Over the past three weeks we released three updates to the public development branch starting with 0.1.51.1 last October. You can see the additions of the two prior patches by following the link below.
If you'd like to participate in the public development branch you can do so by right clicking The Isle in your Steam library > left click properties > betas > in the dropdown menu select "Public Development Branch". Upon doing so your game will update to the latest available version.
Public Development Branch Information & Guidelines:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/376210/discussions/14/1729828401669165203/
Finally, if you haven't already I'd highly suggest joining our official Discord server ( https://discord.gg/jY3UMZh ) It's the best place to stay up to date with development, including livestream announcements.
Fixed issues with ocean and river sound splines hogging audio memory
Fixed certain foliage assets missing textures
Fixed a skylight error on Thenyaw Island
Fixed nightvision flicker with lake water planes
Nightvision now looks correct instead of fogging everything up close
Nests now switch to a destroyed model when broken
Can now only place nests on the landscape
Can no longer place nests at ridiculously sharp angles
Trees should no longer block the camera
Removed collision from small fallen logs and branches
General
Added velociraptor AI
HUD
Added an option to disable in-game hints
Added an option to use a static version of the hud (requires a restart)
Layout adjustments and improvements
Added a "magnetic compass" that appears when in scent-mode
Object use distance is now more dynamic, scaling with growth
Increased condition status warning duration from 5 to 8 seconds
Stamina icon always shows while resting and if less than full
Consistency pass between News menu and main menu
Graphics
Added near-camera fade when moving through foliage
Colour graded distant paper birch trees to look more natural
Added per-branch foliage interaction to giant reeds
Several foliage interaction & master shader optimizations
Adjustments to landscape distance blending
Reduced highlight intensity of scented lakes
Scented object highlight should now begin fading away when up close
Scented items no longer have tall smoke stacks emitting from them
Added the last two rivers to Thenyaw, no more mud trails
Reduced frequency of river wildlife effects
Tweaked overall sound mix to prioritize footsteps more
Added low pass filtering & occlusion to ocean surf sounds
Patch 0.1.50.9
Greetings islanders,
Here's the July patch... in August. Look, don't ask. There's a joke here about a time machine. In actuality, we're just late. The reasons, or "patch notes" as we call them, are below.
Known Issues The games build configuration has been changed to one more optimized, but this also means that the location of your user settings has changed as well. To find the new location, open the settings menu and look at the path listed near the bottom. You will need to reset your settings to have access to the new keys, so click the Reset button in the settings area and restart your game.
Note: Gameplay is being developed with Survival mode in mind, the following may not fully function in Sandbox.
The character database has been wiped.
Gameplay
<*> New Night Vision system, eyes and footprints now glow in the dark
This has been a long time coming. No more nightvision that looks like gamma cranked up to 11. <*> Night vision viewing distance is different per class
Certain dinosaurs see better at night. We're still tuning this, so don't rage too hard if your favorite dinosaur isn't the best in the world at night. <*> New scent system, hold Q to detect footprints, food and water, doesn’t work if its raining
All dinosaurs can scent to varying degrees. With the changes to edible plants, herbivores can now easily sniff out and highlight their edible food. <*> Footprints no longer appear with every step but have a chance to appear scaled by speed
This was pretty simple but necessary with the way tracking works now. The faster you move, the more likely you are to leave prints behind. <*> Utah and Dryo now have increased jump survivability
These two, despite having pretty decent jumps, broke their legs too easily. This has been rectified with steel shin bones. <*> Fixed improper food values on several dinosaurs
A few decimals got switched around and resulted in a bad time. We fixed that. <*> Rebalanced growth times of all Survival species
Adjusted each species range (small/medium large) to be relatively similar, but have large gaps in between. Large animals now spend more time at a subadult phase. <*> Added AI dinosaurs: Orodromeus & Psittacosaurus
Cute, but succulent food for carnivores. Precious little noise makers. <*> Added the following dinosaurs to Survival mode - Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Diabloceratops, Dilophosaurus, Dryosaurus, Maiasaura
New dinosaurs are always good, so here they are.
