Combined Community Crunch 29 & ARK Digest 23

[Jat]

Greetings Survivors!

Welcome to a combined issue of the Community Crunch 29 and ARK Digest 23! Apologies about the delay on these posts, the team have gotten a lot more busy as we work through this winter period.

Alienware Modding Contest

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=559125549

It’s been quite a while since we first announced the Alienware Modding Contest! Throughout the last fortnight, we’ve been hosting a stream on our twitch channel - www.twitch.tv/survivetheark - showcasing all the mods that had made it into the Top 10 of the Contest! If you may have missed out on our streams and want to see what the finalists were all about, you can do so by checking out our past-broadcasts on our channel!

Friday will be our final-stream showcasing the Advanced Architecture Mod, previously spotlighted in a workshop feature, so be sure to check in and check that out at 6PM EST! The results of the competition are looking to be announced on the 8th of December!

Don’t Forget to be Awesome!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=568107249

We receive a lot of requests regarding where you can purchase ARK goodies, we’re still in the process of getting everything setup, thankfully the lovely guys over at DFTBA have been helping us out by working with us to sell ARK T-Shirts and Posters on their site! So for those of you who are after an ARK Shirt, Poster or SoTF shirt, you can get your hands on them over at:

http://store.dftba.com/collections/ark-survival-evolved

Fanart, Screenshots and more!

Dino Portraits by Lacking Rhythm

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=564723718

Giga by MCD_Alternate

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=563219205

Utheretrodon by Triceraflops

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=566138288

ARK Survival Evolved: Turkey Trials by HungerZach

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=562044843

Turkey Terror by Lacking Rhythm

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=560575242

Paragentorphodon by Triceraflops

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=566127370

[Jat]

Fanmade Dossier: Danny Devitosaurus by sgtcheeseguy

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=567969600

Fanmade Dossier: Ambuloectus by I Want MY Burd

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=566531940

Fanmade Dossier: Lucanus by I Want MY Burd

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=565846442

Fanmade Dossier: Thylanychus by Captain Mendoza

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=561511668

Fanmade Dossier: Yutyrannus by Snoopy Sniper

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=562457809

Fanmade Dossier: Miracinonyx by Mister Bubbles

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=566148224

Fanmade Dossier: Craig’s ????? by CraigChappy

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=561412730

Fanmade Dossier: Xiphactinus by fruitpunchgaming

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=559071520

Fanmade Dossier: Hystrix Enorma by Njiko

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=559582542

Fanmade Dossier: Gorgonopsid by ALEXMAC1999

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=560687882

[Jat]

Community Contests!

Every week for the foreseeable future we’ll be hosting two contests for our Community Crunch. Remember for this week (and the foreseeable future!) we'll also be accepting entries for the newly introduced: Warpaint images, human and dino tattoos/bodyart for the #ARKArt award as well as bases both on your Brontos and Rafts for #ARKitect! Can’t wait to see the platform bases, the ships and tattoos/bodyart! Also can’t wait to see your new bases in the new biomes!

ARKitect

This is a title given to the Survivor who has created, in our eyes, the best base for the week. Survivors will need to upload their screenshots to the Community Hub, both the Artwork or Screenshot section will suffice and then post them in the designated thread, it’s also possible that we’ll see the screenshots in the hub but posting them in the thread will ensure that they’ll be spotted!

We’ll be judging the bases not on the quality of the screenshot, but on the unique designs, functionality, and the use of in-game tools available to you! At the end of each week, the screenshot for the best base will be featured in our #ARKitect section of the Community Crunch!

The #ARKitect award for Community Crunch 29 goes to…

It’s a tie!

Joint First Place: Aquarius Resort by Wolf Angelus

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=561472053


And you can check out the rest of the screenshots here:


http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/485622866454026249/#c485622866454097315

Joint First Place: ARKAde by Valoule

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=568157416

And you can check out the rest of the screenshots here:

http://imgur.com/a/4HOIP

Huge congratulations as you guys are this week's ARKitect! We’ll be in touch to get the prizes handled!

Honourable Mentions / Runner ups

We’ve got a few runners up for ARKitect this week too! So big shout-out to them and we’ll be in touch too ;)!

