This update introduces wildfires on herbivore feeding fields, expands spawning of ambient AI, a slew of bugfixes, and significant performance improvements.

A few PSAs:

  • We've migrated to Unreal 5.3 with this release, shoot us a message in case something unexpected breaks. Feedback welcome.
  • Graphics presets have been updated, so we recommend you re-apply the appropriate preset for your hardware.
  • Important note: we had a case of AMD Instant Reply causes performance issues. We recommend to have it off while playing the game if you're having trouble.

Features:

  • Added the first iteration of dynamic spawning of ambient AI to complement the static spawning spots, for now lizards and fireflies.
  • Overhauled performance of foliage fields to allow a larger variety of foliage.
  • Wildfires! The first implementation of this natural disaster is now available, and will trigger randomly within herbivore foliage fields during warm weather. It can spread, but not beyond the foliage fields for the moment. More fire starting scenarios and expanding beyond the fields are planned as features.

Tweaks:

  • Aim mode can now also look and move up/down to improve the usability while swimming and chasing fish.
  • Adjusted Sarcosuchus' animation limits for looking around.
  • Reduced sliding when letting go of input.
  • Tweaked surface alignment interpolation speed to reduce floating on inclines.
  • Polished Sarcosuchus water enter/exit transition, but still requires further work.
  • Added bite collision trace during tail attack Sarcosuchus.
  • Tweaked spawn preview to make character not rotate & snap.

Bugfixes:

  • Improved reliability of herbivore eating, fixes a case where the removal of the plants didn't trigger correctly.
  • Fixed Sarcosuchus drink and eat anims not looping.
  • Fixed Sarcosuchus bask action being in the wrong place on radial menu.
  • Fixed Salt Marsh spawn turning screen black.
  • Fixed flickering biome preview for prairie.
  • Prevented Sarcosuchus basking underwater.
  • Corrected "hints" typo in controls options as well as the settings change confirmation wording.
  • Temperature icons are now correctly always shown on the UI if the "Hide needs when satiated" option is false in the options.
  • Fixed options requesting confirmation without having changed anything.
  • AI name tag now disappears correctly when removed (swallowed/despawned).
  • Tweaked bodypile that was sometimes causing temperature drop.
  • Fixed various foliage fields not respecting the min-1-blooming-field-per-biome rule.
  • Fixed a stretching issue that would happen occasionally while interacting with jungle grass.
  • Fixed various water particles rendering pitch black at great view distances.
  • Fixed Dilo not being able to emote while sitting.
  • Fixed animation loop on sliding end for Allosaurus.

Performance:

  • Optimised landscape rendering.
  • Various rendering optimisations.
  • Client game thread optimisations.
  • Further modest VRAM savings.
  • Optimised Ambient AI server performance.

Map:

  • Increased fish in swamp.
  • Fixed various locations where water was stretching and showing underwater postprocess above water. This is a workaround and a proper solution is still being looked at, reports of other locations where this happens are useful.
  • Smoothed out the banks in the alpine lake to make it easier to climb out.
  • Fixed water collision hitbox at swamp -> ocean waterfall.