Maps
<*> AI dinosaurs now spawn on the maps
<*> Increased overall number of spawn points
<*> Spawn system now tries to avoid placing you near other players
<*> Edible plants are now procedurally generated, with random locations
<*> Foliage density is now the same regardless of quality level
<*> Added more clearly visible landmarks
<*> Added the North Star to aid navigation at nighttime
<*> Added more water sources
<*> Fixed misaligned physics volumes on water sources
<*> Improved collisions on trees & rocks
<*> Thenyaw Island: added shooting stars at night
<*> Thenyaw Island: laid out where rivers will be placed in the future
<*> Thenyaw Island: removed "party pool" lake at the center of the map
<*> Isle V3: major re-landscaping of the entire island
<*> Isle V3: added redwoods biome type (WIP)
<*> Isle V3: added placeholder assets at various points of interest
Graphics
<*> Small foliage now reacts when you move through it
<*> New look for edible plants (they're no longer blue)
<*> Updated several dinosaur models with new & improved versions
<*> Added new full-body vocal animations for Survival classes
<*> Numerous animation improvements such as more fluid jumping
<*> Improved landscape distance textures
<*> Added animated blood pool to corpses
<*> Added effects for idling in or drinking water
<*> Improved rain visual effects
<*> Rain density now changes depending on storm intensity
<*> Improved water visuals, now takes sun colour into account
<*> Underwater visuals are now properly masked by the water surface
<*> Raindrop ripples only appear on the top of objects now
<*> Corpses appear to rot over time (visual only)
<*> Adjusted sun & moon lighting, tweaked colour correction
<*> Updated night sky texture with more detail
<*> Enabled distance field shadowing for all quality levels
<*> Motion blur effects now only enabled on High+ post processing
<*> Updated the main menu and all video sequences
<*> Started preparing Character info screen for the Affinity system
<*> Nametags are now coloured based on server role
<*> Chat no longer scrolls to the bottom when viewing old messages
<*> Heart rate monitor on Character info screen now changes speed & colour based on health
General
<*> Fixed certain quality settings not being adjusted properly
<*> Added new commands for server admins
<*> Fixed server admins being unable to join full servers
<*> Fixed inaccurate player pings on the scoreboard, were previously showing only 1/4th of their accurate value.
<*> Water volumes no longer receive decals
<*> Characters now float more reliably in water
<*> Fixed edible plants wanting to grow underwater (mostly)
<*> Fixed certain objects blocking eat/drink interactions
<*> Fixed some hatchlings being unable to eat from nests
<*> Increased blood splatter lifetime to 10 minutes
<*> Moon opacity now fades based on cloud density
<*> Disabled turning in place while moving
<*> Fixed Trike being able to stomp when exiting rest
<*> Fixed being stuck in a loop when interacting with menus open
<*> Fixed an ambush exploit relating to usable objects
<*> Disabled ragdoll freezing
<*> Added nightvision ability to spectator mode
<*> Added more movement control to spectator mode
<*> Fixed group tags not displaying properly sometimes
<*> Fixed chat messages not being received due to lag
<*> Updates to controller support (WIP)
<*> Fixed an issue that could lead to settings being reset on launch
<*> Fixed an issue that caused screen resolution to reset to default, but not rescale
<*> Fixed being able to use chat when escape menu is open
<*> Graphics settings menu now has a reset to defaults option, but the game must be restarted.
<*> Disabled most graphics settings being changeable outside of the main menu, due to various rendering issues this causes.
<*> Fixed issues with game accepting unsupported resolutions / hardware
<*> Fixed timing out from lengthy loads when joining large maps
Sounds
<*> Added more ambient sounds to the world
<*> Refined and adjusted several vocal calls
<*> Swapped attract and broadcast calls on Dilophosaurus
<*> Changed distant roars to be deeper and fade more gradually
<*> Fixed vocal calls cutting off beyond a certain distance
<*> Added distant rolling thunder in overcast weather
<*> Fixed certain dinosaurs using the wrong sized footsteps
<*> Fixed priority weighting on certain effects out of view
Optimization
<*> Over 90% reduction in network bandwidth used
<*> Over 70% reduction in replication update frequency, reducing latency
<*> Optimized how vocal calls are networked
<*> Optimized how character skins are replicated
<*> Fixed characters "rubber-banding" under certain network conditions
<*> Dynamic shadow rendering optimizations
<*> Optimized collisions on edible objects
<*> Optimized ragdoll physics calculations
<*> Improved efficiency of interactive water
<*> Fixed a memory leak caused by ambient sounds
<*> Fixed severe performance during the dawn and dusk phase
<*> Disabled fireflies until further improvements are made to them
<*> Bodies now decay twice as fast to improve performance
<*> Various ambient particle effect optimizations
<*> Adjusted grass render distance and level of detail
<*> Ported more materials to using master shaders for efficiency
<*> Optimized lava dynamic lighting
<*> Various menu / UI optimizations
<*> Numerous crash fixes
Servers
<*>The official servers have been replaced with new hardware in new locations for both the east and west coast of the United States, and London and Frankfurt for Europe. Currently Dev 3, Dev 4, US 3 and US 4 are still undergoing this transfer and may have degraded performance compared to the other servers. The transfer should be completed by August 10th 2018.
