This patch focusses on performance. A lot of graphics options were changed, please re-apply your most appropriate preset to get the updated configs and tweak it back to your liking from there.
All changes and notes below:
Bugfixes:
Shadows - Fixed an issue where disabling or lowering the CSM config did not apply properly and caused a performance drain.
Fixed an issue where screenscale wasn't being persisted properly.
Features:
Shadows - Added an extra option for CSM Far Cascades.
Shadows - Added an option for the Cloud Shadows.
Shadows - Added an option to turn off CSM shadows when the sun is near the horizon, this is the point when they're the most expensive.
Shadows - Added an option for the Volumetric Shadows.
WeatherEffects Rain/Snow - Further scaled performance impact of these by increasing the settings available in the weather effects graphics option.
General:
Rebalanced graphics presets.
Optimised the Redwoods biome.
Patch 0.7.2 - Quality of life improvements, map polish
0.7.2 is now out!
All changes and notes below:
Features:
You can now invite people anywhere on the map, it is no longer needed to be close by.
Trot! The slow walk key (default "C") has been repurposed to a toggle, and having it active while sprinting reduces the sprint to a trot. Further, sprint is now a toggle unless held for 3 seconds.
Performance:
Some optimisation for grass and small rocks. Further, the "foliage density" option now also scales render distance for the grass/rocks. If they're impacting your performance, check out the graphics setting.
Added a new "Weather effects" graphics option, currently used to lighten the performance impact of the rain/snow effects. Check it out if this was impacting you.
Fixed a config issue that forced distant fog particles on if fog cards were also on. Check your settings.
Bugfixes:
Further tweaks to foliagefield to improve stability
Fixed some issues around falling transitions for Para
Map:
Tweaked snow colour on landscape to be a bit less bright
Added back a slope exclusion mask for the snow on the landscape
Did a polish pass of foliage in conifer, redwoods, prairie
Misc:
Tweaked Para broadcast and friendly call to work during movement
All emote calls can now also be tapped instead of held
Patch 0.7.1 - Stability
Update on the disconnection issues
This patch includes some tweaks to the networking config, but we're continuing to monitor this issue. Logs seem to suggest it relates to a timeout that happens at the level of steam's networking.
All changes and notes below:
Performance:
Minor performance improvements
Added lod bias graphics options for static meshes and the landscape, try these if you're struggling. Recommended to reapply a graphics preset to get the intended settings for them as a base.
Bugfixes:
Fixed an issue where volcano did not burn you. The actual distance needs to be a bit tweaked going forward but should trigger now.
Misc:
Increased min food in foliagefield to show up during smell.
Networking tweaks in an effort to sort out a disconnection issue
Patch 0.7.0 - New map, new playables, better immersion and more interaction
Some time in the making, this is our biggest feature release for the game thus far and focusses on expanding gameplay, polishing the experience to allow for more immersion, and adding more opportunities for interaction with the world.
Sound, graphics, gameplay, there's improvements in every domain with this patch. Read on for all the details.
A couple PSAs before we start off
❗ Disconnection issues
We're aware of and monitoring an issue where folks sometimes get disconnected by the server. We're running with increased logging to track this down. If it happens to you, please report it in the discord with the server you were on and a timestamp when it happened.
❗ Emote wheels for Allosaurus and Parasaurolophus
The radial emote wheels for the new playables are still missing and are coming shortly. Meanwhile use the various shortcuts for your calls.
❗ Turn in place
Turn in place did not work out yet as well as we wanted to, and we recommend for now to turn it off in the controls.
❗ Server owners: reset your world config
For server owners, we recommend resetting your world json config for this patch, a lot changed and it would be best to regenerate it.
Gameplay
Allosaurus
Allosaurus has been added as a medium sized predator. Rend your foes with your claws, or tear them to pieces with your bite.
