Official News

This month I worked mainly on two fronts. The unified systems for footsteps visual effects (VFX) and sound effects (SFX). The system just scales all conditions based on species and size, avoiding us to have multiple assets per dinosaur/per size (growth). This speeds up dinosaur setup and asset creation, The second main front was finishing and merging the new systems for Migration and Entomb save. They are now on the...

I have been busy refactoring some stuff related to the game’s security and bug fixing but also some updates to mechanics: Migration system: Most of the system is being updated. The idea behind migrations are kept almost the same but the way they work both in code and for players is different. This will allow us to use the good parts of the current in-game system and remove what hasn’t been working. Also included are...

This month I was looking at various issues from the horde test and making related changes. I also made a small change to nesting; after taking an egg, the dinosaur will now automatically hatch after a while. This was done because there were cases of people taking an egg and never hatching, this way making those eggs unusable for others. Hopefully that won't be a problem going forward. Other than that I got back to wo...

I’ve been working on fixing UI issues and preventing some exploits. Kentrosaurus has a few reflection bugs where it's dealing damage in unintended ways but it should be done soon. The only thing to show this month is the skin system. We want to make sure it works fine using texture gradients without issues, but also avoid people being able to spawn with ridiculous colours on official servers. That’s all this month! S...

Who’s ready for Director’s Commentary 2: Return of the Donblog? It’s just me again. I’m going to play a bit of catch-up with some Hordetest info and some immediate plans. Since I’ve last written an entry the whole island has been updated. Jace had been hard at work getting the feel of each area nailed down, from the forests and jungles to redwoods and mangroves. Mangroves in particular were previewed before the redwo...

This month I have been focused on kentrosaurus and its defensive stance. This helps it to reflect damage back to attackers when they hit its spikes, but this will also be seen for other animals that have spikes or build in defenses like ceratopsians. I also worked on the updated skin system color picker so that we can bring larger color selections back to you. Skin colors are based on a texture which the players can...

This month I have been working primarily on bug fixes for several systems while we focus on bug cleanup, but I’ve had some small time to work on some upcoming changes for the skin system. You will get a limited type of color pick gradient for skin palettes that change per layer and not every palette will be on every pattern, but overall it should offer more freedom and consistency in the look of your animal. There ar...

This month I worked more on updating some remaining UI panels and bug fixing them. The UI took less time to implement than expected, which is great for once. Besides that, new mutations have been added which allows you to change your gender, but also another one that allows a female to lay eggs without a mate, allowing more nests to be around. These are needed additions but required some additional setup to get worki...

Director’s CommentaryI gave the team two months of reprieve from having to write in any of these and you can see why Fred is the GoodNoodle™ of the team. This officially makes my entry director’s commentary and I don’t have to write a saga. We’re going to start strong with bugs. I’ve been partaking in bug hunts this month that make me want to put my head in a bag of holding and scream until I’m dead or I wake up God....

Who’s ready for nothing but director’s commentary? There’s been a lot of moving parts this month so I’m giving the team a break from having to provide an entry. There may be a distinct lack of media in this particular devblog since it’s just me, but I’ll try to catch the more interesting stuff the team is doing. For a little bit of time we unfortunately had to divert attention and resources away from the HordeTest to...

As you know, there were also some issues related to upgrading the engine version from 5.4 to 5.6 that caused delays, but it was a much needed upgrade. The T. Rex and Elder System has its first pass out in the Hordetest, but I have also been working on the allosaurus and have started to get into the austroraptor. The allosaurus is the first animal in a long while that doesn't require a lot of custom things to make it...

Wedge - Sound DesignerThis month we have wrapped up all the tyrannosaurus vocalisations, knocking out the remaining juvenile sounds in addition to sparring. Next the team all have moved onto concepting the vocalisations for the Austro and Kentro suite of vocals, while I have worked on the allosaurus. I have worked hard on maintaining the elements of Allosaurus calls that are the most revered by the community. Althoug...

This month I have been mostly focused on the elder system.The system will be fully functional by the end of this month, likely only needing bug fixes and adjustments based on data gathered through testing. It has been made with older UI elements so that it can come before the overhaul. Besides that I have been working on fixing a lot of bugs, for old and new mechanics (such as elders and its new functionalities), but...

This month I’ve primarily been focused on the Elder system, which the current roster is having their curves put in for players who meet the requirements once they become adult. We had to replace the growth curve system to allow more entries, which will help us to easily edit and balance normal and prime elders, but also allow even more expansions in the future if we want that. All the curves have been set up and the...

