[7/2/15] Introducing the Pachycephalosaurus and ARK Digest Issue 8

[Jat]

Hello Survivors!

Welcome to the eighth issue of the ARK Digest! For those who missed the previous issues, check out the Announcement section on the Steam Community Hub and be sure to catch up with what you’ve missed there is tons for you to catch up on!

ARK Survival Evolved on Mac and Linux

Today we are pleased to announce that the open-world adventure game ARK Survival Evolved is now available for Mac and Linux on Steam Early Access, among the first large-scale Unreal Engine 4 game released for these two platforms!

The Mac and Linux versions share all of the features and content of the PC game and includes seamless online cross-play, with players able to play together no matter which platform they choose. We’ll be continuing to iterate on the technical aspects of these new platforms in the coming days and weeks, so you can expect further improvements to them as we proceed!

New Dinosaurs!

For those who may not have noticed, in Patch 181 we introduced two new marine friends into the ARK universe! You’ll be able to find them in scattered around the vast ocean that surrounds the ARK Isles!

Here’s a little glimpse of one of the beasts ;), the Plesiosaur!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=472713601

The other critter we’ve introduced is called, Ichthyosaurus, they’re a lot more friendly and can be tamed, using our non-violent taming method! This requires equipping meat to Slot 0 in your inventory and manually feeding your new friend. After continuously feeding it whenever it’s hungry, it’ll eventually grow to love you! We want to see how survivors find this taming method, if they find it more interactive and enjoyable, we’ll begin working on adding it to all the other herbivores too, in addition to their current methods! The non violent method will allow them to be tamed, and will yield a higher Taming Effectiveness, therefore increasing the Dinosaurs base level and stats, when successfully tamed. We’ll also work on introducing an analogous method to Carnivores (though it’ll be a bit more… dangerous…), assuming the feedback is good!

Your Questions, Our Answers!

Survivor, Dualist asks, “Will you be restoring farming rates back to a reasonable level?”

Answer:

Tonight! We read all the posts and the feedback we received from players and began discussing internally what would be the best option to take with this. After a little while we’ve decided to come to the conclusion to revert the change for the time being. We’ll be working on a new gathering balance that bring each creature’s abilities into focus, but until then, the previous “over”-gathering values will be as they were.

Survivor, BMan asks, “When will the game be more optimized?”

Answer:

This is an ongoing effort, you should expect every week to see some measurable improvement, some days will have dramatic improvements as work on key area of optimization completes. Plus as we progress throughout the year, we’ll have access to new technology & new rendering techniques on DirectX 12 so the game will run even better! We want to get the most of all your machines as possible, so you can be sure that we’ll keep on working on it.

Survivor, Lurk asks, “when the husbandry happens, will genetics play a part?”

Answer:

Yes! We cannot have breeding without at least a representation of genetics. You can expect to see Breeding rolled out later in Summer and as we get closer to that time, we’ll be able to discuss more about the cool features related and involved in the process!

Survivor, Number Red asks, “Will there be a way to get taming effectiveness up, even by a little?”

Answer:

Yes, we’re currently undergoing a major revision to the taming food, in terms of what is liked and disliked by the creature. We’re going to introduce other cool aspects into the feature, such as the involvement of recipes, eggs and how they will have a role in taming affinity boosting for each species.

Survivor, Number Red asks, “Will the player be able to arm their dinosaur with guns/lasers in the future?”

Answer:
We’re initially introducing the capability to have major building platforms on large creatures onto which you can place sleeping bags, turrets, ballistas ;) etc and from there we’ll be moving onwards to more cool features!

Survivor, Duckman asks, “Will there be exclusive content for holidays, for example Valentines, Christmas, Halloween?”

Answer:

Of course! We love our holidays just as much as the next person and you guys can expect to have some fun on the ARK with cool limited edition events and or content. There’s a little fun coming in a few days too for a certain holiday ;)

Survivor, Nissalee asks, “Will we have the option to fully play with just LAN worlds?”

Answer:

This is something we are currently working on, we hope to have it ready in the upcoming weeks. The idea is for the game to support non-dedicated hosts for smaller groups of players, and they will be listed separately rather than regular servers in order to avoid confusion.

Survivor, Lakchys (Josh) asks, “When will Rcon be coming out? :)

Answer:

Early next week is the aim! Sorry about the wait guys, thanks for being patient <3

Survivor, Tenshi asks, “I wonder if it will be possible alliance between the tribes?

Answer:

Definitely possible and definitely something we’re interested in :)! We will be adding Tribe Alliance to PvP servers, this will do several things. First of all it will allow Dinosaurs and other creatures to not target another tribe during aggression, as well as ensure that both players and dinosaurs are unable to damage another tribe’s tamed creatures and buildings, with the possibility of enabling cross-tribe structure snapping. As we progress through EA and we receive more feedback on the system, we’ll make changes and improvements as necessary.

Also for the PvE servers, we will be adding a Tribe Warfare declaration! This will allow survivors to declare war against another tribe, if they choose to.

