Hello again everyone! As always we've been very busy these past few months, so we’re back again to give everyone a recap of what we've recently released and what to expect coming soon to Path of Titans! Let’s jump right in!

Recent Dinosaur Releases

Ceratosaurus TLC

With the recent release of the Pachycephalosaurus TLC, we next turned our attention to the Ceratosaurus TLC. For the Cerato we really wanted to push our osteoderm-covered theropod to lean into its role as a mid-sized brawler! With that in mind we've given Cerato brand new ways to be antagonistic, forcing players to get out of its way or face the consequences.

Tyrannotitan

We also recently welcomed the massive blood thirsty predator that is Tyrannotitan to our dinosaur roster! Tyrannotitan rivals even Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus in size, and is one of the most powerful dinosaurs in Path of Titans. This Colossal dino can equip the new "Bloodsoaked" hide ability, which ensures that each of Tyrannotitan’s bite attacks will cause its prey's blood to drip from its scales.

We hope you've enjoyed these two recent creatures, and as always we look forward to hearing your feedback.

Features Coming Soon

We've been working in the background to expand a lot of the core game systems in Path of Titans, and are pleased to note that you can expect to see these new feature updates in the next full game patch!

Critter Growth

We are thrilled to announce that significant enhancements to our critter system will be coming in the next full game patch. Critters will now spawn at various growth stages in a similar manner to the existing player dinosaur growth mechanic.The age of the newly-spawned critter will directly influence its strength and power level, and in turn it will also provide more food upon defeat. Baby critters are slower, smaller, and weaker, with their corpses provide less food, and the sub-adult and adult critters providing greater rewards upon defeat in exchange for being a tougher fight.

New to this growth system is the rare chance for an alpha critter to spawn. Alpha critters are larger,faster, have more health, and deal more damage than regular critters, and as such Alpha critters corpses provide significantly more food than standard critters.

We've also added a large number of additional critter skins to help bring a bit more visual variety to them. All critters now have a unique baby skin and alpha skin so it's relative level of danger and potential reward to the player is more identifiable at a distance. We've also added growth sound adjustements to all critter sounds. They are now appropriately smaller and higher pitched when a baby, and lower pitched and more aggressive as an alpha.

Other Critter Improvements

We have also implemented a handful of other improvements and polish to the critters in this patch.

Pamelaria

Pamelaria, the strange long-necked reptile, will be found all over Gondwa and Panjura. This new critter is quite skittish and will be a great first hunt for younger dinosaurs. Be sure to listen out for this strange new critter's sounds in the undergrowth.

Critter Footsteps

Critter footstep sounds now take into account the terrain type they are walking on, such as dirt, grass, rock, etc, and the volume of their footsteps and how far they travel has been adjusted to be far more appropriate for their size.

Time of Day Spawning

Critters will also now spawn depending on the time of day with some critters only spawning at night, and others during the morning. As such it will be easier to find these creatures during their preferred time of day, so be sure to keep a sharp eye out for their sleep schedules so you know when to find em’!

Damage Overlays

Critters will soon have a bloody damage overlay when they are attacked by a dinosaur that will become more obvious the more damage the critter takes. This system will provide players with clear visual cues indicating a critter's health status, including a progressively intensifying bloody overlay and blood spurt effects as the critter sustains greater damage, allowing players to better gauge the number of attacks needed to defeat it.

Audio Improvements

We have also begun our first pass at improving the quality and immersion of the audio of Path of Titans. While we are by no means finished with these improvements, you will be able to experience some of these in the next full game patch.

Footstep Rework

All footstep sounds have been revisited with work ranging from minor tweaks to complete overhaul and replacement, new size classes have been added for the smallest and largest creatures, audible range and attenuation distances have been tuned or in several cases overhauled and fixed, and appropriately distant thumping effects depending on your creature's weight and growth stage have been added to better communicate dinosaur size and distance. Players can hear footsteps from much further distances allowing you to better judge how large or dangerous surrounding creatures may be, and accurately judge how far from you they are. This gives you significantly more time to prepare for a fight, or leave the area.

We are very interested in hearing feedback from the community for these new footsteps once the next full game patch is released, and we hope they will be helpful for both solo and group players alike!

Environment Sounds

As a very first initial pass, we have updated our biome audio system to be able to play a variety of different sounds based on the environment type. For example, entering a swamp will now play a chorus of frogs and flies ambiently in the area. We have much larger plans for this system and it will be covered in more detail later in this update, but for now we hope you enjoy this first pass!

Player Density Indicators

Taking into account community feedback, we have implemented a new system to the game map. When a large number of players are detected in an area, all players maps on the server will update to indicate an area of "high activity". This will be displayed as a red glow and small dinosaur icon around the affected area.

This will give players a better understanding of where potentially dangerous packs of players may be stalking, and let them avoid the area (or head there for a fight!). This setting is fully configurable for community servers, and can also be completely disabled if desired. We look forward to hearing your feedback!