Dodo Dojo by GamerPerfection

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=564011501

And you can check out the rest of the screenshots here:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/485622866454026249/#c485623339232294733

Cliff overhanging base by Apop85

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=564042498

And you can check out the rest of the screenshots here:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/485622866454026249/#c485623406949645986

RP Home by Tomb

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=568158299

And you can check out the rest of the screenshots here:

http://imgur.com/a/re4zp

Snow Biome Castle by Vara

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=564338351

And you can check out the rest of the screenshots here:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/485622866454026249/#c485623406950975534

#ARKArt

The second contest which will take place is for the #ARKArt award! This is a title given to the Survivor who has created, in our eyes, the best piece of art for that week using our new Per-Pixel painting system! Similarly to #ARKitect, Survivors will need to upload their masterpiece to the Community Hub, both the Artwork or Screenshot section will suffice and then also post them in the designated thread, it’s also possible that we’ll see the screenshots in the hub but posting them in the thread will ensure that they’ll be spotted!

We’ve also got a little request! Do you lovely painters mind uploading your ART PNT files so others could also give them a whirl? http://arkpaint.com/ has recently launched and will be a great place to do so! Be sure to provide a link in your next post :)

The #ARKArt award for Community Crunch 29 goes to…

It’s a tie for first place!

Happy Thanksgiving from ±

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=563085690

Room Icons by Okim

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=562309716

And you can check out the rest of his artwork here:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/485622866454026249/#c485623406939290630

Huge congratulations as you guys are this week's ARKArt winners! We’ll be in touch to get the prizes handled!

Honourable Mentions / Runner ups

We’ve got a hilarious honourable mention for this week too!

|*iFataL1ty*|

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=562921904

[Jat]

Workshopper Spotlight!

Workshopper: Kenturrac

Workshop Item: Total Conversion -Tribe Wars!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=547753876

Survivors, this week we're joined by Kenturrac and they're here to answer some questions and talk about their mods with us. Thanks for joining us! Do you think you could introduce yourself to the community, and let us know about what you're currently working on?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=568107540

Kenturrac:

Hey guys, my name is Matt aka Kenturrac from Germany. Well, not anymore since I just moved to the beautiful Stockholm to start a new Job at DICE (super happy :D). I am 28 years old and make my money with the development of video games. Yes, I am one of the guys who work 8h on a game, go home and continue working on a Mod… :D

Before I started working on Tribe Wars I have seen and read quite a bit about ARK but never really played it. I think I actually bought the game in the first week of release but I am one of the people who need 60FPS and it’s just not running well on my PC. Luckily the Modding Tool was released and I got quite some experience over the last three years with Unreal 4 so the next logical step was to build a Mod.

I personally always liked the Survival-PVP more than just the raw survival experience. So it was clear to build something in that direction. After some trying around I quickly came up with the rough concept of Tribe Wars. I liked the idea of SOTF but to make a difference I wanted to create an objective based gamemode in which two teams fight for a certain goal. I always imagined it as an additional gamemode next to SOTF (like you have CTF next to KOTH or TDM in other games). It’s a long way ahead but I hope that it gets a similar successful like SOTF on day.

Tell us more about Tribe Wars, where did you get the idea for the mod and what are your long term goals for it?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=568109960

Kenturrac:

For me the PVP endgame of ARK seemed to be big tribes fighting against each other and raiding their bases but I also knew from other PVP survival games that only a small portion of the playerbase will ever get there. I mean let’s be honest, you have to spent a lot of time into the game and if you are without luck you get raided while you are offline and you can start from the beginning. So the goal of Tribe Wars was to make base raiding and tribe battles more mainstream and accessible. The idea is to have a ~1:30h match that you can easily play on an evening and get all the action you could have if you would be part of big tribe that just started going to war with another tribe.

I have quite some plans for Tribe Wars and my feature wish list is really long it will take time but I am sure I can get there. There is enough time since I am confident that ARK will stay popular for a long time and I also believe that Mods in general will help with that. The version you can download right now is just a proof concept which will get updated over time. The update I am currently working on includes a lot of refactoring and bugfixing of existing systems since I had to hack a lot of it in on time pressure for the contest. I got quite lazy when the contest time extension came up. You know I told myself there would be enough time now.

Next step after that is the implementation of additional ingame-events and better spectator/admin tools for potential competitions. I think I some planned features on the workshop page. Go there if you wanna get hyped. ;)

Something I will not do is changing tuning of Dinos, Weapons, Armor and so on. I want to keep the actual mechanics and tunnings very close to SOTF so player can easily switch between both gamemodes. I know there are a lot of rebalancing Mods out there and I understand why people want it for PVE but for good and consistent PVP I trust in Wildcard. They have way more data to figure out how to create the best PVP experience possible.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=568110080

That's a very interesting point to make regarding that only a small portion of players will truly reach end-game PvP in a survival game, I can definitely understand that point. I really like the game-modes where you try to make the content more accessible for those who are unable to reach it in the core game. Something else if I'm a fan of in Tribe Wars is the ability for players to join already started games as witnessed in the Contest Showcase and your Workshop Notes, as it's more team-based and less about the individual. Though I am wondering how you plan to balance people joining later on, stacking teams, and make it so that they can make a reasonable comeback - it seems like something that would be very tricky to balance.

