Lambeosaurus TLC Released!

27th of April, 2024

Hello everyone!

We are very excited to announce that after several months of work, we have released the update to bring Path of Titans to Unreal Engine 5.3! It includes a number of important fixes and improvements that we are using to bring the game to new heights! This update also includes many quality of life improvements in addition to the highly anticipated Lambeosaurus TLC. We have also made some performance improvements to our game servers, so even more players can play together at once. Read on for all the details, or watch the video version below.

Why Did We Update?

Unreal Engine 5.3 opens the door to new features, optimizations, and capabilities that were previously unavailable to us, such as the ability to hotpatch a lot more content to players without the need for a larger patch update. This means that we can get important fixes and brand new content out to players quicker and more efficiently than ever before!

Alongside this, upgrading to Unreal Engine 5.3 also brings improvements to optimization and in-game visuals, which will help give many players a smoother experience in-game. There's a lot of new features that we as developers are also leveraging, which will help make development more efficient, such as faster patch build times and new engine tools.

That being said, there are still some bugs and issues we are actively fixing through hotpatches and game patches to make sure the game is stable. We apologize for any inconveniences for any bugs you may encounter, and we are working to get them fixed ASAP.

Lambeosaurus TLC Released!

New Visuals

Our Lambeosaurus TLC is also ready to head out the door! This TLC update brings new life to an old hadrosaur, with updated proportions, animations, and textures that make it look like a brand new dinosaur. A couple of its older skins (Default, Swamp, and Barred) have also been updated as well to match its new look, so we’re excited to see what you think.

New Lambeosaurus Abilities

Lambeosaurus has a number of new kick attacks to help defend itself when alone, including a Rodeo Kick that has it kicking in all directions! It has also been given the ability to rear up on its hind legs, which allows for a better view of its surroundings as well as a whole new movement style.

However, the highlight of Lambeosaurus’ TLC is the overhaul of its vocal abilities, moving from equipping individual vocal calls to specialised sets of calls that are uniquely suited for your preferred gameplay style.

Healing Call Set:

Healing Call - A slow passive heal for a long period of time

Primal Mend - A strong self-healing ability

Rejuvenating Roar - Boosts status effect recovery for all nearby group members

Survival Call Set:

Hustle - Increases your group’s trotting speed for a long period of time

Guiding Beacon - Reduces incoming damage to group members, but also reduces their outgoing damage as well

Slow Digestion - Slows all group members’ food and water drain by half for a long period of time

Combat Call Set:

Call to Arms - Boosts outgoing damage for all nearby group members

Rallying Horn - Boosts the armour of all nearby group members

Blaring Cry - Reduces outgoing damage of nearby enemy players

Other New Abilities

Lambeosaurus is not the only creature getting some love! Some of our newer creatures have also received some new abilities to improve their gameplay and player experience, based on feedback both from players and our own observations since their release days.

Rhamphorhynchus

Lucky Feather

Allows Rhamphorhynchus to survive an attack that would have otherwise killed it. This will result in a puff of feathers falling from your character, and you'll be able to flee before getting attacked again.

Fishing Lure

Applies an effect to all nearby fish in a 50 meter range that causes a delay in their fleeing reaction for 3 seconds. This can make fish easier to catch for younger Rhamphorhynchus!

Hatzegopteryx

Beak Clack

A vocal ability that exposes any nearby creatures that may be hiding in bushes, by scaring them into performing their Alert emote call.

Death Croak

A vocal ability that lowers the armour of nearby creatures while close to a corpse, allowing you to bully others away from their hunted prey.

Shriek of Horrors

A vocal ability that slows the speed of all nearby creatures that you can carry, letting you catch up to them to clamp and carry them away.

Achillobator

Mocking Cackle

A mocking ‘laugh-like’ vocal ability that reduces the effectiveness of Bucking for a brief period, letting you stay pounced onto a target for longer.

Underwater Effects

We have also updated our underwater effects, adding ripples and shafts of light that will change with the direction of the sun. Oceans feel more realistic than ever, and allow swimmers to feel the cool currents and beams of light shine through the murky waters.

Other Changes

Of course, these are just a few of the changes that are coming with this update. This update to Unreal Engine 5.3 includes a vast number of large and small updates to the game, that’s more than a little too long to include in this blog! Not to worry, you can check out all the changes we’ve made on the Alderon Games launcher, by selecting the ‘Read Patch Notes’ button on the right hand side.

What's Next?

Struthiomumus TLC

We are making great progress on the Struthiomimus TLC, and its remodel and animations improvements are wrapping up. Alongside this, we’re working on its new abilities to improve and expand upon Struthiomimus’ playstyle and how it can interact and help out its group members. We’ll keep you updated as we continue sprucing up our favourite prehistoric emu! Here are some clips of its development below.

Game Modes

Our next big focus is on finishing and releasing our game modes. We have already tested them comprehensively, and have only a few minor adjustments to make before they are ready for everyone to play. We have also ensured that the game modes are actually fully compatible and stackable with other mods made by the community. This means you can play a modded creature, on a mod map, with modded Creator Mode items, and they will all work together when playing King of the Hill, or any other game mode.

As an example, we took the "Stoneclaw Highlands" mod map, and we were able to quickly set up a King of the Hill map by simply placing down capture points and spawn points. You can see some of it in our video here!

More Players Per Server

With this patch we have already implemented a very dramatic improvement to server performance. Previously, once a server reached about 80 players, its tick rate would begin to drop to 15ms or so, which resulted in players rubber-banding around when making sharp turns or moving quickly. However, with this heavy optimization pass we have managed to bump servers up to being able to handle 200 players with a tick rate of about 25ms, which is perfectly playable. We aren't quite yet finished with optimization, and we think there are still some further improvements we can make server-side.

While it initially sounds like we should simply just swap over to using 200 player servers, part of the reason why we needed this improvement is in preparation for AI dinosaurs. AI dinosaurs are unique in that they must be controlled and managed by the server, which requires additional server usage. While we could have 200 players on a server, it would mean there would be very little room for any additional AI creatures. In this situation, it may be better to have servers of, for example, 125 players, that would then allow for a healthy AI population as well. All this is very early in development, and we will keep you updated on further progress!

Improved Game Performance

We are aware of certain devices reaching low framerates when near a lot of players at once, and are going to focus on solving some of these issues.

We have been working on optimizing our animations and characters when in a large group, especially when near over 15-20 players at once. This issue stems partly from the way our animation system currently works, which always attempts to play fully detailed animations on every character even if they are far in the distance. We will be focusing on implementing a dynamic system that will prioritize animating the creatures nearest to you, instead. We are also working on putting in an "Animation Quality" setting that will allow players to increase quality depending on their system capabilities.

As always we are so grateful for your support, and we hope you continue to enjoy Path of Titans as more content and improvements are added! We’re excited to see what you make of the new changes and abilities we have done, and will be keeping an eye out for your feedback as we continue to work on the game.

We also wanted to mention we have a new skin pack available for Earth Day this month, currently on offer in-game for a limited time. These skin packs help fund our development, so we can keep working on adding new content and making the game the best it can be. Thank you for reading!

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