Note from the developer:
Overall, this is a massive stride forward that has so much work done under the hood that most people won't recognize. So many issues flew under the radar for a long time that have now been cleaned up that allow us to make large strides forward in development. We should have an announcement soon in regards to the final systems for dinosaurs. Hopefully the next gap between patches will not be this long, and you'll feel as confident as us that the result was worth the wait.
See you on the island.
Linux Dedicated Server Support
Greetings Islanders,
We are regretfully starting the process of phasing out support for Linux dedicated servers for The Isle. This is due to both engine performance issues we have encountered when running linux servers, and most importantly, the new third party technology we are integrating into the game. Unfortunately, our license does not cover support for the Linux platform.
Windows dedicated servers will continue to be supported as usual, and offer the best performance for The Isle servers. This process will be taking place over the next two weeks, so that server administrators have time to move their infrastructure to Windows. We appreciate the support from all of our Linux users and deliver this news with compunction. Further news regarding platform support for The Isle will be available later next week.
Patch Hotfix 0.1.38.7
Patch Hotfix 0.1.38.7
Didn't you know? Fixing something and breaking something else is how I keep this team employed. Here's a quick rollout:
<*>Fixed corpses disappearing after one minute.
<*>Fixed being unable to use world items after recently using one.
<*>Fixed head rotation issues related to using world items.
Patch Hotfix 0.1.38.6
Patch Hotfix 0.1.38.6
Greetings islanders,
As expected, there were a few hiccups with the latest patch. This rollout should fix the issues we've had reported.
Slightly lowered Carnotaurus bleed.
In an attempt to bring Carnotaurus in line with some balance, we're taking his bleed down by 5.
Lowered Carnotaurus turning angle when running.
He's still the fastest, but jukes now work.
Slightly increased juvenile Utahraptor trot and run speed.
Utahraptor is in a good place, but the juvenile was not. We're giving it a little bit of the zoomies.
Fixed Gallimimus health discrepancies between hatchling/juvenile/adult.
For some reason, his health was resetting back down to the 20's when he was adult. It was actually the worst.
Fixed juvenile Giganotosaurus hunger decay only being at 1.
A lot of people were reporting that Giga juvies didn't have to eat because of how fast they grew... they did and still grow at the same rate of juvenile tyrannosaurus, but their hunger was stuck at 1 decay. We scaled it to be the same as the rex.
Adjusted wet gloss clamp for dinosaur skins.
Now they look wet instead of oiled up WWE wrestlers.
Added a "floor" to lava volumes so players can't walk underneath them.
No more falling through and living.
Added a new rock cliff texture to avoid visual artifacts.
In rare cases it looked like a paintball fight occured on the mountains. We changed up the texture a bit.
Re-enabled distant shadows in several bush meshes.
Because not having shadows in the distance is ugly.
Adjusted blood decal material to be more PBR-accurate.
Does anyone like the blood looking like the T-1000? No. This bug is terminated.
Adjusted capsule half-heights on survival dinosaurs to be more accurate.
This should fix some of the dinosaurs swimming beneath the water. It will also allow us to put in the new swimming oxygen detection soon.
Fixed an issue that could cause a certain set of players to never load into a level since the engine update.
This should help lower end PC's, but if you don't meet the specifications there's nothing we can do for you.
Permanently disabled steam family sharing players from playing online.
This is/was/always will be the most abused thing in the history of abused things. It will not come back.
Fixed voice wheel functionality
General bugfix, even though all of you should use 1,2,3,4,F.