Kenturrac:

You are right and would lie if I would say I have a perfect answer for that already. I am thinking of a system that is multiplying the XP that people below the average team level get. Like a “Rookie Bonus” – normal XP + 50% or something along these lines. Please don’t take the “50%” not literal. Balancing these things will be an ongoing process. Another issue will be gear and tames since you need time for that no matter how fast you level up. That might be something the team needs to provide. It’s definitely something I need to think about that a bit more. :D But I am sure there is some smart person out there with the right idea. I just have to hope that he supplies me with his feedback.

Hopefully you’ll be able to find that right amount of balance, it’s always tricky! Though we’ve got a pretty vocal community and I’m sure they’ll be able to help :) Now you've mentioned that you don't want to change or tweak Dinos and Equipment items in Tribe Wars, however we've found ourselves that we've needed to make item and creature tweaks in SoTF. For a 1 and a half hour game, don't you feel like it would be necessary? And something else I would like to know is with this being a proof of concept, in the future are you going to allow a lot of customization in regards to how frequently events appear, how long the games are, how long players have to place the flag etc

Kenturrac:

I actually didn’t know that item values and Dinos are adjusted in SOTF. Which means you just added more work to my task list by telling me. :D Most importantly I want to provide some consistency for players that come from SOTF or switch between both gamemodes.

During the past tournaments I saw so many people coming up with strategies and a plan before the game even started just because they had such a good understanding of the timings, costs, progression and so on. I think it would make Tribe Wars less accessible if players have to forget half of what they know just because the gamemode changed. That was actually the reason why I thought there wouldn’t be a difference between the vanilla game and SOTF besides some XP, resource gathering and taming time multipliers.

About the other question regarding customization: You are basically right. The idea is to make most of the timers and multipliers customizable via the config file or the extended admin/moderator/spectator tools I want to add in the beginning of next year. These extended tools are mainly catered towards people who want to host their own events/tournaments.

So clearly you’ve got a lot planned for this mod and have quite a bit of experience under your belt already, how are you finding working with the ARK Dev kit and what’s your modding experience like?

Kenturrac:

So in general I should point out that when I started working with the ARK Dev Kit (ADK) I already got 3 years of experience with Unreal 4 since I worked on the recently canceled Dead Island 2. And even before that I have worked with other Engines or did modifications on games like Arma, Crysis and some older RTS games. So I would say that roughest part is behind me.

ARK itself does a lot of things differently to the vanilla Unreal since this engine is just not made for such a game but the systems that exist make a lot of sense so it was easy enough to adapt to it but I have to say that is a lot of trial and error. Taking systems apart and putting the together again. Also just trying stuff out and see if the ADK crashes. :D The SOTF blueprints are a big, big help but they are a mess in terms of structure and comments and there is not a lot of documentation in general. Having that said I do not really expect something else from an Early Access game and I have seen modable games that are in way worse condition and are out for years.

I am actually super surprised and happy that we got a Mod Kit already. I just hope that the conditions around improve over time. It will also help the Modding community growing. I think what I really try to say here is that I am so happy that we have so many people within the Modding community that just made their first Mod without the experience I have and keep pushing and don’t give up. Keep on pushing, I know it’s worth it.

As someone with a vast amount of experience, do you have any tips for upcoming modders on what they can do when working with UE4 and ARK itself?

Kenturrac:

Before you start working on ARK, start getting used to the basics of Unreal. It’s a great engine with an even greater community and a lot of helpful tutorials. You will have a hard time doing a Mod that is more than tweaking values, adding engrames or reskinning existing items, if you do not know the essential systems of Unreal. You do not have to create a game in Unreal before moving over to ARK but you should know how Replication, Interfaces and Blueprints in general work.
Once you are ready to work on ARK make a copy of the whole ADK and integrate the SOTF that you can find on the forum into the copy of the ADK. These files will teach you sooooo much.
Besides that I have only a few additional recommendations:
Don’t give up so easily. Yes, it will not be easy but worth it.
Start not too big. Go bigger with each project and be prepared to fail once in a while.
If you have questions don’t hesitate to ask people on the forum and especially on the IRC. There are so many smart people there.
Share your knowledge and help others.
If you find something that is no possible with the existing ARK systems use the whole power of Unreal and create your own systems cause you have all the power of Unreal.
And don’t give up so easily. :P

And please do not download the ADK from Steam. Download it from the Epic Games Launcher instead. Every day there is one new guy at the forum who downloaded the wrong ADK (60GB). :D

Thanks for the advice! I’m sure players are going to be very grateful for all that information :). Finally is there anything you'd like to end with before wrapping this up?

