cases where character creation would show the wrong material - Speculative fix for the server restart leaving the selection overlay visible on disconnection - Fixed an edgecase where nest placement failed - Fixed ocean waves not curling at the coastline
Patch 0.7.11 - Polish and bugfixes
0.7.11 is now out!
More bugfixes and polish for this one.
Update on the couple of hotspots where performance still dips on the map:
We've debugged the most expensive tiles on the landscape and are reducing complexity to improve performance. The changes aren't in this patch yet, but coming soon.
Changes:
* If you initiate Deinonychus' glide too late, and subsequently gain too much speed, it's now more important to press the spacebar to flap and reduce your speed. * Allowed placing nests on sand. Desert now has some flowers in the foliage fields.
Bugfixes:
* Fixed a crash on placing nest * Fixed nest placement preview colour not matching the placement validity * Fixed a bug that would under some circumstances cause deinonychus to die on landing impact while gliding (mind the fact that if you go too fast, you can still take damage, flap to reduce speed) * Fixed fall animation on Deinonychus being a run animation if not jumped * Fixed foot sliding on Parasaurolophus
Highlight of this patch is a polish pass for Parasaurolophus' locomotion. Changing stance can now be done with a separate key, default 'Y'. This also means sprinting can now also be done in quadrupedal stance. Another implication is that para can now tail swipe while sprinting when on all fours, which should help with combat viability.
Further, trot has been slightly reworked to allow going to trot by double tapping the reduce speed (slow walk) key.
Lastly, we've moved the game to UE 5.2 with this build, let us know if any funny business pops up.
Features:
* Parasaurolophus can now change stance with a dedicated key instead (default Y) * Trot can now also activate by double tapping the reduce speed (slow walk) key.
Balance:
* Reduced fall damage for Deinonychus, will be looking at the other animals shortly * Slightly increased regular walking speed for adult/elder/ancient Parasaurolophus and Allosaurus * Slightly increased slow walk speed
Performance:
* Further gamethread performance improvements
Misc:
* Migrated game to UE 5.2 * Admins: yeet button changed to numpad *
Bugfixes:
* Fixed a bug where character would jitter on initial spawn * Fixed various mesh collisions not loading in around the edges of the map * Fixed a bug where logging back on after a non-safe log off caused the animations to be stuck
Patch 0.7.9 - Gamethread performance, no more thirst during rain
0.7.9 is live!
Noticed the server performance dipped a bit during load, so focussed mostly gamethread performance improvements in this one. There's some more work coming down the pipe in this area.
Balance:
* Thirst satiation no longer drains during rain.
Performance:
* Client gamethread optimisation for scenes with high amounts of animating characters. Game will try to limit the animation tick rate for characters farther away when needed. * Server gamethread optimisation.
Patch 0.7.8 - Megalania AI side character and general AI polish
0.7.8 is live!
This patch adds further server performance improvements, adds Megalania as an AI sidecharacter, and tweaks AI behaviour.
Performance:
* Another batch of gamethread performance optimisations, particularly for the server.
AI:
* Added the old megalania easter egg as an AI in the prairie and desert after community suggestions. This is a fairly basic model, but fits these biomes well and adds some variety. Because the current model isn't on the same quality level as the other animals, we're keeping the spawn count for these low on official servers. Server owners should reset their world config. * AI now threaten calls during attack chase. * AI now has a small attack timeout when changing attack/defend target, to make combat a bit fairer and reduce the amount of 360 noscope instakills.
Patch 0.7.7 - Herbivore refinement patch #2
0.7.7 is live!
Couple more refinements and bugfixes for herbivores.
Bugfixes:
* Fixed an issue that caused the foliage field instances not to show up on client.
Herbivores:
* Smell trail now points to a random foliage instance in the field, instead of the general area.
Performance:
* Further gamethread optimisation. Let us know if something breaks.
Patch 0.7.6 - Herbivore refinement patch
This patch smooths out herbivore feeding to sort out the issues reported recently. We're continuing to refine this, but Parasaurolophus should already be much more viable now. More feedback on this is welcome.
The edible foliage in the alpine areas is still a bit hard to spot, we'll be adjusting that in a separate patch.
Further, the scent trail points in the direction of a general area of the field, we'll adjust this to point to an actual plant in that area.
Herbivore food rework:
* Increased the amount of fields on the map * Game will now ensure at least one field in bloom per biome, instead of across the whole map. This should make it so that there's always a field available to feed on nearby * Scent trails will no longer lead to a field if there isn't at least 30% of the food (total being at max growth) in the field
Bugfixes:
* Fixed foliage smell for some fields being in the air. * Fixed swimming being broken. * Fixed packing.
Misc:
* Slightly drained the desert salt lake to make the salt cracks more apparent. We'll add a hint that it's not drinkable water in a future patch. * Further increased timespan between precipitation.
Patch 0.7.5 - Performance
0.7.5 is out!
This patch focusses mainly on performance improvements and stability, with significant improvements to server performance, as well as rendering performance improvements on the client in problematic spots on the map.
PSA - herbi food issues:
I want to just call out that next we're looking at fixing the herbi food issues that came up. Couldn't get it done in time for this patch and didn't want to postpone it further. Expect an update on this shortly.
Features:
* Added an option in controls to disable the "release key to cancel call" mechanic. When turned off, calls are just simple one shot taps. * Added an option in the interface section to force needs and stats like health/hunger/stamina to always be on screen instead of hidden when satiated.
Map:
* Fixed various cliff mesh holes.
Performance:
* Rendering performance improvements. The various spots around the map where framerate dipped should be smoother now. * Client and server gamethread performance improvements. I made some fairly impactful changes to some of the core systems, but rolling them out piecemeal. Send a heads up if something unexpected breaks.
Bugfixes:
* Further adjusted an optimisation that was causing rendering artifacts on water
Misc:
* Adjusted collision box for ai to prevent bouncing off their tails as much * Adjusted the server shutdown message to be more clear in case of reboot due to performance issues
Patch 0.7.4 - Bugfixes
Public service announcement: We found a couple spots in the alpine region that seem to wreck performance. If you spawn somewhere and get a big slowdown, try respawning through the escape menu. We're looking at fixing it properly.
Reports of issues in particular spots would be super handy, so we can note them down. The discord or the forums are good places to give feedback on this.
Balance:
Rain/Snow now only happen max once every half hour, this should help with excessive bad weather.
Performance:
VSync off by default, can still be turned on of course.
Made the lightning flash during thunder scale with the weathereffects option, performance impact should be a bit lighter on its low and medium setting.
Added a "very high" preset for the weather effects, rebalanced the other presets.
Bugfixes:
Fixed an issue where quickly skipping through characters on the character customisation menu would prevent skin types from loading.
Speculative fix for some character creation skin alphas sometimes not loading properly.
Fixed a bit of jank where character deceleration looked odd for juvie allo, caused the animation to not match the movement if you let go of movement during sprint and let the character come to a stop.
Fixed bug where the character snapped around when pressing the back button. The actual pivot animation is still slated to be improved.
Fixed a rendering issue where water rendering showed artifacts due to an optimisation. As a trade off, water rendering performance might be a bit impacted.
Misc:
UI now disables the resolution option on fullscreen windowed to correctly communicate the behaviour of the option.
Added a warning to the weather effects setting that increasing it can cause performance drops especially for older hardware.
