by BiakeGreeting Survivors!
Welcome to the 20st issue of the ARK Digest! To those unaware this is a topic which primarily consist of content to share, made by the community, for the community! As well as any little changes I want to make survivors aware about, which happen within our community ;).
ARK: Fear Evolved
YouTube™ Video: ARK: Fear Evolved
Views: 214,855
For the next week the ARK is undergoing a spooky seasonal change where the air is cooler, the days shorter and the nights longer, and a Blood-Moon shines brightly as bats and creepy-crawly creatures…
This week the ARK has undergone a spooky change where the air is cooler, the days shorter and the nights longer, and a Blood-Moon shines brightly as bats and creepy-crawly creatures of the night appear above ground. Survivors should take care when exploring the island as the mythical DodoRex stomps across the land with an army of blood-thirsty zombie dodos in tow, and a variety of re-animated Skelesaurs walk the lands. For those brave enough to face their fears, there will be a number of new items to craft and collection including thatch-rich scarecrows, custom Jack-o-Lantern carvings, Skelesaur Costumes, Candy-Corn loot drops, Witch Hats, Masks and a Saddle for your spider! You’ll also be granted the opportunity to tame endlessly-rejuvenating Zomdodos, Bats, show off artifacts collected from your adventures in the dangerous caves and of course earn a brand new Steam Achievement!
And for those of you who’ve always wanted their own Zombie Dodo Army and of course to experience the ARK in its spookiest form, now’s the chance as it’s currently 33% off the Steam Store!
Alienware Modding Contest
Alienware Modding
Community Created Artwork for ARK: Survival Evolved
By: Jat
We’re now approaching the final entry period for the Alienware Modding Contest! We encourage any and all survivors interested in modding and currently working on their own version of the ARK to submit their mods to the contest! We’ve got loads of prizes up for grabs and are super excited to see your envisions of ARK come to life!
Check out this thread for all the extra details!
The Last Stand – Bonus Round
The Last Stand – Bonus Round
Community Created Artwork for ARK: Survival Evolved
By: Jat
The ‘Bonus Round’ will be a 3-hour SotF match hosted next Sunday, November 1, from 2pm EST to 5pm EST, and will be livestreamed by our dearest caster, the most excellent BikeMan! All the Contestants and Streamers who competed in ‘The Last Stand’ Championship Finale game are invited into this high-value Mini-Championship! You can find all the details of the event here.
ARK Digest Q&A
Survivor, Cymerio asks, “Will the game use modern OpenGL / Vulkan someday and thus gain features like tessellation, SSAO, etc?”
Answer: We plan to update to the latest OpenGL version closer to wrapping up development so that we’re not hitting a moving target. It’s very tedious to generate builds for different shader platforms, so for now it’s better to keep it to fewer platforms since we tend to release builds so quickly. But as we hit the final launch stretch, it’d make sense to upgrade the Mac and Linux renderers and we plan to do so then (which will make them look basically like the PC version).
Survivor, PainKiller asks, “When you click on the Leave Tribe Command can you add a confirmation prompt?”
Answer: That’s a good idea, we’ll do that!
Survivor, AtomicNM asks, “Will other methods of obtaining dossiers be implemented so that they don’t just pop into your face after killing or taming?”
Answer: There won’t be different method for creature Dossiers, however we will be including different methods for Plant Dossiers! (Yup, there will be dossiers for Plants!). Also, they won’t pop up in your face for much longer, instead you’ll get a prompt where you can press a button to optionally open up that Dossier specifically after discovering it.
Survivor, Nui-Chan asks, “Random GPU Driver Crash Fix: Truesky — What’s the current progress on this fix?”
Answer: It’s a low-level driver issue that we actually don’t have a lot of visibility into, and due to how infrequent it is, it makes getting a reproducible test case quite difficult. We intend to poke for NVIDIA (and AMD’s) help with analyzing the source of the driver crash until it’s resolved, or just tackle it en-masse with an automated script until it crashes in a way that we can get a trace on. It’ll definitely get fixed, but it’s hard to say exactly when due to the nature of the issue.
Survivor, benjaminjredmond asks, “Will the DodoRex be tamable in this Fear Evolved event?”
Answer: During Fear Evolved the DodoRex will not be tamable. It currently needs some additional balance work before we’re able to make it so. However it will be making a reappearance sometime later in November, and during that event – you will be able to tame it.
Survivor, DoctorEnema asks, “Will you guys implement a remove paint option from structures and equipment?”
Answer: We plan to add a new item to the game, “Soap” – and we’ll actually move it forward so we’ll get it in next week!
Survivor, Pammy Pop asks, “Is there any possibility for a VSync option? Some reason my AMD card hates it! Would be nice to disable it.”
Answer: You can disable VSync by doing the following:
In your GameUserSettings.ini — add this in:
bUseVSync=False
You can set that to true or false as you need! Additionally, we’ll also add it to the Options UI soon.
Survivor, Snoopy Sniper asks, “Do you mind shedding more light on how console servers will look? Will we be able to switch it from private to public at the whim of the admin?
Will we be able to host a server while we’re offline (so others can play on it while you’re away)? Like Fallout 4, will console players be able to download mods?”
Answer: Consoles will have the option to play in “Local Host” mode with the tethering for up to 4 players, and also “Dedicated” mode for up to 70 players which provides a Server Status/Administration Menu but otherwise does not allow that console to play the game. And by the way, the Xbox One version of the game is super fun and on looking target for a release very, very soon ;).
Survivor, Navi asks, “I ask this every week, maybe this time I’ll get lucky! Will we get plants on boats and platform saddles?”