Kenturrac:

So if you read this and you are hyped for Tribe Wars download it, play it and most importantly give feedback. Just be aware that I can’t update the Mod during December. As mentioned before I just moved from Germany to Sweden and my working PC is stored away until I find a permanent apartment here in Stockholm. Sadly, this will not happen before January. :(
And if you read this and you are hyped for Modding: Just do it! :D

And last but not least I want to thank Wildcard for this Modding Kit. I grew up in a time when Modding a game was very common and then times changed... Gladly we are slowly getting back there. Thanks for help showing the world what Modding can add to a game.

We recently featured this mod in our Alienware Mod Showcase on our twitch channel! Unfortunately we were having some difficulties grabbing screenshots but if you’d like a more indepth look at the mod check it out yourself or have a watch of the VOD!

http://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark/v/28021042

[Jat]

ARK Digest Q&A

Survivor, Buster asks, “Any chance on reevaluating the eurypterid being tameable?”

Answer:

Yep, we’re reevaluating various upcoming tame-abilities. Remember, as an Early Access game, we reserve the right to revise -- enhance -- the Dossiers as we proceed! :)

Survivor, OnlyUseMeRaifu asks, “I'm excited for the Ascension process. Can we know some more about it please? :D Does it have to do with your level/further level progression?”

Answer:

It involves beating all the bosses, going into the volcano, completing an uber-hard dungeon and travelling through a stargate, beating a final fourth boss and discovering the true nature of the ARK, sacrificing your character and resurrecting as a new character containing a soul cube with a progressively level cap (and if done again, taking on bosses that are scaled even more difficult and have some changes each time). That about cover it? ;-)

Survivor, Tier asks, “What’s the ETA on the alpha sea predators?”

Answer:

Before the end of the year, along with the sea Supply Drops.

Survivor, HelenTheHero asks, “The leedsichthys dossier tells us we will be getting fish meat and prime fish. Will the fish meat and prime fish be better for taming marine animals, but also some land? Spino, karpo, baryonyx, etc, come to mind.”

Answer:

You have it exactly.

Survivor, BananaDongle asks, “When do you plan on introducing diseases (and hopefully medicines to cure them)?”

Answer:

Early next year, diseases and respective medicines. Including potential of rabies from Direwolves and Hyaenodon etc

Survivor, Neizan asks, “Can we have grenade launcher, for grenades, posion grenades and smoke grenades?”

Answer:

That’d be a cool idea for the modern tier, we’ll think on it.

Survivor, JasonB asks, “Are you guys considering implementing any of the stuff from the mod competition into the game? “

Answer:

We are, but that’s ultimately up to the Mod Authors too, as it would be their decision.

Survivor, JasonB also asks, “Do you guys have any more plans for shields? Maybe a push or bash? Or anymore plans to make melee combat more exciting?”

Answer:

Yeah, a shield bash would be a cool idea. We are also looking into parries and movement-based melee swing directions.

Survivor, GinMaou asks, “will there be any tech tier for farming? like those green house farm where we may get higher yield of berries?”

Answer: Yeah we plan more advancement of farming into modern tech, along that line.

Survivor, [PXI]KiraDues asks, “When can we expect to get the "alpha" feature, more precisely for Direwolves ?”

Answer:

Around mid-December.

Survivor, DiksDiezel asks, “Will we ever see some kind of aquatic marker? We can use torches and campfires to mark postions, downed dinos etc”

Answer:

A light-emitting floating buoy would probably be useful for that yeah, we’ll do it. Could also serve as a small platform to stand on it to recover stamina out in the deep ocean.

Survivor, Red River asks, “Can we get a primitive option for SP?”

Answer:

You should check out this Total Conversion!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=504360469

Survivor, Frosty3k asks, “Can there be more blending of biomes please? It's weird seeing a jungle beside ice with nothing inbetween.”

Answer:

Yeah we’ll be doing more work on that as we proceed, though bear in mind, the ARK isn’t exactly a naturally created environment and we’ll have more indications of what is creating the distinct biomes added as well.

