DevBlog #73

Filipe - Lead Programmer

The month was mostly concentrated on finishing oviraptor setups, new migration rules, Entomb saves, and getting the HordeTest into your hands without the major bugs. Oviraptor is almost complete and we move onto baryonyx testing and the work is progressing very well there. There is still some work to do with some of the universal VFX’s being applied to the roster and the final underwater visuals.

Besides that we have a small surprise for Dryo's player (and others). Something I have been experimenting on and will start development now: There's a small video preview of this being dropped in the Phase 3 channel of the discord after the release of this devblog.

That’s all I can say for now for what I’ve been doing. See you!

Ariel - Programmer

I spent most of the month focusing on oviraptor related mechanics. This includes smelling nests, adjusting how the eggs’ food and nutrient values are calculated, and adding an egg cracking feature that works similarly to clams.

I also did some work on the baryonyx. We are looking at its defensive stance, which puts you in a state where the dinosaur automatically turns towards the camera direction and can use different attacks. Additionally it will also automatically strike back when attacked to defend against certain abilities, but you’ll also have manual control over other attacks in this stance.

VisualTech48 - Environmental Artist

This month the focus was on the last entrance to the dome and getting all of the entrances game-ready for Gateway.

It's been a long path to get all of them interconnected and joined in various ways so there is minimal abuse of positioning within those entrances, including sightlines for guns. The water entry proved the most challenging with its interconnecting pipes, waterway for aquatic animals to find their way in, and making sure it broke up lines of sight enough that players couldn’t hold a singular dominant position and prevent anyone from entering the dome from that area if they so chose. All of the main entrances are risky but I think we made them quite fair.

Tapwing - 2D Artist

For the last few months I’ve been hard at work creating and implementing gradients for our animals’ palettes. We’ve finally zeroed in on a good balance between limitation and freedom for a natural variety of colours through restricting hue range but allowing for greater range of light/dark. It’s a constant balancing act though, as some skin patterns take on a variety of palettes easily while others practically demand to be restricted to “ONE COLOUR ONLY.”

Case in point: austroraptor’s default patterns (Pattern 1, 2, 3) are super flexible with colours. I drafted 10 palette concepts for it and the animal wore them all well.

On the flip end, Allosaurs’ default is a good example of an extremely fussy skin pattern. Browns, olive and grey were about the only colours that seemed to work, on top of that, what works on pattern 1 might not work on pattern 3 and vice versa, meaning those respective patterns will need unique palettes to themselves to fill out the list.

And that’s largely what I’m working on now; Since the current roster has at least 3 default palettes per animals default patterns, I’m working on pattern specific palettes, adding 4th default palettes and experimenting with recycling some of the more flexible gradients on dinosaurs they weren’t original designed for.

For example, a Dryosaurus’ green might work just as nicely on the Omniraptor, so rather than making another similar gradient, it’s handy to reuse the flexible ones to save on space.

Wedge - Sound Designer

This month the majority of the audio team's focus has been on further work on avaceratops’s suite of vocals. The large majority of its adult vocals are completed as well as a handful of juvenile sounds and progress on Ava will be continuing into next month as we move onto rounding out the full spectrum of its vocals, finishing it off with its sparring sounds.

I have taken some time this month to implement an overhaul to call attenuations and spatial processing which you have likely heard in the Hordetest. I have adjusted the submix chains for spatial effects which include adjustments to reverb, making the reverb much more present on distant vocals as well as adjusting various aspects of the reverb sound such as density, dispersion etc. I’ve also adjusted the delay effect that distant vocals are put through, shortening the delay times to give them more of a slapback effect as the sound bounces off nearby reflective surfaces and filtering those echoes to simulate the absorption of high frequency content from those surfaces. The overall audio balance is also undergoing some adjustments, particularly for the ambience & weather volume. There is a lot of content affected by these changes so they are undergoing testing and review as we fine tune the soundscape of The Isle.

There has also been refinement, adjustments and fixes on a small handful of the recent playables we have worked on as well as footstep and foliage audio.

I have also gone over Camara and Quetz calls implementation in preparation for them as well as some exploratory work on Quetz’ supplementary sounds to find the extents of its vocal palette, with this creature being a new slightly different approach to creature sound design for the team.

Bryan Phillips - Animator

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a good bit to write about that isn’t boring stuff like Gore Morphs or Gore Meshes. Stuff that wore out the switches in my mouse. Do you know how hard it is to find a good left handed mouse? I bought a supply years ago and it’s finally running out. You’re welcome.

But this month, I’ve got two treats for you and it isn’t even Halloween yet. Aren’t you spoiled.

The big Spoon has a new, fully modern rig. This baby has a Head Stabilizer, independent IK/FK switches on each limb and a fancy metatarsal alignment function. What does that mean? Nothing really. We’re animators, we gotta take what we can get.

Aside from that, this is how I look at my computer when I finish work for the day.

Yes, John Cakeman too has a big fancy rig now and a full wardrobe to go with it. Still working on stacking up his armoury. More of a .577-450 kind of guy myself, but 7.62x51mm NATO can drop a big sharptooth with the right shot placement too I guess

Hypno - QA Lead

QA have been busy throughout the month focusing on bug testing for releases to the hordetesting branch. We’re currently working through the highest priority issues identified during testing, being passed directly to the development team to be fixed when they are found.

As part of this process, we’re also revisiting a number of older issues and mechanics that have grown larger over previous updates. One example is Tyrannosaurus becoming immune to sparring when holding its crush ability and being hit by an eligible opponent. We’ve confirmed that this issue has now been fixed and is currently working as expected in hordetesting.

Another example is the Deinosuchus lunge, which currently doesn’t look or sound quite as it should. What was once an effective jumpscare has become noticeably weaker, as both the animation and audio end abruptly, leaving the moment completely silent. We’re currently working to bring this mechanic back to its former glory for our next update to the hordetesting branch.

These are just a couple of the many areas we’re working through as we continue to improve and bring older mechanics back up to standard. Changes elsewhere in the game, from engine upgrades to the introduction of new playables, can often have unforeseen effects on existing systems, so our priority is making sure those interactions are being identified and addressed as we add more content to the game.

KissenKitten - Animation Supervisor

The train never stops so even though I was on vacation I have plenty to show if not so much to tell. The animation team is still working on the parasaurolophus primarily, wrapping up some vocals for camarasaurus and avaceratops and on occasion making some edits to existing animations here and there for hordetesting creatures. I did some other mechanic animations for the baryonyx and I still have some straggler animations to complete for oviraptor, quetzalcoatlus and some other things here and there. Bug fixes and the like. Not much to really report there. Same ole. At long last, the new-new is the upcoming spinosaurus. I’ve had the animation team do some exploratory posing to test and familiarize themselves with the rig, which not only helps get the creative juices flowing but it gives Bryan swift feedback should anything be wrong with the rig.

I will be working on establishing spinosaurus animations for the rest of this week into next week so I can have it prepared for the animators that are ready to move on to it. We want spinosaurus in Evrima to have more weight, more bulk and to be more imposing than it ever could have hoped to be in legacy. More tightly wound and a more obvious and clear precursor to the Hyperendocrin Spinosaurus where you tell it's powerful just by looking at it. Powerful enough to go toe to toe with an adult rex should it need to, but definitely preferring to stick to its own realm in the water where it is king. A healthy adult spinosaurus will have little to fear from other species when it’s in its preferred areas and will induce fear and respect on land from anything unlucky enough to be targeted.

Other than that, I’m gonna start scheduling human animations for the team to start working on and the train keeps going. That’s all for now! Take care!