New Wind Effects

One of our focuses of this patch has been to make improvements to our wind effects. All in-game foliage now benefits from these improvements, resulting in more realistic movements. For example, in grassland areas wind-blown grass will now exhibit realistic swaying, and during stormy weather foliage will now respond dynamically to stronger winds. Looking ahead, we are also looking to improve both of our game maps by similarly upgrading the foliage. Players should note that wind effects are disabled on low settings and mobile to maintain optimal performance.

In Active Development

We still have a lot of improvements we are making to the core Path of Titans game, and wanted to share the items we are actively working on for future patches. The recent introduction of our Dynamic World Spawning Critter system was a big step in the right direction, but we are continuing to improve immersion and give players more activities to take part in.

New Upcoming Quest System

We have had loads of useful community feedback and suggestions on how we can improve our current questing system. The main feedback we've received is regarding repetition, the lack of exciting rewards for completion, and how growth and marks are very easy to lose if you are killed. This is especially true during the early growth stages where your dino is often more helpless and difficult to defend with.

We began working on the updated quest system last year, and we have already made significant progress on this front by reworking it from the ground up. The new system is much more modular, letting quest designers specify quest objectives dynamically with a building-block style of creation. This is much different from the old system which was essentially limited to only being able to create collection, kill, deliver, and go-to quests, each of which weren't able to rely on dynamically spawning objectives, mixed objectives, or even specifying the order of which tasks must be completed.

The new system is modding-friendly and extremely flexible to work with. We are still fleshing out the full functionality of this system, with extensive testing ongoing.

Geographically Significant Quests

We want to ensure that new quests are intricately linked into the design of the Path of Titans world. By linking quest objectives with the game’s geography, players will be encouraged to explore more diverse biomes, discover new strategies for completing tasks, identify prime hunting areas for specific critter types, and discover popular player destinations.

Flexibility

The rework to the structure of our quest system has significantly helped expand on what is possible in terms of design. This allows us to streamline the quest creation and testing process while also expanding on what kinds of quest we want for each map. We can now introduce straightforward hazard quests that offer players novel and engaging challenges as they navigate from point A to point B.

The overall goal is to increase variety and interest within quests. Instead of basic "Collection” or "Delivery” type we will be able to create highly situational objectives based on the location they take place in, and ideally work towards having fully functional questgivers to seek the player's help or put the player into interesting situations. This new system supports this goal of developing intricate, multi-step quests unique to each area.

Map Interactions

Furthering our goal to create a more immersive and natural exploration experience, we aim to shift the overall player exploration loop. Instead of prompting players to visit new biomes solely to collect the next set of items, we plan to introduce dynamic elements such as hazards and obstacles to distract players while they traverse from one location to another. For example, as a player moves towards a new biome they may encounter a tree they can scrape against for a reward, or be faced with a dynamic ambush of critters. By doing this, we aim to make the world of Path of Titans feel more engaging and organic.

Game Modes

In other news, we are actively developing new game modes with ongoing public testing to ensure both quality and engagement. We have also reworked certain elements to ensure compatibility with other mods, including community maps and custom spawn areas or capture points. Game modes such as capture the egg were previously incompatible with other mod maps so we wanted to make sure that these modes are more accessible, and moving forward it will make extensive use of the creator mode placement system in order to place spawn points, egg capture points, spawn blocker barriers, and various other game mode systems.

This will also mean we can release the small “Amazonea” game mode map as its own standalone map mod without being pre-bundled with each game mode as was the issue previously.

Environment Soundscapes

We have also made significant progress on further enhancing the environmental soundscapes of the worlds of Path of Titans.

Currently, the environmental sounds players experience are very predictable and static in being single looping sounds that are played map-wide. This was simply an initial placeholder implementation of environmental audio that is obviously extremely limited as it doesn't take into account the diversity of the landscape the players can explore.

We have already internally reworked our biome audio system to include new functionalities, being able to play small audio cues and environmental stingers as the player walks around. This includes things like hearing small bird chirps in the bushes near you, creaking trees around and above you as you walk through a forest, and insects occasionally buzzing around your ears. These play all around the player, and create a much more fleshed out feeling to the environment. The system also allows us to play unique sounds based on your locomotion state, such as flyers hearing large gusts of wind and swimmers hearing deep underwater creaking sounds.

In addition to all these audio cues that will be playing, we are creating completely new environmental soundscapes for each biome in Path of Titans, making each area feel truly unique and immersive. From the grassy open fields of the Grand Plains to the windswept desert of Stego Mountain, each area will be audibly distinct and immersive. Stay tuned for these improvements in future patches!

Path of Titans Developer Podcast

We have recently brought back the Alderon Games Podcast! In this show we cover some of the features the team has been working on and also answer various questions from the community. You can watch our most recent episode linked below.

Do you have any questions you'd like to see answered on the show? You can ask them over on our Discord, or send us an email!

Thank you so much for watching, and we look forward to getting our latest patch into your hands as soon as possible. See you next time!