Parasaurolophus and herbivore gameplay
The patch also introduces herbivore gameplay to the game. The first herbivore— Parasaurolophus—is able to smell foliage fields that have blooming flowers, and sustain themselves on the plant matter. The foliage rotates through different fields on the map, decaying over time and forcing players to migrate between them.
We're still working on finetuning this new gameplay mode as we build on the foundation the patch lays.
Smell rework
The old smell system had to be overhauled to integrate it further with gameplay while maintaining acceptable performance. The set-up is still being iterated on, we're aiming to make it bring back the more natural feel of the old system, while retaining the new improvements to clarity, trail diversity, and performance.
To sum up, the main changes are:
Performance and clarity improvements
You can now track over a much longer distance
Scent trails for AI and other players now conform to the path they walked, instead of pointing directly towards them.
Going into water breaks the scent trail for a little while, and you'll need to find a fresh trail after crossing yourself.
You can now also track team members through scent (with a light pinkish colour). Note that scent points directly towards team members, and is not interruptible by natural barriers such as waterways.
Your team's nest is now also smellable, displayed as a yellow colour.
New map
As detailed in the last blog post, the old map has been replaced with a new map. We've built it from the ground up with all the lessons learned from the first map.
Temperature
A basic implementation of temperature gameplay effects also makes its introduction with this patch. The system is still unsophisticated and not very involved, but you'll notice some areas of the map are too hot or too cold for your animal. This lays the groundwork for more in-depth systems in the future.
Character control & locomotion
Smoothing out character control is one of our highest priorities and this patch brings a couple improvements. Beyond various bugfixes and general polish for the character handling, there's new locomotion audio (detailed below) and we've now also added terrain alignment, meaning characters will conform better to the terrain it below their feet.
There are also new dynamic camera effects such as a slight movement bob, shakes, and fov changes. In case these make you feel uneasy, this feature is off my default for the moment and opt-in through the controls menu.
The turn in place and its accompanying movement mode have gotten its share of fixes and polish, but we felt it's still not entirely there so we've reverted the default to the old movement mode. It can of course still be turned back on in the controls.
More to come in this area.
AI
AI got various improvements in this patch. They no longer stop as much while fleeing (still needs some work), and correctly match the terrain now so they don't feel as floaty.
Fish and other aquatic animals are temporarily removed on official servers. We want to put these back, but they currently weren't contributing much to gameplay yet and were costing performance we wanted to spend on other things in the new map. Community servers can still choose to turn them on.
Environmental interaction
We've also added more environmental effects like birds that sit on the ground and fly away. You'll want to avoid these, unless you don't mind giving away your position. Snakes are another addition, watch out for their venomous bite!
Nesting
Nesting has been simplified to remove the dirt filling step (dirt digging itself has also been disabled), and nests can now only be built on surface where you used to be able to dig. We're intending to bring this back in some fashion in a later patch.
Immersion
One of the game's core pillars is providing an immersive experience and we've made big efforts with this patch to take this to the next level.
Locomotion has been improved, the audioscape has been overhauled with new locomotion audio and contextual music, and a new map with all-new biomes has arrived to explore.
Graphics
Graphics got a big step up—from map detail like having actual proper trails, new foliage, volumetric fog effects, new lighting, new weather types, to smaller things like updated blood effects.
Sound & Music
Another large component of making the world feel more responsive is iterating on the game's soundscape. To do so, we've made a couple large improvements for this patch:
Ambient audio
Transitions between ambient audio areas have been reworked and should feel a lot more natural. Ambient audio now also correctly responds to weather conditions, fading out during storms and precipitation.
Locomotion audio
The first improvement we've made is the locomotion audio. Footstep sounds (including during vaulting) have polished to make the materials feel more vibrant and impactful, and various bushes now also have interaction audio. We're iterating on this further.
Dynamic breathing
Allosaurus has also gotten a dynamic breath system, that speeds up as he gets more exhausted and exerted, and calms back down as he catches his breath. This feature will also be rolled out to other characters.