This month I mainly worked on the climbing features for the hypsilophodon and herrerasaurus. The former will be able to latch on to walls and jump around, but not climb around freely like the herrerasaurus. It will also be able to use the spit ability while latched and use it to knock down other climbing dinosaurs. I also had to make some changes in the background for the charged jump to work together with the aimed...

I completed the main setup for Rex montages. The Deinosuchus needs some special treatment due to its morph target setup and animations. The core systems for Rex and Trike are now mostly finished, with the Crush ability undergoing some bug-fixing, leaving sparring as the final step for full release. I have been working on a variety of systems. There are now interactive foliage sounds which trigger when animals move th...

It’s been another busy month with a primary focus on the new playables like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops and Allosaurus. The T-Rex’s signature mechanic, Crush, is nearing completion, with only a few animation adjustments left to finalize. Another mechanic for sub-adult and older tyrannosaurs is a short, but effective speed burst to aid in ambushes. It has worked fairly well during internal tests, but we’ll be c...

Hope you all had a great holiday season with your loved ones. After spending time with family and friends it’s time to get back to work. The main ability of the allosaurus has received more attention this month. While the main code is the same as some existing mechanics, visually the allosaurus looks very different when performing the action, so some adjustments are specifically made to accommodate this. We are in th...

Hey Islanders, while there will not be a DevBlog this holiday season, we do have patch notes! Thank you to everyone that participated in our recent Hordetest. It’s been an action-packed year and we’re all excited for what 2025 has in store for The Isle. A new patch is now available on the EVRIMA Public Branch. Happy Holidays everyone! - The Isle Dev Team Patch 0.18.111

At the beginning of this month, I focused on fixing crashes and various bugs for the latest public patch while simultaneously working on the Allosaurus and its unique mechanics. Most of its basic systems are already functional, though some key animations, particularly those tied to its special ability, are still in production. We also made notable progress on the Tyrannosaurus, mostly visual fixes and enhancements. T...

This month I worked mainly on finishing the diet system. The stomach grows with the dinosaur and food no longer scales with the stomach. This doesn’t have much impact on smaller animals, but large ones that have quick moments of growth are forced to eat far more often. The combinations for diets were simplified but now they are not dependent on having active slots. The value of a nutrient increases the bonuses propor...

This month I was busy reworking the math behind food, which also changed all diet code including the combinations. Now slots no longer need to be activated anymore, the bonuses are scaled with the amount of nutrients until a defined maximum. No more getting full before you receive any benefits from eating what is on your diet! This change also made all balance changes easier for all animals, but also for calculating...

This month I have been mostly focused on the new features for pounce and finishing up some systems before moving on to the new playables. As for pounce, the new slot swap system is finished which allows players to manually swap slots when latched to a target by spending some stamina. It can be used to better coordinate with other pouncers or simply be used to avoid being knocked down when the target uses nearby trees...

While hordetesting continues and some fixes are still being allocated, work continues as normal on the main branch of game development. This month I have been focused on finishing some work in progress mechanics and cleaning up the codebase, refactoring some code and data to be more organized and allow the creation of new dinosaurs or future abilities to be far easier. In that regard, Rex’s crush and throw abilities...

This month I focused on finishing the grapple mechanic since it will be used as a basis for other upcoming dinosaurs with their own specific variations. Outside of regular bugs, the Hordetest allowed a more “natural” environment to begin balance testing for grapple. Right now it is getting to a very stable state that we can start expanding upon. The same can be said about Mutations; its main functionalities are in wi...

This month I focused on refining the Rex’s crush ability and the new throw it has, which is linked to crush but not exclusive to it. The grapple ability is still receiving some updates, which now is mainly for balance as the grapple values need to align with the entire roster but we have massively different animal weights. We added a new open corpse ability with new animations, included in the current Hordetest. This...

Hello everyone. This month I don't have much to say that you guys don't know already. For the most part, it was a busy Hordetesting month. If you have been following you know we released a lot of bug fixes and quality of life changes. We also managed to stress test the server and noticed some performance caused by the nuances of some AI’s logic and the navmesh. The good news is that when testing only player capabilit...

This month I've been pretty busy working on several different tasks, discussing changes and what comes next. A lot has been done with internal core code in order to improve server performance and use less data. I don't expect this to suddenly allow for more slots, but it's more like a “drop by drop we may fill a glass” type of thing. Meanwhile I also worked on several quality of life changes and improvements, some of...

It’s mostly been a continuation of last month’s work, with the exception of several changes and bug fixes for the latest patch. In regards to what I’ve been working on; - More Burrow internal tests and prototypes, there are several concerns about the scalability and performance of this system, so we are experimenting. Not much to say about this one yet. - Continued working on Rex Crush ability, which is a variation o...

