🚧 PSA: This release had to come out early and a little under-cooked due to recent server issues that seemed to be plaguing the old build. As a result, these current issues are known and still present in this build:

  • After logging in, there's 5 seconds of very diminished performance while the game executes some important tasks. This is known and being worked on.
  • The new experimental vertex paint application has some last minute bugs with what appears to be replication, sometimes added paint doesn't seem to properly make it down to the client. Already being worked on but time got cut short with this expedited release.

There might also be bugs or crashes we haven't managed to catch yet, so please do report anything you come across.

With that out of the way, on to the content! The patch includes bugfixes and polish, as well as experimental climbing for Deinonychus. Details below.

Further public service announcements:

  1. Your settings might be jumbled with this move, due to changes in the codebase. Reapply your graphics preset and double check your options.
  2. Some settings around collision have changed, if you have issues please let us know.
  3. If you had a previously grown character and the skin customisation is wrong, respawn the character. Some preset settings changed in the game.

General:

  • Updated to Unreal 5.4
  • Temporarily removed admin scanner drone from the admin menu, needs rework after project restructuring.

Features:

  • Experimental Climbing - Deinonychus can now climb (press/hold glide button onto a surface). Jumping off is done with the jump button. Use at your own risk, this feature is still every experimental and unrefined.
  • Experimental material effects - Mud, sand, water, and blood material effects can now appear during gameplay on your character. There is a current known issue with reliability/replication of the effect, and it might not fully work on all animals yet. Also needs further work to polish fidelity, this is a big work in progress feature.

Performance:

  • Improved render thread performance thanks to the update to UE 5.4.
  • Optimised memory usage
  • Optimised package size

Graphics:

  • Experimental - Added Virtual Shadow Maps option, DX12 only. Currently only recommended for very powerful systems and after carefully tweaking your graphics settings. Provides much better shadows but needs further tuning to be performant.
  • Fixed flickering with transitions between day and night.
  • Fixed intermittend flickering/shimmering on grass with DLSS.
  • Slightly rebalanced lighting to be brighter in various weather types. More work on this remains, there's stills scenes where the shadows are overly dark.
  • Slightly rebalanced foliage lod bias for performance across the various graphics presets.
  • Fixed missing shadows on some meshes (mostly rocks/cliffs).

Locomotion:

  • Increased gravity to make jumping feel more realistic.
  • Fixed issue with animation movement direction sometimes feeling incongruent with the actual trajectory.
  • Aquatic motion tweaks.
  • Cleaned up sarcosuchus jump.
  • Improved smoothness of going over un-even terrain, though upgrading/adding further polish to the IK and surface alignment in general is something that we want to pursue.

Bugfixes:

  • Various bugfixes for ambient ai food.
  • Fixed termite mound attack key prompt not being accurate.
  • Fixed termite mound not being attackable for some animals.
  • Speculative fix for termite mound sometimes not spawning a larva.
  • Adjusted brightness RainDark weather preset.
  • Fixed Sarcosuchus losing textures when zoomed out.
  • Fixed a bug where dynamic shadows wouldn't come back on after sunup.
  • Fixed Coelophysis repeating the get up animation after breaking sit.
  • Fixed an issue where the loading screen wouldn't automatically end.
  • Speculative fix for getting stuck in rocks when logged out on top of them.
  • Fixed AI not disengaging when their target was destroyed.