Dynamic music and combat sounds
Beyond simply adding more tracks, music selection happens a bit smarter than before and is more contextually appropriate to better fit what's going on in the world. A storm feels better with dark and gloomy music, the bright rays of the early morning are a great time for some hopeful melodies to celebrate making it through the night. The track selection now responds to world location, weather, character health, and time of day. More hooks and refinements are planned.
Lastly, we've also added combat music to amp up the tension a bit.
Bugfixes and miscellaneous changes
Hit detection fixes for strafing characters
Various fixes and polish to locomotion
The game now includes DLSS support
Expanded customisation options for Deinonychus with extra patterns
Fixed various weather audio playing underwater as if above water, now distorts. We still a couple improvements to make in this area.
The aurora feature had to be removed during the lighting overhaul and is currently unavailable.
That wraps up the main changes for this patch!
Thank you for being here, we're excited to move into the next phase of development where we further iterate on the new features and expand gameplay even more.
Join us on the Discord for smaller, more frequent updates.
Patch 0.6.2 - Performance
Another small patch today with some fixes to further improve performance and resolve some issues.
All the details:
Fixed the "Max Texture Size" option not actually changing the texture size. This should help conserve VRAM, especially useful for lower-end hardware. Please note that currently, if you increase the max texture size from what you loaded the game with, you're going to have to restart the game for the settings to apply.
Added a graphics option for the water interaction, to allow disabling it.
Fixed a server crash that sometimes happened when a player joined.
Patch 0.6.1 - Performance
After resolving issues relating to performance by switching back to DirectX 11, we've decided to set DirectX 11 as the default graphics RHI for now. If this negatively impacts you, you can switch back to DX12 by following this guide here.
All changes:
Set default RHI to DX11 to fix performance issues.
Reduced various default graphics options like foliage density to be more conservative (you can still scale up as desired).
Added explanation about demanding graphics options in the help menu.
Patch 0.6.0 - UE5, Biomes, Polish
This patch brings the game onto Unreal Engine 5! You will likely not notice too many things from this yet directly (showcase features like Nanite and Lumen are still not quite ready for use in the project), but this migration makes it possible to grow the project further in the future while all the new goodies in the new version of the engine become more mature. There's also a good dose of polish and bugfixes in this patch.
With this patch out the door, we can focus our efforts fully on new playable characters (work on these has already been underway for a while).
Details on what changed since the beta patch and things to watch out for below.
PSAs:
❗ A quick note on performance
Foliage rendering performance has been improved, but the amount of foliage has also increased on the map. If you're having performance issues, that's the first thing to check in your graphics settings (Foliage Density) . The game can scale it down for you if you're struggling.
❗ Client crashes
We haven't seen any frequent crashes, but have run into some rare crashes here and there that appeared to happen deep in the engine's bowels and did not seem directly related to gameplay code. We're keeping an eye on this.
❗ Server crashes
Early in the beta patch test, one of the servers exhibited a crash/restart loop. Once we tried to investigate this however, it didn't happen anymore. We're keeping our eyes open for this, but if you're a server owner and this happens to your server see the section below on how to switch back for the time being. Please also do report it to us.
❗ How to switch back to the old version
We've opened a new steam branch dubbed legacy-0.5.0 where the previous patch will remain available and you can switch back to. If you're a regular player and you want to switch back (or you want to play on your legacy server as a server owner), make sure you remove your old settings at C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\IslesOfYore (this will also remove your skin presets, back those up).
❗ Known issues
The following issues are still present. They're planned to be worked on, but weren't immediately game-breaking and have been deprioritised over getting work done on the new playable characters:
Surface displacement (sand/snow) has been temporarily removed due to Unreal Engine 5's removal of Tessellation. Displacement will likely come back in the near future through an alternate solution.
