HOLY MOLLY

[Incus]

Got to say. That video was by far one of the best indroductions to a game I have seen in ages. Game looks amazing. Hope the hype train that is soon to follow is not let down.

How big is the map as that looks massive?

[Jeremy Drake Stieglitz]

Hi there Incus,

Thank you for the encouragement, it's great to hear! We've just scratched the surface with what we've shown so far too... it's a deep, deep world out there being designed for 1000's of hours of gameplay ;)

Regarding the size of the ARK, it's currently approximately 36 square kilometers of walkable land mass. There's also about 12 square kilometers of ocean, and of course that's just 2 dimensional measurement. There are very tall mountains that rise above the cloud layer, and oceans are quite deep with major underwater reefs, and there's a massive underground cave system that adds about 50% more traversable area to the ARK. The caves themselves are akin to dungeons in many ways, so while they can be inhabited by players, they are not easy places to survive long-term...

So yeah, it's a very large environment, but then it has to be with 15,000+ simultaneous creatures being simulated on it, and many of the creatures themselves being quite large-scale ;)

Hope that answers your question!

-Drake
(Lead Designer)

[Incus]

Wow that was an amazing quick reply thank you. Yes the creatures look varied and amazing. I love the look and feel. Its what we wished with The Stomping Land but never got. I am glad you are around to develope this.

What is the resource gathering like. Im guessing nodes that we harvest but do these nodes change when harvested? EG A tree falls down.

[Jeremy Drake Stieglitz]

Yes essentially every tree and rock and bush and most grasses in the game are harvestable. And yes they all fall down / fall-apart and disappear as you harvest them (they eventually respawn if no one is around for a long while). It was... challenging... to achieve this technically but we pulled it off ;)

You can totally clear out a huge jungle to build your village on, if you want to. And yes all the dynamic overcasted lighting of the jungle changes in real-time as a result.

-Drake

[Incus]

Yes its a beautiful world you guys are creating. I love the look. The net code must be impresive to host over 15000 creatures and 100 plus players. The server demands must be quite heavy on requirements. Is a lot done server side or player?

[Jeremy Drake Stieglitz]

Everything important is calculated solely server-side, to prevent hacking we can not trust the clients with _anything_ and the server is 100% authoritative. So we shouldn't have some of the hacks that plague other survival games.

Consequently, the online server host requirements are currently rather high currently hovering around 3 GB RAM and 100% single core 2.5 Ghz CPU utilization to host a large-scale dedicated server. However, we intend to reduce these requirements in the weeks ahead to Early Access, and beyond that we will keep optimizing it until it's light as a feather :)

-Drake

[derkyn]

¿how many people are you targeting for the official server ?

Wow, ¿so we can build our home in the game?

[Jeremy Drake Stieglitz]

Our goal is about a 100-player maximum at Early Access launch, if you've got a quite-powerful server CPU. And yes, you can build really large structures in the game, and you can use the dinosaurs to aid in construction (when you're riding one, you can place building units much farther out depending on the size of the dinosaur, or even when flying on a Pteranodon)

[macfra]

This looks like the dreamgame that never came out, really looking forward to this! HOLY MOLY! :)

[Vandarix]

Necroed