And don’t worry server owners, we haven’t forgotten you! We will be adding built-in server options for survivors to enable PvP during certain periods of the day! (For now, of course, we recommend this tool if you want such control on your server: http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/594821545177819162/ )

Survivor, Bishwa asks, “Will you plan on scaling the plesio's up a bit more? i was hoping for a bronto sized aquatic dino”

Answer:

We’ve gotta allow some growing room for the Mosasaurus and other water creatures to be even larger ;) However we’ll increase the size of the Plesio as well. This will go in line with being able to build on their backs! You can expect to see the back-building system in the coming weeks :). Yes, it’s true, not a rumour :D.

Survivor, Buster asks, “Will you be improving dinosaur interactions, so we no longer have predators teaming up on you,, or a single t-rex/spino simply killing everything in sight?”

Answer:

Yup! This summer you’ll see massive improvements to Dinosaur AI, which will include more realism and sensory input ;). Better be careful walking around with that chunk of prime meat, could be a bit smelly and attract some unfriendly foe.

Survivor, Buster asks, “Any chance of also adding more ways to interact with your pets as well, for example playing with them, giving them toys and proper shelters/habitat? (It would be cute to see my raptors playing with each other.) Or playing fetch with dilos.”

Answer:

We’re going to be starting with feeding your pets by hand, this will double their food intake as well as their health regen, along with getting all the signature roars and calls added in :). That’s just the beginning though! So we’ll see how it goes from there ;)

Survivor, kingpin003 asks, “Any chance there will be a trough that allows all dinos to feed communally when hungry and avoid manually checking the inventories of many dinos?”

Answer:

Great idea! We’ll do it.

Survivor, Razer950 asks, “Will the dev kit be updated anytime soon?”

Answer:

This weekend!

Survivor, Destiny asks, “Will you be making a Battle Royale like gamemode for Ark?”

Answer:

Yes! We’ll have our own competitive gamemode with its own features based around the mechanics on ARK, however we’ll be sharing more on that later ;)

Survivor, Jag Blade asks, "Is anything being done about the horrendous server lag and rubberbanding? The game is virtually unplayable for me in the evenings now when I get home from work."

Answer:

Yes, expect major improvements there over the next several days. It's a key area of focus for our engineering team now that Mac and Linux are released.

Survivor, Dimitrion1812 asks, "Will we be able to set or herbivore's on a "grazing" mode? since there is nothing to gain as a herbivore is on aggressive."

Answer:

Coming soon, to an ARK near you!

Survivor, Broote asks, “"Is there any progress addressing the 'glitching under terrain' bugs that have been plaguing us?"

Answer:

Yes! we’re aiming to have this resolved fairly shortly :)

Survivor, Jeiku asks, "Also, are beds going to be made actually usable at some point, so you can log out without just collapsing on the floor?"

Answer:

Good idea. Yeah we’ll implement this, it’ll work as a “use bed to sleep” function that will actually put you into a sleeping animation, on the bed. Just a visual animation, it won’t actually lockdown the bed of course.

Survivor, qazzzy1212 asks, "Will we ever see a procedurally generated Ark?"

Answer:

Yup! And you’ll see it coming this year :)

Survivor, Nakame asks, "Will you add any efficient defenses against flying type dinos?"

Answer:

Indeed and that’s coming up very shortly! You guys can expect to see some terrifying prehistoric projectile plants on the ARK ;)

Survivor, major lag asks, “will there be a buildable oven ? very inconvenient to have to set up multiple campfires to cook meat”

Answer:

Also, coming to an ARK near you ;)!

Survivor, Tuturuu~ asks, "Can you tell us more about "Competitive ARK: Survival of the Fittest game type"?

Answer:

More information will be revealed later on in July! Let’s just say we hope you guys enjoyed the Hunger Game series ;D

Survivor, Captain Awesome asks, "Building is becoming more and more popular, Are you going to expand on the current build system?"

Answer:

Yes! We’ve got loads planned in the pipeline, such as more structure peices, the capability to rotate snaps, per-pixel paint-brushing, decorative objects, 45° ramps!! among other things :D

Survivor, fylith asks, “"Do you plan on making SCUBA gear or something to help with sea diving?"

Answer:

Yup! We’ll have it available soon :)

Survivor, Sivok asks, “Will we ever get a Dire wolf to ride?”

Answer:

"The runt of the litter! That one's yours, Snow."

Survivor, Stargazer1820 asks, “Can we get some more diversity regarding lower tier weapons & (utility) tools?”

Answer:

Yup! You can expect to see loads more primitive stuff incoming. One of our goals is that you could play the game entirely just as a primitive-era experience and still have a huge robust game and ecosystem at your disposal :)

Survivor, Lord_Iivaitte asks, “"Are there plans for a base sized air dino?"

Answer:

Oh, do you mean the Quetzalcoatlus? Among others ;)

Survivor, Stargazer1820 asks, “Can we at some point in the future make "dino groups" ? (Ability to issue commands to a set amount of dinos)”

Answer:

Very good idea! We’ll see about doing this soon enough :)

Survivor, Ebrim asks, "The description of berries in the game suggests that they should be much more geography-specific on where certain types of berries can be harvested than exists currently. When is it planned for berries to start being more biome-specific? Or is this still a planned feature?"