There's a couple areas where foliage is in incorrect places or angled in such a way that you can get stuck on them. While we polish this out, if you get stuck, press the unstuck option in the escape menu and if needed, relog afterwards.
Interactable foliage might pop in with the wrong scale. A workaround for this is to walk a good distance away from the foliage, wait a few moments, and come back to it. Issue is known, but needs a bit of further development to fix.
While the issues with river collision are better than in 0.5.0, it's still not fool-proof and remains an area of active development.
There's a couple weather types that don't blend very nicely (foggy -> clearskies for instance), you might see the weather being temporarily too dark or too bright while it transitions. This is being worked on.
This is not a new issue, but wanted to acknowledge that we've found a couple of scenarios where there's some rubberbanding. We're going to look into improving this in an upcoming patch.
Changelog
Features
Added Turn in Place for Deinonychus.
[Work in Progress] - Added interaction effects to water. This works well in lakes, sort of with the ocean, but not yet properly in rivers. Work in progress. Small asterix to place here is that you currently have to be in the water for the interaction to be visible active for other players too, which will be improved.
Expanded the amount of foliage that react to touch.
New biome: rainforest.
Added extra sounds for Deinonychus.
Added a "what's new" screen on the main menu.
Polish
Various improvements to turn in place. Some more work is needed to round it out completely, but it's a lot more stable and is now by default turned on, no longer marked experimental. It's still optional for the moment though.
Expanded and polished Deinonychus' animations.
Added various action/emote icons for Deinonychus to radial menu.
Removed experimental tag from Deinonychus. He'll still get more polish (especially in the audio department) and further gameplay features, but the basic implementation should be fairly solid now and no longer warrants the experimental tag.
Reworked jungle and redwoods biomes with better foliage distribution to achieve less repetition and more organic placement.
Expanded jungle biome to run along the beach.
Cleaned up (reduced artifacting) and greatly expanded the amount of Kauaʻi ʻōʻō audio sounds.
Server performance improvements.
Improved foliage rendering performance on the client.
Another round of big improvements for weather and time-of-day lighting. Further work continues on this.
Tweaked rivers in various positions on the map to reduce clipping and collision issues. However, see known limitations section on this.
Adjusted roaming area for scanners so they're less likely to get stuck in the rainforest. Though this is not fool-proof, the game is in need of a better navigation solution to properly fix this.
Added AI spawn points in the new coastal jungles.
Tidied up various rainforest spawn spots where it was overlapping the waterfall and the alpine biome.
Tweaked light occlusion of sun and moon as they rise and set, to be better blocked by the geography in front. Not perfect, but a decent step forward.
Added a new "far shadows" option.
Added a "Full scale" button to make switching to 100% screen resolution easier.
Balance
Nerfed bleed.
Buffed bleed resist Brachio.
Bugfixes
Redid water system to mitigate issues with collision. The "floating above water" issue the game had is a lot better now, but still not rock solid. Some areas where the discrepancy is very large we can much more easily tweak now if we run into them, but there's still some limitations with how far we can fix this. Surface transitions between water bodies also sadly took a hit in visual quality (you'll be able to much more easily see a cut on the water surface), slated for improvement. This overhaul represents an intermediate step to bridge the gap until a more mature and higher fidelity water solution is in place.
Fixed foliage jittering due to wind changes. The experimental wind opt-in is now gone from the menu and enabled by default.
Fixed flickering on Redwoods branches.
Fixed vaulting onto foliage.
Fixed various cases where the locomotion system would skate around instead of moving naturally.
Fixed various cases of items not despawning in water.
Fixed nesting preview placement material not being properly visible at night.
Fixed a bug where clicking the "build nest" option while already trying to build a nest, would duplicate the placement and not allow you to cancel the initial placement preview.
Fixed a bug where other players would appear as walking sideways (incorrectly oriented) while strafing.
Fixed character automatically walking onto termite mounds.
Fixed footprints showing up on character is if you walk through them.
Waterfall is no longer brighter than the sun at night.
