New playables and a whole new world to explore—a rough preview build for our biggest content expansion to date is now available! The patch for 0.7.0 can be found on the steam experimental branch.

Beyond the big ticket items like the new playables Allosaurus and Parasaurolophus, this patch also features a slew of other improvements and new additions. To name some, we've introduced combat music, overhauled the ambient audio, and added various new environmental AI.

This post will dig into the new map, with a full write-up with patchnotes being made available once the patch releases onto the stable branch.

🚧 A few things to keep in mind 🚧

This is a test build for public testing, and is thus slightly undercooked!

We've compiled a list of various things we still need to sort out before public release. Among others, balancing still needs adjustments, some of the new mechanics might not work fully, and the lighting/map need a bit more polish too. Expect rough spots in this build, and please report them in the Discord!

Notes on para and herbivore gameplay:

Food for Parasaurolophus is found in fields that rotate across the map, the scent colour is green. At least 1 field on the map will have food at all times, but you'll need to move around the map to the next one once it's depleted.
This is a fairly early implementation of herbivore gameplay and will likely need further balancing, let us know for instance if getting to the food spots is rough and we need to increase them.

A new island

An important point of development for this patch was to improve a lot of our internal tooling around how we build the map, and to this end decided to create a new map from the ground up at the same time.

This meant removing some of the systems that weren't working well, like rivers (though we're looking at new solutions for this), and expanding on others like the cliffs, the foliage, and management of the biomes in general. Doing so has allowed us to expand the biomes the map has and scale the detail present on the map.

Making the map feel more varied and interesting was a big point that we wanted to improve on with the update. Slightly scaling down the map, adding new biomes, and incorporating special little places to find were the biggest things we focussed on. Note that while smaller, it'll still feel decently large as we also incorporated more verticality in the map. The new size is roughly 10.5km x 8km, with some sections of that area blocked off.

There's also areas that tailor better to the animals' unique abilities. The first example of what we've done in this area is making sure that the desert and praerie areas are climbable (vaultable) by Deinonychus, giving it access to an area of the map that is not reachable by other animals.

Going forward

There's still work to be done on further improving the map, and we intend to iterate on it in the coming patches. In particular we want to further increase the handcrafted areas, and further push the graphical fidelity.

The old map

The old map has been taken out of game with this patch, but once we're happy with the new map we're intending to bring it back once we get a chance to overhaul it. The plan is that it would serve as a larger map for people who prefer that type of scale.

A tour

Below are some screenshot with highlights of what the new map looks like.
Note that the lighting in these is still a bit odd (mostly the shadows being too dark). A lighting pass is still being worked on before release onto stable.

Cloud rainforest

The upper region of the jungle is now a more distinct biome from the lower regions. We're aiming to elicit a more "cloud rainforest" type feel here.

Prairie

This is a new, drier, biome with sparser foliage.
Deinonychus enjoys a movement advantage here, with large rocky regions that are only easily traversable by the raptor.

Redwoods

The redwoods too have been overhauled with new foliage.

Desert

Another new biome is the desert. Dry and inhospitable, but you'll be able to find smaller animals here.

Hope you enjoyed this preview of the map!

Come join us on the Discord and give us feedback in the lead-up to the stable release.