Survivor, Tanker751 asks, “When we can finally see ARK's trading cards, badges and profile backgrounds on Steam?”

Answer:

As the game gets closer to launch, you will :)

Survivor, Reaprign asks, “You mentioned Survivor notes that could be found and also released the ruins concept. And there are the mysterious Artifacts and Boss Dossiers. When will we see the backstory of those and the ARK in general?”

Answer:

Early next year, we’re working on it as it relates to the ruins

Survivor, Mourlie asks, “Plant X that are set to target "players and tamed creatures only" attack creatures that are currently being tamed by yourself, can you please fix this? Also, they shoot through closed behemoth gates.”

Answer:

Next patch :)

Survivor, Stephani Rabbitheart asks, “Will it ever be possible to make glow in the dark warpaint/dyes using the Angler Fish bioluminescent gel?”

Answer:

Sadly that would probably require a bit more Material reconfiguring than we’re up for at the moment. But we do have more plans for how the Angler Fish gel will be used!

Survivor, TheEnglishSpartan asks, “Will you be adding anymore type of Customisation to our characters soon?”

Answer:

Character face changes and hairstyles will be arriving in January finally!

Survivor, Yamani asks, “Teleporters: Will they be able to teleport dino's? Also will non tribe members be able to teleport to another tribes Teleporter if they have the pin code or if it's not locked?”

Answer:

Yes, you’ll be able to teleport dinos. The teleporter will work on whatever’s standing on the pad when it’s activated, and yes it’ll be tribe / pin activated.

Survivor, Jona | Hugh Idiyout asks, “In the last Digest you announced the resource "Element". Could you explain how to get it and how it looks?”

Answer:

You can’t get it yet, and it will look like glowing balls of energy-plasma. You’ll ultimately get it by completing the upcoming key objectives of the game, along with Ascension.

Survivor, Kyotsuno asks, “As far as trophies go, will we ever get to use humans? Put human heads/skulls on pikes mounted in the ground?”

Answer:

Haha it’s worth considering… scary but could be really amusing, if it said the name and tribe in tooltip and retained the warpaint and appearance of their head. We’ll see how viable it is...

Survivor, Harbinger’s Cat asks, “What's the next dino you guys are gonna work on?”

Answer:

Looks like the Procoptodon is coming up next -- get your pouches ready!

Survivor, RedZek asks, “Will there be any form of egg saddle for the dimetrodon? Something where you could strap the egg to the dimetrodon and the dimetrodon would keep the egg at incubating temperatures. “

Answer:

That’s a neat idea. Now that we have the capability to move eggs around with the Oviraptor, it wouldn’t be difficult to add a similar system for the Dimetrodon. Seems likely to me!

Survivor, Ken asks, “When do you guys sleep?”

Not often ;)

That’s it for this week’s Community Crunch and ARK Digest guys! 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

[Wolf Angelus TTV]

Thanks, surprised you chose that image to represent my entry over the others xD I thought that was one of the worst ones out of the selection and the others had more of a "wow factor"

[bubblywums]

Danny Devitosaurus LOL

[John_J_FROST]

will there be more complex ecosystem AI?
like carnivores fighting over hunt territory, or some herbivore males (doedicurus, pachy) challenging other for domination.
btw, as been told in some of previous Digests, you will add hitchpost later. will there be something like invisible version of it, placed on living animals, that makes dino herds travel in family groups (male leads and female with some babies follows)?

[GP]

Thank you for choosing me as a runner-up in the ARKitect and well done to everyone else in the contests!

Next Creature the Procoptodon, awesome!

[DannysRCool]

Lol it's fun to see this when people were just asking if a new digest was coming out even if my ReQuestion wasn't answered. Oh well. Maybe I can figure out how the mod maker thingy works.

[the_british_kiwi]

I like how most of the more important questions are tossed aside for the easy answer ones..

[Val "w31" Comdriver]

anyone ever asked devs about adding wood/stone/metal stairs? something like this
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=520879363

[EvilChaosDX]

I'm hoping as we didn't hear about xbox that we will be hearing some good news soon.

Please Jat tell us more

[Tal'ruan]

Yeh they didn;t really answer about the primative option for singleplayer either. Just directed to a full conversion mod for multiplayer which I don;t think is anything close to what meant lol

[WolfY]

Just a little Xbox Date tease? Go oonn!

[Shahkulu]

I'm pretty sure it's been discussed before but can their be something to make tribes officially have to declare war for fighting to commence? Because I love myself a good war, it's just I don't like having to fight off trolls all the time I need a break ya' know?