After a quick break we started working on fixing the main issues present in the latest patch, but that didn't stop us from working towards overall progress of the game, below are some of the main things that I worked on this month: Skin Creator has been updated with a new UI design to provide more room for the new rendering camera. This new camera isn't based on a 2D texture anymore, allowing it to look and perform b...

Hey Islanders, Due to the holiday season we will not be providing a devblog over the new year. However, in the spirit of moving forward with presentable content, we are releasing a new patch that will be delivered straight to evrima as opposed to the standard hordetesting branch. The inclusion of herrerasaurus and dilophosaurus has come early, however there are certain quirks both visually and mechanically for each o...

It’s been another busy month spent working hard to release Gateway, which included several adjustments because some of the new mechanics weren't ready in time, so they had to be removed. The remaining efforts were focused on moving forward with some new additions to the game, but also to have the first post-Gateway patch released as soon as possible. However, some work in progress systems are:. Tyrannosaurus crush ab...

Hey Islanders, We are now deploying Gateway to the EVRIMA branch. As outlined in our latest DevBlog, our current live version (Spiro, 0.11.59.04) will be moved to its own branch for a limited time. This move is designed to accommodate players who do not want to partake in active development but wish to continue playing the game on the previous stable version. Once Gateway's gameplay loop is assessed internally as sta...

This month I have been working mostly on getting Gateway sent to the public while also doing more work on upcoming mechanics. Most of time was spent working on several different approaches for migration, different design or technical needs to make the system more robust. Several options are going to be made accessible for community servers, so they can customize migration to their liking. Stress Tests have been great...

This month I worked on several fronts, while also working on improving the Spectator Mode for the public Evrima branch of the game. We also fixed a few small problems server side, and introduced the new Vomit Sickness. Like last month, I’ve cut my work into topics for easier consumption: Implemented more mutations and fixed a lot of related bugs. The mutations are made in a way that server owners can enable/disable a...

This month I have been working on several different things across various days/weeks, so I will mention the most important topics below: Reworked the thrash abilities mouse detection, as there were issues with certain resolutions that prevented it from triggering. The mutation system is in progress and new mutations have been implemented as their design has been approved. Alongside this, new UI alerts, panels and QOL...

In my completely biased opinion I must say that this has been one of the best months I’ve had working on the game. The time finally came for me to continue working on the herrerasaurus. There had been a few times when I experimented with it due to the pteranodon’s latching for example, but I can focus more on the movement and agility now. The climbing system is made up of several parts. First, there’s moving the char...

Most of the month was focused on getting 6.5 out of the door. It entailed an array of bug fixes, balance adjustments and subtle refinements to nearly every game mechanic. We also invested significant effort in server-side optimizations to bolster performance. With the update now live, my attention has shifted back to the main branch, where I am actively working on enabling the migration system for rigorous QA testing...

This month, my main focus was on enhancing and resolving issues with various mechanics. We had several strange behaviors concerning physics and other various interactions when multiple abilities occurred simultaneously. Such as with the introduction of troodon, a new playable capable of pouncing, that brought forth additional scenarios that had the potential to disrupt existing mechanics. On the topic of pounce; I’ve...

In our previous testing the gallimimus was only able to forage near shores, where it could dig up frogs. This does not really fit the playstyle of the dinosaur, so I added support for foraging on land. The system is still essentially the same, with the difference that compies can be dug up instead. They provide a little food, but no nutrients, serving as a more interactive version of grazing. Originally we tried a le...

Much of my work this month revolved around the gallimimus, which has a different way of grabbing things, as it may use either its mouth or hands, so I developed a small system to control when to use one or the other, including swallowing something that was grabbed using the hands, the system adapts automatically. Included to that change, pickup also adapts to the size or position of the target. Like for tall trees it...

This month the focus has been adding onto and improving all the new dinosaurs, but also fixing the enormous amount of issues caused by our migration to Unreal Engine 5. But not everything has been about fixing issues, we have new additions such as bee hives (with some very angry bees) and new vocals for the troodon’s venom pounce that triggers simultaneously for each group member of the attacking troodons, to give pl...

With the release of U6 and the break over we have been in the process of migrating the game from Unreal Engine 4.27 to Unreal Engine 5. This has brought some exciting new features to work with like Nanite. As we convert more art assets to be compatible with this system, we can create more detailed and realistic environments without as much compromise to performance. I have also been working on implementing world part...

As we were getting closer to the release I mostly focused on bug fixes and smaller changes as it’s important not to break anything in the last second. I went over a few issues or confusing behavior we had with nesting and single parents in particular. Leaving a group after courting will make you lose access to the nest if there is one, but keep it for your partner, letting them raise the eggs alone. If you are a sing...