Foliage now properly dampens wind intensity and interaction once grabbed.
Fixed an issue where the 2D aurora would not show up (which is enabled if the volumetric clouds graphics option is disabled).
Fixed various ambient audio tracks not looping properly.
Further stability improvements to turn in place. Reminder that while it is now enabled by default, it is still optional. We feel it's stable enough for use, but it's not as butter smooth as we want it to, you can still opt-out in the controls menu for the moment.
Fixed a desync (resulting in jitter) that happened intermittently while moving. See also earlier note about known issues with rubber banding that we're further looking into.
Fixed smelling causing a squared shadow depression on the landscape.
Fixed an issue where the sim.time command didn't set the correct time.
Fixed various sky rendering instabilities.
Fixed various issues with dynamic weather.
Fixed various issues with the aurora.
Fixed wind intensity behaving incorrectly on some foliage. We're still improving this further on a per-foliage basis.
Fixed another cause of foliage wind jitter.
Fixed foliage blur that that occured while it moved, with the exception of grass that cannot currently be fixed due to an engine regression in UE5.
Fixed black rendering artifacts on certain ferns.
Fixed a bug where desired screenscale wouldn't be persisted.
Miscellaneous
The "TAA Gen 5" graphics option has been renamed to "TSR" (Temporal Super Resolution) to fit the new UE5 terminology.
Patch 0.5 - Bleed & combat, Night visuals, Vaulting
This patch focusses on combat and adds a bleed mechanic. Different animals and their individual attacks now have unique likelihoods of causing bleed damage to the opponent. This effect is stackable, meaning that the more hits you take, the worse your wounds will end up being and the more damage you take. Further, wounds heal slower and even worsen on their own by moving around too much.
Another notable change in this patch is a bugfix for getting stuck on other characters. This would mostly happen for various AI characters once you got into their strike range.
Note on night time darkness: Nighttime visuals have also been adjusted, see the notes at the end. Further balancing will be done to the light balance, there are likely weather/time combinations that are a bit too dark and need some adjustment. If they are disturbing, nudge the gamma up a little bit until the next patch.
Lastly, player characters can now vault, allowing them to jump onto objects like rocks, larger fallen tree branches, and if you're playing as Deinonychus, the smaller trees.
Full details below.
Features
Bleed
Adds a stackable bleed mechanic that adds wound that get worse the more you move around. The likelihood of adding one or more wounds per attack depends on the animal and the attack in question. Finishes this roadmap item.
Vaulting
You're now able to vault onto objects. To vault, get close enough to an object that isn't too high, and simply press jump once you see the input hint. This feature is a work in progress first draft and will get further polish. In particular it currently has these issues and limitations:
You might have to walk around and up to the object you want to vault a few times to get the trigger (there's an input key hint). It's a bit fiddly. You need to orient the character towards the object and then look at it, for the trigger to appear. You also have to be reasonably close.
There's some snapping (especially when Turn in Place is enabled)
Not all rocks/meshes work great with the vaulting yet, you might sometimes see that the character doesn't manage to get on completely and falls back off. Holding the forward key meanwhile helps a little.
Animations still need to be tightened up a little.
Deinonychus can scale small trees as well through this method, but a proper climbing feature is needed for larger trees. A prototype for this is being built.
Polish
Turn in place
The experimental turn in place got some love with a fix to resolve a great deal of the jitter that was visible while looking around and having turn in place enabled. The accompanying animations for Coelophysis (Deinonychus does not yet have TIP) have also been tweaked. This feature remains a work in progress, and is still undergoing further polish.
Nighttime overhaul
A previous patch made the night significantly brighter, but this washed out the visuals quite significantly. This patch makes steps towards rectifying the problem and making the night more appealing. This is an evolving feature, presentation and lightning balance will likely get further tweaks. There are likely weather/time combinations that are a bit too dark and need some adjustment. Feedback about this in the Discord is welcome, try playing with the gamma a little bit meanwhile.
