Here is where I'm at now ...

[Enferno]

Ok, I started this game on 1/20/2025 (13 days ago) and I must say that it has come a long way in just 13 days!

I love the growth system now. It takes awhile, but you get to enjoy the dinosaur along the way and you actually get to play the game with having to survive A LOT more now before you're Adult. I like it better this way because when you could just grow all dinosaurs from hatchling to adult in 30-60 minutes, you'd run out of things to do (or get bored and start a new one) cause there is no end game. At least this way it takes you awhile to grow fully and give Exhibyte some time to come up with some mid / late / end game stuff.

The UI on the HUD is absolutely amazing! It fits a dinosaur game perfectly, imo. Better than the other dinosaur games that I've played. I would like to see the chat + Tab menu screen updated to fit the color scheme + hex icons of the main UI hud.

The Toxicity is a bit messed up (thanks to me, it's completely my fault) because starting off with 10 minutes is way too much for the small corpses that you eat way faster than even having to worry about getting Toxicity. Then the corpses last forever once it starts to gain Toxicity (rott). I think this should be set to a way to work off Toxicity if you eat it fresh or within the first 2-3 (maybe a bit more for the large carcass's) minutes, after that it would begin to gain Toxicity levels. There has to be a give and take and I understand that Exhibyte was going for a debuff system - The way it is now it's destroyed that , sorry man :(

There are some bugs, but eh... visual mostly like the beach with rocks / shells / etc - plus the sand moves like water and well, I get motion sick, so it throws me off a bit for sure. The actual rocks / objects on the land could use some colliders for collision, because every dinosaur backs / walks or runs through them.

I don't think many players reported or asked very much being some of these posts are from years ago and such. Remember you have to report in order to get things fixed / changed! Help come up with some idea's, he actually listens and does his best to fix everything and come up with ways to make everyone happy, unlike 99% of the other devs who put games on steam!

I hope the Exhibyte is working on the traits , skills + new talents! I absolutely cannot wait for them and I'm looking forward to it for sure!

[Exhibyte]

I can try 1 minute per size, so 1 m for tiny(compsognathus, etc), 2m for small(oviraptor, velociraptor, etc), 3m for average(dimetrodon, etc), 4m for medium(trike, stego, etc), 5m for large(rex, brachio, etc), 6m for huge(argentinosaurus).

Trying to change how I do things, and weekends are now dedicated to gaming and learning time, Primeval dev is going to have to wait till the weekdays start back up because it was taking up all of my time for the last 4 years and now I'm trying to learn more game dev skills, like Pixel art right now.

[Exhibyte]

The sand moving is due to the tessellation feature of MicroSplat, I've turned the effect way down as of one of the latest patches, that way it doesn't do that quite as much and also doesn't hide small dinos under it as much.

[Enferno]

Hey I understand with having to stop / pause to learn more. That is what brought me to your game, I was taking a break from my own project and now I'm back at it again. I learned A LOT with colliders man. So, a break is very much needed from time to time.

Yes, that 1 minute per size might be better than the full 10 minutes, because with the full 10 minutes it pretty much destroyed a few things.
1) You can eat nearly every corpse within 10 minutes, so Toxicity never was a factor for the most part.
2) The first 10 minutes of starting was amazing for the carcass's at your starting nest, but after the 10 minutes it would ruin them because they would be stuck in the toxicity forever, so they wasn't even worth eating.

Like I said, there has to be some sort of give/take to it. Right now it just takes, meaning you build up Toxicity, but there is no way to work it off except massive time. I had 5% toxicity that took over 2 hours to wear off, this is way too much. So, if someone had 30-50% toxicity, they would never get rid of it...

Ah, the sand moving ... I never learned anything at all about tessellation feature, that is interesting! I guess it causes movement with textures? I mean that might be cool underwater, but not on the shores?

On a serious note though, man this game has come far in just 2 weeks compared to what I've read on it before, the growth system has completely revamped for the best, imo. I seriously love your HUD UI, it's amazing, even the color choices imo. I think you should update the rest like the chat box (maybe just put the outlines of the colors around it to dress it up a bit) and the "Tab" window. Keep the hexigons with the outlined colors, put those for the talents / traits and such. They fit so well!

[Exhibyte]

Drinking freshwater removes 5% of your current toxicity per drink.

[Exhibyte]

Tessellation causes the texture to appear to be 3d depending on its normal map from what I understand.

[Exhibyte]

You should see how far its come in the 4 years of early access, its pretty much a new game.

[Exhibyte]

Thanks for all the bug reports and suggestions. I appreciate it, really helps out because I can't find everything or see everything from every angle.

[Enferno]

Originally posted by Exhibyte:

Thanks for all the bug reports and suggestions. I appreciate it, really helps out because I can't find everything or see everything from every angle.

I agree, I wish more players would actually report what they see and even give suggestions (you might not change it to exactly how we want, but it will give you and idea on how to go about making it better) instead of them just putting a game down with "Oh your stuff is broken" or " Hey my game crashes help" ... They should understand that you must explain yourself and the more details that you can give the easier / better it will be to pinpoint the problem and fix it...

I seen some screenshots of the early game, the changes in the UI you made over the years. It revamped quiet a few times, but I seriously like it right now, it's perfect! I can't imagine some problems with the actual gameplay and bugs and broken stuff. I mean, people wouldn't believe what it takes to actually implement a new skill, just 1.. especially if you had it coded already for just a player object, now try to convert it to a actual class with several different ones.. you have to scrap the old code / scripts and create new ones in a much different structure. I know I'm talking blah blah to most people, just saying!

Some people haven't reported things on here or discord in months / years... I try to report everything and suggest everything, doesn't matter if you do it or not, just seeing it makes you think of new things or create new ideas is how I look at it. I guess some get butthurt if you don't do what they want, I look at it as I have no idea what your vision is for your game, so I make suggestions.

I cannot wait for you to implement some of the idea's you already had for mid / late game. More talents and the traits, I wanna see what you had in mind! But we do need something to look forward to in order to want to play and grow the same dinosaur with evolution points. It does take awhile to gather them now with the new system(s), but it seems a bit easier at first to gain some of the Evolved skill stuff while running, swimming, eating, damaging and regenerating health and stamina.