Answer: Yeah, we’ll go ahead and try to bring that in the next Major Update. At the time it had caused an issue with Plant Species X, however we’ll just get that fixed up instead!
Survivor, Wantman asks, “Will we be able to keep the bats and spiders after ARK: Fear Evolved and will they still be tamable afterwards?”
Answer: Yes you will be able to keep them and they will be tamable!
Survivor, Frodo-Synthesis asks, “Are the entity IDs going to be kept up with or switched to a new version?”
Answer: We’ll go ahead and do a pass and get them all up to date in the next Major update. We don’t really use the IDs internally anymore, but I imagine it is more convenient for server admins than using the full item strings.
Survivor, Jassar08 asks, “Can we get some Insight on Gigantosaurus Rage Effect and how will this play into riding one?”
Answer: The Gigantosaurus will have a special “Rage” meter. If it takes damage, ‘Rage’ gets added (and will decreases naturally over time), which causes it to regain stamina faster and do exponentially more damage in its own attacks. But if it’s Rage meters maxes out, it throws its rider off, will attack friendlies and won’t be able to be ridden until its rage meter cools down again. So the key is to build a bit of Rage if you want it to hit really hard, but not too much so that you’re in danger of being attacked by your own mount.
Survivor, Moh asks, “Will the Gigantosaurus have it’s own mini-platform saddle or even a multi-person saddle?”
Answer: Nope. We prefer leaving the platform saddles to beasts of burden, rather than the attack dogs. Also the back would be a little too pointy for it to fit nicely :P.
Survivor, Dinotank asks, “In the Dossier it says that Dimetrodon has temperature cooling abilities, so can it be used for maintaining temperatures around eggs for hatching?”
Answer: Yes they will be able to! They’re like Dino Midwives 😛
Survivor, Dinotank also asks, “Will the Oviraptor be able to pick up fertilized eggs? It would be useful if they did when it was too hot or too cold.”
Answer: That’s a pretty good idea! We’ll go ahead and make them do that.
Survivor, DomiDarko asks, “Will Scorpions and Underwater Creatures be able to mate?”
Answer: Eventually yes, we’ve got plans for them to be able to mate – however we need to do some more work on their lifecycle before that can happen!
Survivor, lizardwolf asks, “Will you give a push to the Wardrum? Could use some mightier sounds….
True Wardrums 2.0
A Workshop Item for ARK: Survival Evolved
By: Jesus
New True Wardrums structure with real wardrum sounds. Old one still exists. Clean. stackable and all that stuff. Recommendation: Use programs like “Macro Recorder” to record your number inputs, adjust them…
Answer: Yup! We plan to do a full beefy-sound pass on the game as we get closer to the launch. That said, That War Drum sound mod is pretty damn righteous.. so we’ll get in touch with the author too ;).
Survivor, BreakMeDown4 asks, “What do you personally look forward to most in the future of this game? What are your thoughts on the current state of the game and how do you expect it to differentiate from the end goal?”
Answer: At present I think we have the basic survival — except the upcoming diseases system — and creature systems getting to be where we want them to be. Balancing-wise things are feeling pretty good so far, except that Tamed Dinos are currently overpowered and need to be dealt with in a pre-launch pass.
What’s most exciting is getting the proper boss fights, Ascension cycle & long-term character progression, and proper end-game into place, which ties into revealing the story and truth behind the ARK’s purpose which are all very exciting prospects for us in the months ahead.
Essentially, the things that make it more than just a great survival game, but also a great mythos, something that will really stay with players — that’s what we’re most looking forward to!
And, of course, making the game run a helluva lot faster and consume less memory! 😉
Survivor, Sharkking asks, “Will we have the possibility to craft from remote inventories?”
Answer: Yeah we’ll probably get to adding that soon.
Survivor, Lesi123 asks, “Can admins get an option to enable a decay timer/feature on their servers that automatically destroys abandoned structures? With no player/admin interaction required”
Answer: Yup! That’ll actually be in the next Major Update :).
Survivor, Colonel Siberia asks, “Is there an ETA on the Dimetrodons? They’ve been sitting in the Dev Kit for a while.”
Answer: They should be rolled out to keep you warm or cooled in November!
Survivor, Doug Rattman asks, “What’s going to happen to the Fear Event once it’s over?”
Answer: It’ll make its way back onto the ARK in enhanced form next Fall, but also it will reside in the Dev Kit for Mod Authors to mess with and incorporate into mods as they wish. It’d be easy for a Mod Author to release a Total Conversion that literally IS the Fear Evolved Event, and maybe we’ll do that ourselves too as an example ;).
Survivor, Lium asks, “Why did we not receive tamable boas, despite the promises they’d be given with the Fear Evolved in a previous digest?”
Answer: Sorry guys! They needed a bit more work and balance time to get them to behave how we like. We’re aiming to bringing them around in November :).
Survivor, David Bowie’s Bum asks, “What can we expect from the ocean in future updates?”
Answer: We have a lot of sea creatures in the works! As well as an expansion of the playable sea area along with a deeper max depth, and a sea Cave-Dungeon. Furthermore, you can also expect an entire Oceanic/Isles ARK 😉
That’s it for this week’s Digest guys!
Don’t forget the Alienware and the special Fear Evolved contests! As always if you’ve got anything to share please get in touch and be sure to follow us on Twitter at @survivetheark, Facebook at www.facebook.com/survivetheark and Reddit at www.reddit.com/r/playark!
Thanks everyone!
All the best,
Wildcard Jat and the ARK Survival Evolved Team