Disabled stamina regeneration while crouched.
A new feature to prevent people from crouching everywhere forever. Have you tried crouching for a long time? Cramps, man... cramps.
Heavily increased herbivore food found on Isle_V3.
Apparently looking in fields was too hard for many people. We've increased the food count to see how it affects herbivore populations.
Added alphabetical sorting to the character selection screen.
No one liked the random order of dinosaurs on the list.
Fixed several bugs related to jumping for Gallimimus and Utahraptor.
None of you get to fly anymore.
See you on the island.
Patch ID: 0.1.38.5
Patch 0.1.38.5: The Mega Patch, or as close as we're gonna get to it.
Greetings Islanders,
You know that format we've been doing where we put little notes from us on every change? Well, it's been two months. Unfortunately the time it would take with that format with these patch notes would probably take us as much time as George RR Martin finishing Winds of Winter so we're going to pass on the format this ONE time. In this announcement you're getting more cliffnote-esque blurbs than exacts because, again, I'm not writing a Crichton novel length patchnote. I'm sure this will result in a negative review somewhere.
Updated to latest Unreal Engine version.
Removed exploit that allowed server administrators to set players as Hyperendocrin dinosaurs.
All reported crashes have been fixed. Client edge cases may remain, so continue to submit reports.
Fixed a movement bug that would cause your character to randomly begin to spin.
Chat system is redone. Includes a new color rich display and logs all chat to the server console.
New chat command system for administrators and players (type /help in game).
New spectator mode for admins (default key is backslash \ ).
Bleed system has been updated to tick every 3 seconds instead of 0.1, so you don't just instantly die from something biting you and guaranteeing death. This is customizable and will be tweaked further, but for now enjoy some breathing room.
Parasaurolophus added to survival (two life stages).
Triceratops added to survival (three life stages).
Gallimimus added to survival (two life stages).
All dinosaurs in survival have had various tweaks to stats to adjust placement in the ecosystem. These are not final.
Added a new swimming system: swimming now consumes stamina and dinosaurs begin to lose oxygen and drown if in the water for too long afterwards.
Every survival dinosaur now starts at full hunger/thirst.
Important note: Carnotaurus is now the fastest carnivore but has no longer can ambush.
Every carnivore in survival now has their hunger update every 60 seconds instead of 120.
Carnotaurus, Utahraptor, Gallimimus, Tyrannosaurus, and Triceratops have had overhauls to idles, locomotion, etc, to give more life to them instead of looking like statues.
Water system is completely redone. New visual and sound effects, etc. Dinosaurs now make appropriate ripples and sounds based on mass. There's also ambient sounds in relation to the water.
Ambient sounds have been added. Insects and birds can be heard based on the appropriate time of day/night.
Weather: Dynamic weather system has been introduced. Weather will decide severity in increasing order; sunny, cloudy, overcast, rain, storm, severe. There's a ton of detail here, just go look in game.
New dead body system: Ragdolls convert to static mesh based on body food value, and now properly removes bodies after a set amount of time to help reduce server lag.
Improved performance of dinosaur headtracking.
Fixed Distance Field Ambient Occlusion.
Added Thenyaw Island map (recommended for 50 players; 100 max or gameplay starts to fall apart).
Re-added Isle V3 for testing (first pass for foliage so it's relatively light for food.)
New eating mechanics for herbivores (vibrant blue bushes). Hold E to eat. When the bush is consumed it will convert to a bare mesh.
Added steam friends compatability (Invite Friend/Join Friend now functions).
All dinosaurs resized to their accurate sizes... again... for the final time... we swear... hopefully.
Updated animations for most dinosaurs (now support fullbody). This includes eat/drink for most of the sandbox related ones.
Updated several sounds for various dinosaurs and their transition distances. Before you flip your lids, no, Utahraptor broadcast is not the same sound from Jurassic Park, but it's close! Tortoises mating... ew.
New server database system which now stores bans.
Admins can now kick/ban from the server scoreboard.
Fixed more UI bugs than we can remember.
Took Region2 out back and put it in a grave next to Mesa.
Overhauled the vegetation system and models. Ground bushes are currently absent.
Fixed a game freeze when a new player would spawn.
Fixed skins not loading based on gender.
Removed humans temporarily while they're being re-written.
Fixed sandbox not listing all available dinosaurs.
