//////// Introduction (to the new guys) /////////
It feels appropriate for some introductions, I am Primal, the Lead Developer.
Some of you may know me already but for those who don't, I got ownership of the project in late 2022 and have been working on it mostly solo since then.
Our team mostly remains the same, most have not worked on the project since I took hold of the project but I've been building the project from the ground up on a fresh codebase all the while squeezing time for animating, texturing, modelling and optimizing.
It's been a long year and a bit but I think the project is now in a suitable position for the lime light and I want to drop all the goodies about development & playtests in the Discord Server and over here on Steam Community.
A preface for those who have not been paying attention for the last couple years. The game is not the same as it was, as this is a debut devlog it is fitting to show the difference of the game in 2021 compared to current day.
Early 2021: We did not know what to do for our controller, it was incredibly basic, did not respond well to inputs and did not have any mouse aid for directing the dinosaur. Funnily we considered hiring a few Animation Programmers to get it up to par with where we wanted to go for.
Easter 2024: A lot of work has been put into making the dinosaurs feel incredibly bespoke, smooth and unique to every species. Across the board the game has been polished and refined. Don't take just my word, participate in a playtest so you can get a feel for it for yourself!
Onto the real meat of this devlog, the update that is launching today with it:
//////////////// Features & Changes ////////////////
We've made a lot of work since our last major update (Dec 2023), most changes are QOL and are outlined in the change lists but I'll be discussing some of the main feature changes/additions that arrive with this update.
//////////////////// New Abilities ////////////////////
If there's one thing that we're trying to strive for is a cinematic but epic feeling experience to the game, we want you to feel every punch, bite, swipe and crunch of every dinosaurs moves. We also want the players to have control over what your dinosaur can do, our 'build' based system therefore requires me to create many different abilities, animations and implement them with our cinematic camera. The turnaround on these have been extremely slow as I've been relegating myself to other areas of work like programming and more recently bug fixing. In any case this update drops a few new ones, here's a new head swipe one for the rex:
//////////////////// Nests ////////////////////
We now have an implementation of Nests which will hold some dino eggs, these are planned to be used in the S&D Game Mode (Nest Hunt) where it'll be a tug of war of humans raiding nets whilst dinos recuperate and brood more at other Nests.
//////////////////// Foliage Interaction ////////////////////
Back from the dead, foliage interaction has returned. This feature has been a bit taboo as to how to go about its implementation but I think I've arrived at a solution that is both performant and does not sacrifice its visuals. It is currently exclusive to some plants which will shuffle as well as play a rustling noise whenever interacted on. Additionally they are reactive to bullets, so shooting through them will make them rustle too! This should help the humans and dinos pinpoint each other much more easily!
//////////////////// Foliage Destruction ////////////////////
Those who were here from our initial prototyping in 2021 were keen and eager to see some sort of tree destruction from our tyrant classes. I'm pleased to say this update welcomes tree destruction! Tyrants can walk through specific trees and they will fall over and break apart dynamically. This feature is quite experimental, the destruction may misbehave but we're eager to see all the cinematic moments this will introduce!
//////////////////// Blood & More Blood ////////////////////
The most sorely missed feature is gore. Previous updates did not feature gore outside of blood splatter and ribboning trails. Earlier in development I had developed a shader based technique which allowed for blood to pool at gunshot wounds but moving forward and reevaluating performance budgets it was scraped. This update reintroduces blood splatter on skin, which dissolves and appears depending on health. This change affects humans too so you'll see blood marks on your hands and arms!
Soaked Spino :)
//////////////////// Other Stuff ////////////////////
Perk Codex
This is a smaller scale of the larger Ability Codex, here you will be able to switch out your dinosaur perks, these are attribute exclusive so they wont allow you to do special moves etc. The visual presentation is still a bit WIP but here's how it is accessed in-game.
Human Audio Manager
Another feature that has been re-implemented, humans will now have voice manager where different voice lines will be played depending on which dinosaur you're encountering as well as manage a dynamic music system which should play intense music during combat!
Crash Logs!