This month I spent the majority of my time improving new and current systems. As part of that focus, code in general received some significant improvements and cleanup. Diets, Insects & Migration received some minor additions while we are still polishing them in QA. Our focus right now is ensuring they are fun and balanced, which is often more difficult than developing the mechanic itself. You’ll be glad to know that...

Hey everyone, I spent most of this month continuing the development of the Migration & Diet systems, participating in several long design meetings throughout the month, with even more to come as we hash out and test the final details. Besides the Migration System and New Diet system with slot combinations, I also implemented a variety of new food items for Update #6. Such as: Fiddlehead, Dulse, Russula, Papaya, Jackf...

It’s been a busy month of finalizing code and running tests with QA. The migration system is functional, only encountering a few bugs that we’ve now fixed, but far more tests are required to know for sure if it is going to work well and act as an engaging gameplay loop. The new diet improvements are also finished, as of right now we are currently testing the slot combinations in order to find bugs but also to try and...

Hey everyone, some of this month was spent working on the night vision update, which included a few bug-fixes and some necessary improvements to our anti-cheat capabilities. We're also evaluating feedback & investigating a number of reports regarding issues with the current night vision system, you'll find more information on that further down the blog in KissenKitten's post. Regarding Update 6 the progress is going...

This month I was partially working on the latest improvements for Update 5, which we released on the 7th of July with subsequent hot fixes and server performance tests. Meanwhile, we held a significant number of gore design meetings which have already yielded favourable results, showcasing that we have a good and solid plan to move forward with. Some core work for Update 6 had started a little earlier, but we can now...

It’s been very a busy month overseeing the stress test and fixing bugs. We also upgraded our security and added a variety of quality of life features for the skin system, which were built upon feedback provided by our very helpful stress testers, such as being able to rename the skin preset slots, save and share patterns as well as some improvements for the camera. In addition, we’ve also continued to make headway on...

Hey everyone, this month I’ve been primarily focused on enhancements, improvements to existing systems and bug fixes as we wrap up the final piece of Update 5 and all of its new systems. The Skin System is complete and ready to go, we’re all very eager to get it into your hands as soon as possible, but we will see if any issues crop up during the stress test. Now that Update 5 is on the cusp of completion, all of my...

I’ve been working on various tasks related to nesting. Hatching works differently for different nests. If the eggs are exposed then you will be able to see your dinosaur hatch from the egg directly, but for other nests the eggs are covered with debris so you will only see the dinosaur climb out from the pile. I also set up the feeding system for hatchlings. They will not be able to eat directly with the exception of...

I spent most of this month developing the Skin System, we tested a wide variety of different designs to find which one was best and then we started to add the swatches that each animal can access, for each customizable part of the body. We even tried an eyedrop color picker system, but in the end we decided it is best to have a chosen list of swatches that we can expand overtime. Below is an updated image of the main...

Hey Islanders, We're releasing a small patch to address a number of issues that were present in the previous version of EVRIMA, as well as implementing a number of balance & map changes based on the data we gathered from our internal heatmaps. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more about our thought & development process for many of the changes/additions you'll see in the patchnotes, be sure to read our latest Developme...

Hey everyone, this month I spent the majority of my time on two things. Firstly, a small patch contains an enormous amount of bug fixes. Many of those bugs caused issues to various basic interaction mechanics such as eating, drinking, as well as inconsistencies in certain abilities. Then I’ve also been working on the Skin System which is slated to debut as part of Update #5, which is going great, but we’re still test...

Upon returning from vacation I was immediately stricken with a sickness, certainly a fun time. At least I managed to rest during our Christmas Break, so now I’m fully reinvigorated and raring to go! Anyway, it’ll be a fairly short entry this month as I’ve been primarily working on fixing an assortment of bugs and modifying various existing mechanics in preparation for Updates 5 and 6, such as pickup/carrying. It’s vi...

Hey everyone, as always it’s been another busy month filled to the brim with bug-fixes and rounding out the final additions for Update #4. You may recall that in the previous DevBlog I wrote extensively about a special system titled “Lag Compensation” which for those who hadn’t read the previous blog, is a system designed to combat issues relating to latency/lag, aka the time certain things take to go from the client...

Hey everyone, it’s been a month of adjustments, fixes and preparations for what comes next. I’ve been particularly occupied with corrections of old and new mechanics this month to ensure that we have a clean path for the next updates, including humans as well. One important fix was related to “Lag Compensation” which is utilized by a few abilities such as the Utah’s pounce and the Pachy’s ram, the system was causing...