Hey, everyone. We are back again with our monthly dev blog. This month we have some new critters joining us, foliage and particle updates, new quests, and some work on distance dinosaur calls. Let’s get right into it, starting with the new critters in the works.

Aquatic Critters

We've recently added aquatic critters to Gondwa! These critters are able to seamlessly transition between land and water and will attack players that try to escape into deeper waters. These critters also can be found in the open oceans, or in the riverways and swamps of Path of Titans.

New Critter: Goniopholis

The much anticipated Goniopholis has entered the waters as an amphibious crocodile-like reptile that can deal bone-break damage in its alpha growth stage. This familiar looking ambush predator’s similarities are only skin deep though, as this prehistoric version has large articulating back armor giving it its name-sake “angled scale”, somewhat similar to the unique back scutes seen on Sarcosuchus.

We wanted to show you a few behind the scenes shots of us creating this ancient reptile, and a few close-ups of its skins and design process here.

Upcoming Critter: Tanystropheus

Another critter waiting in the shallows, and coming soon, is the amphibious Tanystropheus. This Triassic water dwelling reptile is 50% neck and has been known to grow up to 20 feet long. Here are some work in progress snapshots of this creature, including the model creation process and a few skins too!

Upcoming Foliage

New foliage is in the works featuring several new species of bushes, trees, mosses, and aquatic crinoids. We hope these updates create new spaces for younger dinosaurs to hide and add more diversity to our plant life.

This blue moss will be a collectable quest item that players will be able to find in specific locations of the map.

These bushes have been designed to be clear of branches on the inside, letting smaller dinosaurs hide with their leaves but still be able to peer out to watch for danger. These bushes will notably grow near shores to give players a safe place to drink or to plan their river crossings.

These new foliage pieces also include important features for upcoming quests that we are actively working on.

Upcoming Quests

While we are still working on major improvements to our quest system, we wanted to highlight a few interesting quests that can shape the environment around you. It's important to note that these are "quests" in a looser definition of the word, so think of them more like world interactions that players can participate in that provide rewards for doing so.

Among these new quests are “Knocking Over a Tree” in which an old weathered tree can be attacked and knocked over onto the ground. The fallen tree can then be walked on and even used to traverse gaps as a makeshift bridge, either to cross canyons or to stay dry while crossing a river.

If you’re not fond of knocking them over, old twisted trees can be interacted with as part of the new “Scratch a Tree” quest. Interacting with the tree will allow your dino to scratch it, leaving its claw or horn marks embedded in the bark. These marks will stay over long periods of time, alerting other players of your presence.

There are many more world interaction quests we are working on, and we look forward to showing them off once they are ready to be shared!

New Particle Effects

One of the ways we have been working on improving the visual fidelity of Path of Titans is the addition of different environmental effects to add that extra immersive flair. We wanted to share three effects we've worked on recently.

New Effect: Swimming

In our most recent game patch, we've updated our swimming particles to make them more realistic for our swimmers or curious paddlers. These larger splashes better show movement in water, especially for our largest aquatic creatures like Spinosaurus.

Upcoming Effects: Underwater Smokestacks and Insect Swarms

Other effects that we have been working on include Underwater smokestacks, with their unique mesh displaying billowing, cloudy water from submerged heat vents.

Another is Insect swarms, which will mark environmental carcasses and other deceased creatures adding a level of immersion and intrigue for our carnivorous players.

Progress on Distant Calls

We have been updating our distant dinosaur calls to make them more interesting while drastically increasing their audible range and better indicate the distance they are from the listener. The largest dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus, Spinosaurus, Tyrannotitan, and Eotriceratops have already been completed and released with the latest game patch. Players will now hear the ominous distant roaring of these massive creatures echoing in the far distance, giving them a chance to leave the area if they aren't looking for a fight, or towards it if they are!

Work is continuing on the next group of dinosaurs at the moment as we progress from largest to smallest downwards through our roster. Dinosaurs like Iguanodon, Allosaurus, Pycnonemosaurus, Daspletosaurus and others of similar sizes are up next, with many more planned for the future. We are currently focusing on the “core” calls for each Dino, but if you want to hear more let us know!

While working on these distant dinosaur calls we really wanted to include unique elements to make the calls more identifiable. This meant crafting new calls from scratch as the in-engine processing options for the original calls wasn’t going to accomplish what we wanted. This gave us the opportunity to get creative and really “design” what we wanted Dinos to sound like from really far away without being constrained by any technical limitation, or for that matter even “realism” as we were more concerned with making things sound interesting and moody over strictly “realistic” which in our opinion would be less interesting.

Tonal elements were added or accentuated, frequency response was very heavily tailored beyond what was possible in-engine, and code was crafted to allow these calls to seamlessly blend with the normal “close” calls to create a smooth transition as the distance increased between players. This is an ongoing effort starting with the Threaten and Broadcast calls of each Dino and we are monitoring feedback and making adjustments as we go! Biome/locale specific reverbs are the final piece of this puzzle that will really tie everything together, these will be coming later!

We will keep you in the loop on progress on the distant calls for the other dinosaurs in the future, so be sure to stay tuned for future dev blogs!

Bugtracker Website

We’re excited to announce that we've launched a new and improved Bug Tracker. This will now be the official and best place to submit all bug reports going forward.

This website lets you describe any issues you are encountering, upload videos and images, and vote on existing bugs in case someone's already reported something you are also experiencing. The goal of this website is to make it easier for players to report issues, and don't have to go into Discord or GitHub to report issues. This site will also let us more easily track the status of bugs, and also get a better understanding of the impact of the bug based on the number of player upvotes it has. Your bug reports also now won’t get lost over time, they stay up until resolved.

Our old bug reporting methods (Discord and GitHub) will soon be shut down and made read-only soon, so please do not submit bugs via Discord or GitHub anymore, instead use the Bugtracker link below! Existing bugs in the Discord Forum do not need to be resubmitted to the new site. We will be keeping an archive of the Discord Forum so we can go through them all.

Be sure to check out the new Bugtracker site for yourself here: https://bugtracker.alderongames.com/

That wraps up July’s Dev Blog. We wanted to let you know that the Outback Skin Pack is out now. Purchases like these help us continue development and updates to Path of Titans. Thanks for watching and we hope to see you next month!