October Dev Update!

October Development Update - What's Coming Next

Hi Operatives, we appreciate it’s been some time since our last major update, so we wanted to bring you up to speed on what the team has been working on behind the scenes to give you a closer look at what’s coming next to Deathground.

Below you’ll find some highlights on player mechanics, AI and animation improvements, and system overhauls. These changes affect core parts of the game so we’ve wanted to make sure they’re properly implemented, tested and working together before we release the next major build.

Lighting & Visual Overhaul

One of the largest areas of work has been a major update of the game's lighting and visuals.

We’ve been significantly overhauling the game's lighting, including adding greater support for Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen lighting system on supported hardware. Lumen allows for dynamic global illumination and reflections, more naturally mimicking the way that light bounces off surfaces throughout an environment. We’re also continuing to optimise these changes across different hardware and graphics settings.

Implementing these changes has meant revisiting lighting across all of our environments, alongside updates to effects and supporting assets and we hope you’ll experience and enjoy the difference between the existing lighting and the new lighting overhaul soon, as demonstrated here!

Above (Before) - Below (After)

BIOMEDICAL - SECURE THE SPECIMEN (MAIN ENTRANCE)

Looks a little like someone left the door open while it was raining, anyone know where maintainance has gotten to? The plants in here are starting to get a little out of control!

Above (Before) - Below (After)

BIOMEDICAL - SECURE THE SPECIMEN (MAIN HALL)

Wait, I don't remember this Tyrannosaurus-rex skeleton being here - maybe Dr. Choi has gotten an early start on halloween decorating. Funny, I never pictured her as being the spirted type.

Above (Before) - Below (After)

BIOMEDICAL - SECURE THE SPECIMEN (3RD FLOOR WEST CORRIDOR)

You might notice a few changes other than artwork throughout the updated levels, like new shortcuts, additional places to hide more things to vault over while escaping from Raptors...

Game Feel Improvements

We’ve also made several improvements and adjustments to moment-to-moment gameplay, such as the character controller and UI, based on your very helpful feedback.

Player movement, cameras and interactions have had some much-needed polish, including;

• Camera sway (When moving or rotating the camera)
• Sprint blur (So Sprinting feels a touch faster, while still being balanced!)
• Crouch vignette (So it's easier to tell at a glance when you're crouched)
• Item sway (Which helps items appear less static when moving the camera)
• Pickup/Interaction animations (Picking up items and interacting with buttons, levers and more)
• Tweaks to the flashlight (Brightness, distance, and increased sway to feel more dynamic)
• Increased jump height (just to make clearing gaps a little more pleasant)

We're aware that some of these features may have a negative impact for people who suffer from motion sickness, which is why everything camera/movement-based can be adjusted in the gameplay settings to match your preference.

Item, camera, and flashlight sway reacting to camera movement.

A subtle blur appears at the edge of the screen while sprinting

Crouching now shows a subtle vignette to better let you see your position at a glance

AI & Animation Improvements

On the AI and animation side, we’ve been working to make dinosaur movement and behaviour feel more natural, with improvements to navigation, targeting, attacking, environment interactions and animations.

Raptor pathing/navigation has continued to improve in several ways, such as allowing Raptors to jump up/over small gaps to chase players.

Previously, Raptors would find an alternate route around to continue chasing you getting progressively more annoyed at your little game of 'ring around the rosie.'

Now, Raptors have learned to follow players up short ledges, or over gaps - Clever girl...

We've improved the avoidance between raptors, preventing overlap whilst keeping movement feel more natural than previously. This is just a first step to improving interactions between multiple dinosaurs.

How polite, turns out personal space is important even for Utahraptors.

Another issue was the harsh turns which Raptors would often perform, so we’ve adjusted the way navigation is calculated to smooth out the actual path which Raptors follow while moving.

While moving from point A to point B Raptors perfom a whole heap of mental arithmatic to figuire out what that path actually looks like, aren't their brains amazing.

Improving Raptor movement also includes the ongoing implementation of Unreal’s Motion Matching system, together with supporting and directional animations, to help create smoother, more responsive motions.

Here you can see a range of brand new animations that will be included as part of the Motion Matching implementation. Side steps, backsteps and diagonal steps as well as sudden stops from walks, runs and sprints.

In addition to these movement adjustments, we've been significantly expanding the ways that dinosaurs can interact with the environment, including new interactions with multiple new types of objects in the environment.

Some interactions will also have an effect on gameplay if you look closely, you might see that after the Raptor bashes into the vending machine, a bottle drops out - that could come in handy!

Alongside continued balancing and improvements to the Raptor and Compys, we’ve also been working on a full AI version of the Allosaurus, which is set to feature in a brand new and upcoming mission, but more on this soon!

Audio Occlusion & Obstruction

Occlusion has now been implemented, meaning players will be able to more accurately pinpoint the location of nearby dinosaurs.

If a dinosaur is in another room, behind a wall, on the floor above you or somewhere in the same room, the sound will now more realistically represent both the dinosaur’s position and the environment between you.

Voice Chat & Proximity Chat

Another highly requested feature that is now fully implemented is in-game voice chat.

Integrating voice chat with our existing audio systems has not been without its challenges, requiring considerable development and testing, but is now functional in both multiplayer lobbies and missions

During gameplay, player voices will naturally become quieter as they move further away from one another, adding another element to teamwork and communication. We hope you’re excited to hear your friends getting mauled by the dinosaurs in the upcoming update.

There's now additional audio settings for voice chat but also a new set of UI and HUD visibility settings in the menu that players can adjust.

Until then!

Thanks all! You'll continue to see further improvements, new content, and far more of what we’ve been working on, across multiple updates, so keep an eye out for patch notes when those drop!

As always, thank you for your continued support, feedback and bug reporting. It all helps us to keep improving Deathground throughout Early Access.

Until the next update, Operatives!