Fixed skylight/directional lights for the time of day not updating or synchronizing.
Hatchlings can now eat food from their nest.
Updated detail to all of the ground and foliage materials.
Added in various world effects (geysers, birds, etc). For added fun, try swimming into a geyser when you're a hatchling (or juvenile utah/galli).
Fixed camera shaking every frame update when trotting.
World aligned all rock mesh textures and ground rock textures.
Combat logging (alt-F4'ing) now results in your character being left in the world for five minutes.
Updated almost all dinosaur cameras to be more responsive and have better positioning.
Herbivores are now relegated to grouping/chatting with their own species.
Server admins can join their respective server even if it's full.
Fixed a bug where changing graphics settings removed bushes.
Disabled console.
Disabled debug menu.
Server admins can now display player names on their own screen (default key is delete).
Eating plants no longer restores thirst.
Players do not lose thirst when it is raining or storming.
Added ambush status to the HUD to inform the player when their ambush is ready.
Fixed multiple bugs related to ambush.
Improved HUD animations.
Fixed technical bugs in relation to kick/ban functionality.
Added lava effects and environment types.
Cleaned up nest interface UI.
Updated various dinosaur state effects including blood visuals.
Improved how network errors are displayed.
When kick/banned from a server, it now displays an optional reason from the admin.
If you join a server when banned, it now displays how long you have left on your ban (or if permanent).
Fixed a lot of weird dinosaur bite spheres... again.
Added in a dynamic music system. Needs tweaking for how frequent and when it plays, but for now it's something!
Expanded our Dev Team. Please welcome our newest member, Tapwing!
The changelist above is not fully complete, it's just the only real surface stuff anyone can see was completed. We hope you enjoy the patch and feel the two month wait was worth it.
See you on the island.
Patch ID: 0.1.34.1
Patch ID: 0.1.34.1
Greeting islanders,
This patch is one of those in-betweeners where it's mostly bug-fixing and nothing super cool beyond a return to functionality for certain features. Next patch should be some cool content stuff, like weather and things like that. Most recently we've been looking into the IK features to smooth things out and get dinosaur bodies and terrain alignment going without looking super weird. There's still a few hiccups with the ragdolls and corpses being inconsistent and will be addressed next patch.
- Improved the main menu experience.
Basically, we added ambience... and two hidden things. - Improved network error reporting when having mismatched content with a server.
^ Easier to read and understand how and why something went wrong, both on the back-end, and for players. - Added Steam Authentication and Valve Anti-Cheat support.
For many reasons on a list longer than the petition of players who want Half-Life 3, we're moving away from BattlEye. - Added 720p screen resolution support in the video settings.
Self-explanatory. More resolution support, more happiness. - Increased the connection timeout limit from 60 seconds to 300 seconds.
This is primarily for players with lower end machines. Now people shouldn't be experiencing timeouts while they're loading in just because they can't afford a high-end rig. - Fixed players characters not being deleted from the database if they were killed while logged out of the server.
Also self-explanatory. Shame on you body dupers. We'd ban you if it wasn't our fault for it being an exploit in the first place. - Fixed servers not advertising their current player-count.
Remember that thing we said we knew was broken but we'd fix next patch?
It's fixed. - Fixed several issues related to the chat window.
Nothing special here. Just stupid little things. Also the click-clack sounds will be returning. - Fixed several issues related to nests.
A bunch of tiny errors and problems thanks to QA showed up. All of them should be resolved and nests should work as they originally did before they became a nuisance. - Fixed certain server filters no longer working.
Also something we broke moving away from a custom engine and script automation that we thought was good for the game but wasn't. Fixed it! - Fixed characters rotation not saving.
Don't ask why it wasn't working. It was stupid and we feel bad. - Fixed listen servers being forced to LAN only.
Now you can host your own servers without being forced to dedicated.
Patch ID: 0.1.34.0
Patch ID: 0.1.34.0
"Greetings Islanders,
With almost a month gone by since the last patch, we're trying a few new things. First of which I'm sure you'll notice is a new patch format. After each part of the patch update, there's a bit of a developer explanation (however short or long) posted after, for your convenience to see why we did something, as opposed to us just doing it. If the new patch formatting doesn't work out, we'll just post SVN logs and set ourselves on fire.
