Hey, everyone! Welcome back to another Dev Blog covering what we have recently released and what’s upcoming in the next development cycle. We’ve just released the new aquatic creature, Leedsichthys, along with Krill featured in the last Dev Blog. This time around we have some new visuals, new types of quests, and further progress on previously featured content.

Dino AI

We have been making great strides in our dinosaur AI development, starting with smoothing out some odd behavior we sometimes found while interacting with them during internal testing. In particular, pouncing on AI dinosaurs would often leave them confused about what to do because they couldn't physically run away from the player, and would often just run in circles in an attempt to do so. Not necessarily the most unrealistic behavior…but not what we’re going for. We now have AI more appropriately reacting to player abilities, such as attempting to break free when being carried or clamped, and bucking off players that pounce on them while still running away from other players chasing them normally.

We have also put in a lot of work under the hood to optimize these expensive AI Systems, like refining our custom perception system. This will allow us to not only populate the world with more of them but also allow them to perceive each other as well as players.

Lastly, we're working on making Dino AI more intelligently navigate the world. Dinosaurs cannot turn on a dime as you know, so careful considerations need to be made for tuning Dinosaur movement and turning speed to avoid situations where they'll run into walls or throw themselves off cliffs. We're implementing custom pathing systems to allow Dinosaurs to navigate taking their native turning speed into account as well as realistically control their speed going around tight corners.

We're building the Dino AI with modding in mind as much as possible, with the goal of enabling modders to easily create AI for their unique creatures, expanding it so they can function with minimal effort. Modders will simply need to create a "Dino AI profile", define where it spawns (such as in forests or swamps), its spawning frequency or rarity, and double-check any abilities it has for properly assigned asset tags. We're shipping with support for many default types of abilities, like biting and charging, but we'll also allow modders to expand the AI's state tree with custom behaviors to support unique abilities. As the system becomes more fleshed out, we'll be providing documentation to modders to make the process as simple as possible.

Work like this will make the AI experience feel more like interacting with another player and bring Dino AI to community servers with their custom creatures as well.

Locomotion Effects

We are working on new visuals and particle effects for creature locomotion.

Sprinting on land will soon create new trailing particle effects, with unique visuals for each terrain type. For example, sprinting through dirt will create a subtle trail of dirt clouds behind you, and sprint-swimming will soon show new bubble and stream effects flowing behind your creature.

While these changes may be subtle, these will help players visually identify when they, or other players, are going top speed and to add that extra bit of immersion!

Quests

We’ve been continuing to add further new quests to the game, this time focusing on player interactions and timed rewards!

Cliff Edge Falls and Black Fern Hills are getting improvements to their collection quests, filling these areas with unique quest items and adding to the diversity of Riparia. Players will be able to find new items like Mineral Deposits and Emeralds

A new quest type will feature a server wide competition to pit players against each other for the top score and a reward.

• Critter Spree will have players compete to kill the most critters within a limited time.
• Resource Hoarder will have players collecting themed quest items. These event types will be broken up by creature type so flyers will compete with other flyers to stop any unfair advantages over other creature types.

We hope you will enjoy these new quest types once they arrive, and will be carefully following player feedback.

Biome and Environmental Reverb

The tech needed to begin implementation of our Environmental Biome Reverb System has been completed and implementation has begun! As stated in the previous dev blog, this is an involved process with tech that will change quite a bit under the Dino audio hood, so we are still committed to providing detailed documentation upon its release for ease of use and modding.

This will be a key element in the Path of Titans soundscape to further immerse you into your surroundings while giving a greater and more accurate sense of space and distance to other sound sources.

Camera Improvements

In addition to the Aquatic Dino Camera Improvements that came out with the last patch, we’ve begun work to improve camera collision with meshes.

In some scenarios, especially with small dinos, running into rocks or other terrain will cause the camera to clip into the object, which basically snaps the camera into the dinosaur in a disruptive way. This improvement will change the camera behavior to instead try to push the camera arm and camera along the surface to prevent snapping when running into terrain and meshes.

In most cases, this should reduce those jarring glimpses into terrain or rock meshes when you're maneuvering in tight places.

Replay System Improvements

We have been making a few small tweaks to the replay system, while fixing a handful of bugs along the way.

The replay system is getting improvements to the vertical interpolation movement including a dedicated slider. This will allow finer tuning of how the camera moves up and down in replays, allowing for smoother more controlled vertical movement.

It will also be getting fixes to the depth of field and some of the bugs that have been present there. For example, water planes weren't responding well to Focal Distance, appearing as if in focus, when the rest of the background was blurred.

Our underwater post-processing effect also wasn't behaving well with depth of field, often clipping VFX particles based on the background. The engine Depth of Field pass while underwater is now disabled by default, in favor of a custom post processing material. There is a new checkbox present in the menu that will turn this feature off, and use engine Depth of Field while underwater instead.

We hope this makes capturing that perfect shot even easier than before!

Climbing Improvements

As we stated upon its initial launch, climbing is being actively worked on, receiving updates based on both player feedback and further functionality we require for our future plans for this locomotion style! While we are continuously addressing bugs and reported issues, the main focus for this pass is allowing more surface types to be climbable. This includes thinner trees and objects, as currently only large Redwood trees and cliffs can be climbed. This requires quite a bit of work, updating terrain and other assets to make sure the intended surfaces are working correctly and feel right for climbers both large and small.

Another simple but useful feature will be the ability to hold the crouch button to slide smoothly down the side of your object, playing a sliding animation and draining less stamina. This will let creatures quickly and safely climb down those tall cliff faces. And, lastly, we are working on improving the feeling of leaping off cliff faces, as currently it feels quite stiff and difficult to control. This will bring further polish for climbing gameplay and ensure the transitions between climbing are smooth and believable.

And that’s the end of the Dev Blog! We wanted to mention the Shark Skin Pack is on sale! These sales help support the development of Path of Titans and updates like these. Thank you as always for watching, and we’ll see you again soon!