Finally our shipped builds will include verbose logs from start to close, so we should be able to get more information whenever anyone crashes!
This update is also shadow dropping a few experimental features namely interactable physics objects and explosive barrels, won't talk too much about it here but if this update has enticed you into giving a further look into the game I would highly suggest you join the Discord on the Steam Page (Shameless plug but trust me it's the best way to reach out). We talk about ideas and organize our Playtests there!
//////////////////// Final Words ////////////////////
This is all for the first official "Devlog" post. Development may seem slow, I know, I am trying to manage this as fast and as best as I can, there are no definitive release dates but I can reassure all that the codebase is almost fundamentally complete, the game is playable, the time spent now is just making it as fun and as engaging as possible! I will try to keep posting these every few months or so, usually there isn't enough substantial work being done on a per monthly basis that I feel like is worth talking about however if that is something you're interested in then you can join the discord for live updates.
Change lists will be communicated here from any onwards patches. I usually do communicate larger features in the Discord but it feels more unified to talk about changes over here.
//////////////////// Changelist ////////////////////
- Upgraded to UE5.4 for better performance and future features
- Per gun scope DOF on humans (Fixes egregious DOF on specific weapons)
- New Dino Audio
- Guns will randomly spawn with either ironsight or a scope
- Dino Dynamic Hit Reactions
- Saliva Test
- Improvements to dino locomotive
- Dino locomotive keeps focus around the head when sprinting
- Dino Nest + Eggs
- Hotel Map Environment Work
- RTT Buffer to experimentally test out better server/client timings
- Blood Splatter on Humans when low health
- Blood Splatter on dinos when low health
- Blood Splatter on dino teeth after continuous successful bites
- Improvements to blood hud effect
- Random Glove Color + Random Headgear on human spawn
- Human material tweaks
- Optimizations to lighting
- Random Human physical appearance (gloves + headgear)
- Fixed muzzle flash being almost invisible
- You can now interact with physics objects by shooting or walking into them as a dino/human
- Foliage makes rustling noises and shake if you walk through specific foliage
- Palm trees can be destroyed as a large dino
- Improved Dinosaur Footstep Sounds
- Perk codex is available instead of regular ability codex
- Fixed issues for hotel geometry
- Better Material on Spino & Rex
- Reworked default dino health regen perk
- Fix humans not spawning after team switch
- Camera focus resets to center if falling
- Jumping as a dino provides additional forward velocity
- Human Audio Manager for dynamic music
- Higher fidelity shadows on dinosaurs regardless of lighting conditions
- Faster loading times (Can cause some one-off stutters at the moment)
- Less shaders to load for new users
- Fixed humans not doing a ragdoll on death
- Fixed gun fire not working on offline
- Fixed Reload animation not working properly for third person
- Fixed bullet tracer slightly offsetted for FP
- Attempted fix for scopes having strange projection
- Reduced memory to be loaded instantaneously by 70%
- A various amount of coloration options for dinosaurs
- Reworked TSR to provide a more sharper, cleaner image (performance and visuals may differ in select scenes)
- Fixed an issue where sniff audio was not playing for others
- Ambient audio has a bit more depth by using binaural audio with interior culling.
- Potentially fixed an issue where impact sounds were playing twice
- Cleaner motion blur so that it's less distracting and reduces artefacts
- Reintroduced mostly fixed/balanced Shotgun (Experimental)
- Removed Affected/Independent option from human FOV due to TSR artefacting
- Reduced FOV range for Humans to reduce temporal bleeding and to better help shooting accuracy
- Made some netcode more secure and server authoritative
- Fixed an issue with some inputs not being blocked whilst using abilities
- Shaders will recompile every update instead of every fresh install (prevents hitches when trying new content)
- Spino health reduced from ~4300 -> 3800
- Spino & Rex health regen rate reduced significantly
- Fixed an issue where players would see their impact fx happen twice (Noticeable at high ping)
- More accurate gunfire at super close objects
- Respawn now is moved from 'K' to a pause menu option :D
- Misc Bug fixes