Bugfixes
Fixed an issue where players could get stuck inside other characters.
Fixed a bug where logging out on a rock would cause you to be stuck inside the rock. You might still have a few seconds of jitter in the air as you log in, but it should correctly place you once it's done initialising.
Fixed an issue where cursor sometimes stayed on screen after closing the F1 console.
Resolved various issues with the interactable foliage instance spawning/despawning.
Misc
Deinonychus' teeth are now no longer visible while mouth is closed.
Server performance improvements.
Fixed scanner lights not turning on.
Removed the fracturing effect on the termite mounds. This was based on an older system that is deprecated in Unreal, intent is to bring this back later in a different form.
Added an input hint on how to close the help menu
Removed unstuck and help from options on mainmenu
Patch 0.4 - Nesting customisation, help menu
Highlight of this patch is the inclusion of more foliage to use for your nests. Further, there is now also a secondary optional stage to the nesting, where you can add further bedding to have the nest feel a lot denser. The patch also features a handy in-game help section, see the new "help" category option in the status menu (tab key).
Full details below.
Features
Added more interactable foliage for nesting. Find various flowers in the grasslands (and in a hidden location or two), as well as tussocks around the big lake[1].
Nesting now has a second optional build stage where more foliage can be added. The respawn point works from the first construction.
Improved the look of the glowing night eyes to be a bit more realistic, further tweaks will likely in future patches. Effect is now active for both Coelophysis, as well as newly added to Deinonychus. Other animals to follow.
Added an in-game help menu with solutions for common issues, and information on mechanics. See the new "help" category option in the status menu (tab key).
Expanded character creation with a few tints of blue. Coelophysis has less options and is a bit more muted to better fit the character, Deinonychus has more options.
Added an option to change render scale (screen percentage) above 100. Warning: expensive!
Cleaned up the status menu a bit.
Limitations
[1] The appearance of tussock placement in the nest needs another refinement pass, but can work nicely during the second optional stage as extra thickening.
Balance
Rescaled speed for Coelophysis and Deinonychus, such that Coelophysis is now faster than Deinonychus. This gives it more of a chance against the more powerful attacks of Deinonychus, and brings speed more in-line with historical data of the two animals' capabilities. They are still too fast in terms of realism, but in the absence of other playables, for the sake of gameplay fun they'll remain faster than would be accurate for the time being. Reminder that community servers that do not like this change can adapt it with a gameplay balance override. See the documentation.
Minor changes
Added tooltip to loading screen to better communicate that the hotkey'ed calls (broadcast location, friendly, threaten, etc.) need to be held to complete, instead of tapped.
Bugfixes
Corrective neck surgery for T-Rex. Posture should look a bit better now.
Fixed custom chat name colours not showing.
Fixed a bug where the nest construction hint kept making the hint activation sound.
Fixed the game starting Oculus VR erroneously.
Performance
Replication performance improvements.
Patch 0.3.14 - Simpler group invites, balance, bugfixes
Added the option in the status menu (Tab) to invite people to your pack. You will still need to find them, but if you get close enough to each other, you can hone in further with the player tag that is visible above the character.
Invite button notes and current limitations:
A current limitation is that you have to close enough for the other character to be loaded in for your client, before the button shows. I'll polish this out still.
There's no feedback yet why you can't invite someone/button doesn't show. This might be confusing if the other person is a different species (or right now, is too far away).
Balance
Buffed sprint speed in old age
Bugfixes
Fixed clouds ruining your spawn view when you first log onto the server.
Reduced breathing sound volume.
Fixed various cases where the chat would pop up unnecessarily.
Included a fix for displaying UTF-8 text (Cyrillic, other non-ANSI characters) in the server browser.
Fixed Brachiosaurus getting confused and thinking its stuck when you attack it and stand waiting outside his attack range, leading to a teleport.