That being said, we also have a third development branch up to streamline testing. We updated a private "experimental" branch for us to break everything ourselves before it reaches QA (development) branch, and then touching you all on public. We have enough people that it shouldn't be unrealistic for us to catch most bugs before a patch hits public. The vast majority of you hate frequent patches, regardless of how much it helps us. We will do our best to abide by the desires for uninterrupted gameplay."
- Temporarily halting Mac support.
As it stands there's a lot of issues that have been ongoing with Mac. We're going to have to halt Mac support for an unknown amount of time while we sort out some extremely nefarious issues with the Mac builds. - Fixed database not saving growth and progression.
There was a lot of wonky saving issues going on and what caused a lot of crashing and performance problems. If we listed it all out, ragnarok would be upon us before you were halfway done reading. It's our fault... sorry. -- Database system now uses json files.
Easier saving, but the servers now use a new filepath for saving. Server hosts are dependent to update these for their servers to work properly. - Moved to Unreal Engine 4.18.3
As much fun as it is to have a custom engine, it's actually not. Everything about the first part of that sentence was sarcasm. It's likely we'll move to 4.19.1 when the engine version is out, because there's a lot of parallel development between what we are doing and Fortnite, but any obscene upgrades in the future will just be backported fixes so we can have a stable engine branch. - Fixed various levelbounds issues on AE-001 and Isle_V3 causing anomalous stuttering.
A lot of players were experiencing random awful stuttering randomly throughout AE-001 and Isle V3. None of it was random. It was bad levelbounds and level loading. All players should see an end to that now. - Added Giganotosaurus and Gallimimus to development and QA testing on survival mode.
Once QA confirms there's nothing obscenely wrong with either of these two lifecycles, you'll see them publicly released to play in survival, followed swifly by a certain honking hadrosaur! -- Dinosaur skins are now loaded correctly based on selected gender
*Dinosaurs still only have two genders. - Web links from game menus will now open in the steam overlay whenever possible.
This is just a quality of life thing, because no one likes a game being minimized for a pop-up. - Chat system no longer requires enter being pressed twice to open.
When the double-tap chat feature was put in, we were so occupied with whether or not we could, we didn't stop to think whether or not we should. -- Mouse control is enabled during chat to select necessary tabs.
Because honestly, only using the bracket keys was actually the worst.
Known Issues:
- Servers temporarily do not advertise the amount of players in the session.
It's a pain in the ass, we know. Solved next patch, but we didn't want you all to have to wait for this one particular fix. - Character rotation does not save.
More of an annoyance than anything, but at least you can reposses your old player controller now. - AI disabled until next patch.
On occasion they cause a server crash, but we decided to gut the system altogether to begin making AI that has smart decisions. - Server Filters are currently bugged.
The latest patch seems to have made some server filters sentient. Untick your server filter options and servers will appear.
Patch 0.1.33.5576
Developer Note:
We have been doing smaller, more frequent patches instead of grouping them into big ones because that makes it easier to discover exactly what might be broken and where. Most fixes are made based on player feedback from their server experiences and some optimizations can only be found by analyzing a 60 player server or more.
Those who wish to receive fewer updates or want a more stable version of the game to play on can switch to the Legacy beta branch. See the bottom of this post for details on how.
Updates:
Fixed: Tribals being able to pickup bows when they already have one.
Optimized: Server / Game Performance.
Transition Growth Bug Fixes.
Started roughing in more human areas to AE-001 map.
Added more varied water sources and edible plants to more parts of AE-001.
How to change your game version to Legacy:
1. Right click The Isle in your Steam library and select Properties
2. Go to the Betas tab
3. Use the drop-down menu to select "legacy- Previous stable branch"
4. Run the game or restart Steam to begin auto-downloading the legacy branch
The legacy branch is updated less frequently so may be missing certain features or fixes from the latest development build. However, it is the most stable version of The Isle. Because of this, we advise players who do not wish to update constantly or who are having performance issues to opt into the legacy branch.
Patch 0.1.33.5567
Fixed: Food / Water Saving not working properly.
Added: Multi-threaded character loading.
- Solves Performance problems when multible people are logging in at once.
Game.ini Server Option for Multi-threading (Enabled By Default with this patch)
; Multi threading Option
; If you get server crashes you can disable this below option
Multithreading = true;