Answer:

Yes! This is a planned feature and you’ll begin to see it take place as we introduce new biomes and the plants will begin to become increasingly area-specific and diversified. So will the resources from them (along with new rare plant resource types being added). You'll see the onset of this with the upcoming additions of the Swamp and Snow biomes!

Survivor, A Wolf asks, “Are you planning to make the game harder for higher levels?”

Answer:

Yup! you can expect to see some Super “Rare” Dinosaurs and Creatures being released onto the ARK that will pretty much tear you to shreds. However, spotting and nabbing them will earn you specific benefits. The upcoming Swamp & Snow Biomes and Cave & Mountain Rebalancing, along with the Boss Fight Arenas, will serve as later-game content -- essentially, as we add more dinos and region differentiation, we'll use them to create a greater swath of difficulty range across the Island :)

Survivor, VenoMonster asks, "Why is the amount of crops in plots limited to 30, will that limit be removed and will you introduce a buff for large plots?"

Answer:

It’s now 150 in version 182. As for the Large Crop Plots, as we introduce more types of crops into the game, we’ll work them into the Large Crop Plots.

Survivor, Havocide asks, "How soon can we make mods run from unofficial/private servers. At the moment mods like dino arena works when i launch it from my client however if I wanted it running from a private paid host we cant seem to get it working? (unless im missing something and it already works )"

Answer:

There's a dedicatd server commandline format you can use to launch a mod map from a mod, this way:

You can host a dedicated server with a mod using the following syntax:

ShooterGameServer.exe /Game/Mods/459186056/DinoArena?listen?ModId=459186056

Where the # and the filename correspond, go to the directory that the model is installed onto in your disk. (You'll find this after you download it for the first time via the in-game Host menu. After that you can copy the files directly to another machine if desired)

v182 fixes dynamically downloading the mod content if it’s run with that format. However, v183 will make it simpler by automatically determining the mod ID from the map directory name.

Survivor, Kemzow asks, "In-game chatting.... Any plans to have a local chat so only people in an x distance away from you can see and take part?"

Answer:

Yup! It’ll be coming very soon!

Survivor, Mensa asks, "More mounted base defense options such as cannons?"

Answer:

Yup! You can expect to see ballistas and we’re also working on mounted guns :D.

Survivor, Darktrooper117 asks, “Will there ever be an update to improve the handling of aquatic creatures? It's silly that a Megalodon would hit the surface at an angle and suddenly stop so fast that you think the air above the waterline is made out of concrete and peanut butter.”

Answer:

In the near future they will glide smoothly along the water surface as you’d expect -- hopefully we’ll have it ready tomorrow!

Survivor, FALCON says, “DEV'z I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU STILL :)”

Answer:

We love you too <3 :D

Dino Dossier!

A new Dino Dossier has been revealed, this one is everyone’s favorite dangerous but friendly herbivore, the Pachycephalosaurus!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=473484274

That’s it for this week’s ARK Digest! Thanks for tuning in and hopefully you’ve walked away learning something new ;). Thanks for all the support, engagement, and feedback so far!

All the best,

Your Community Manager Jat and The ARK Survival Evolved Team!

[Gunner]

1st nice dino!

[AmitKilo]

The Plesiosaur picture is amazing

[_Ripperino2K]

Love to see this game growing :D

[KaizergidorahXi]

So, I've noticed an issue with the Icthyos. When I tamed one, a group of megs would spawn and rip it to pieces within seconds, but completely ignore the wild icthyo not 4 feet away. They are still just hanging out. Is that a bug, or are tamed dinos instant targets?

[Daedalus]

Any planned way to tame the Plesio other than exploiting it in a cave? or punching it?

[Daedalus]

Originally posted by Kaizergidorah:

So, I've noticed an issue with the Icthyos. When I tamed one, a group of megs would spawn and rip it to pieces within seconds, but completely ignore the wild icthyo not 4 feet away. They are still just hanging out. Is that a bug, or are tamed dinos instant targets?

they are fixing that tonight :D

[CamelKing86]

Great work. This team is far and away better than any game dev team I have dealt with.

[Scyphonic]

My only question ever for any next digest is this....

When will we see a fix for founders items I had all the items once and then died and never got them back, I and several other people have been reporting this repeatidly and have never seen a response to this.

I would also love to see maybe more craftable customizable skins for sadles and clothing for humans as well.

[JulieCatte]

<33

[TheOnlyManWithaPlan]

stop being cool

[Ruse]

Tons of wasted questions. They've been answered already in past QA events or they're in patch notes. Come on devs.

[TheOnlyManWithaPlan]

Will vehicles be a future addition to the game?

[Chaplain]

Friar Tuck!

[Dholiraja]

what i cant wait to be fixed is the BUG with the indoor/outdoor thing happening cause when im inside my base i should get the inside base bonus EVERYWHERE aslong as there is walls, floors and ceillings.

Alot of the time it says im outdoors and it also rains in my base

[CamelKing86]

Originally posted by Chaplain:

Friar Tuck!

Man I miss Pete Postlewaith