Howdy hunters,

Time for our weekly status update! Have we got good news for you? Sure we have. So grab a cold one, sit back and indulge.

For one, after some additional tweaking and polishing we finally felt that our willow ptarmigans were ready to be released onto Hemmeldal, so we did so yesterday and a little bird told me they are tons of fun. For some willow ptarmigan action, make sure to pop by our official Twitch channel today at 16:00 CEST to catch the latest Lock&Learn 😉

Secondly, and it fills my heart with pure joy to tell you this, our brilliant character artist Ami and equally brilliant animator Morris have started working on upgrading our brown and black bears. Those poor guys have been admittedly our worst offenders among theHunter beasts when it comes to model and animations and the team are super thrilled to finally be able to give them some well-deserved love. I for one can’t wait to see the final result, having said that there is no ETA on when the upgraded bears will be released, so please bear with the existing ones for a bit longer 😉

A bit more on the things in progress. We are aware that the tracking is a bit broken right now and are working on it. Next week we are planning to present a delicious patch with fixes and of course some new stuff, so make sure to be there when we spill the beans.

The last animal for the Summer Fiesta competition is here and it’s a Blacktail Deer. Yes, we are that sneaky. So, if you’ve been mindful with your attempts, like we urged you to be, you can still turn things around in the remaining 4 days of the competition. Good luck to you all and may the best hunters win!

Tomorrow we are launching a little sweet GIF competition on our Twitter channel for you to unleash your theHunter creativity. Keep your eyes peeled for an announcement tomorrow for a chance to get some action and win some prizes.

And finally, what many of you have been patiently waiting for in the last week since the announcement of the Rockies – work-in-progress screenshots! Our artist Mattias has kindly responded to your pleas and snapped a couple of good ones for you. I’ll just leave them here and let you savour all the luminescent beauty.

That’s it from us for today!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

Here’s what’s been happening around here.

I’ve seen it rainin fire in the sky…

In the last status update we planted some seeds about the new reserve in the works and many of you have been spot on with your guesses. It’s a Rocky Mountains inspired reserve with fall environment, whoop whoop! The Rockies have consistently ended up high in our player surveys, as you can see from the snapshots of the results of our 2015 and 2016 surveys below (click to enlarge; some reserve options are of course hidden, but your collective opinion regarding those is duly noted).

Survey results 2015

Survey results 2016

Game design competition – winners announced

We’ve finally had a chance to read through the latest mission and competition submissions and the results are in! In the mission category our game designer Daniel praised the missions by Tanngnjostr for their fun and personality. In the competition category it has been a tight race between three contenders and the winner has been picked only a couple of hours ago. Congratulations to mdfortney! The two runners-up are were waiora and MonacoSteve, whose sets Daniel also liked a lot but some components of them are unfortunately not really implementable with our current competition system. The winners will receive 5000 em$, the Almost Dev Jacket alongside the honourable Contributor rank, and the runners-up will each receive 2000 em$. You can find the winning designs here.

The winning missions and competitions will be implemented in theHunter as soon as they are set up and tested. If your design was not picked this time, please don’t despair, we have lots of new animals coming up!

On the cable-backed bow

Following the release of the cable-backed bow we’ve been collecting your feedback and sentiments and felt that a short explanation from our game designer might be appropriate. The bow got a lot of critique due to it being too weak. These bows are not so powerful in real life and this is why it was kept at the lower end of the power spectrum. We have now increased it a bit, making it resemble a bow made of modern materials more than traditional materials. However, the cable-backed bow is still primarily to be used at distances of up to 30, perhaps 40 meters. Beyond that range it will lose power quite dramatically. That is, until gravity increases the force of the arrow again. On the way down, the speed of an arrow may increase slightly due to the gravitational pull. Pulling off shots like that is quite difficult but the expert archers out there keep on impressing us with their near impossible long range harvests.

Welcome new recruits!

Since the introduction of the new Recruit a Friend programme, oodles of new people have joined us by invitation of their friends, welcome guys! Many a Moose have been killed and many, many camping supplies, membership days and special items have been added to the recruiters. If you want to see the coveted .308 Engraved Bolt-Action Rifle in action, check out this video by HooCairs. We’re happy to see that you’ve been making use of this programme and hope to see more of your friends joining the troops of the EHR.

Say Ciao to Roberto!

A while ago we told you that our brave soldier Danny left his honourable post as the lead client programmer at theHunter to pursue his dreams overseas, and today we are happy to present his replacement, straight from Italy! Roberto will lead our client programming team, represented by Carl-Oscar, Patrick and Robin. Get to know him via his intro below and say hello!

Hi everyone! My name is Roberto Mangiafico and I’ve just joined the incredible theHunter team as Lead Programmer.

I moved to Stockholm from Italy facing the great Swedish winter to follow my passion for develop and play great games. I’ve started my career in the game industry in 2007 as programmer in Ubisoft, then in 2011 I left to create my own company Bad Seed and now I made a big step forward joining Avalanche and theHunter team!

I’m an avid player, game lover and technology addict and when I don’t play videogames I follow my other passions and do snowboarding, play volleyball and read manga!

See you in the forum and in the woods for a great hunt!

Apropos team changes, sadly, our game designer Daniel is also leaving us in a month to move on to new adventures. We are looking for his replacement (if you know anyone who could fit, please get in touch). Be sure to catch Daniel in the Lock&Learn this Thursday for a chance to soak up his theHunter wisdom and exceptional sense of humour.

Come hunt with us!

We are resuming our Friday play sessions, so if you want to hunt with devs, look for some open multiplayer games, between 16:30 – 17:30 CEST every Friday. I won’t be there this week, but the rest of the devs will, so make sure to kick their butts play nicely.

Happy hunting!

P.S. Here’s a small update for those of you who use our Facebook sign-up functionality. It has been temporarily removed as we are working on some website stuff. You can still connect your account to Facebook once signed up / logged in via the Settings, to share your trophy shots etc. We would also like to gather your feedback on how much you use of this feature, so we can prioritize it accordingly.

Discussion

Hello hunters,

Welcome to our weekly status update!

Birds of a feather

If you missed our game update earlier today, we’ve just released a flock of Rock Ptarmigans onto the mountainous regions of Val-des-Bois where the birds will join the previously solitary Alpine Ibex. The ptarmigans will surely remind you of Pheasants, since they are distant relatives, but they also have some distinctive features as well. For one, they are more social and thus prefer to hang out in larger families. In addition, they have an excellent camo and blend with the environment exclusively, so spotting them won’t be easy. I shall let you find out the rest by yourselves 😉

To help make the search for Ptarmigans easier, we’ll add 40 free units of climbing gear to every player’s inventory who starts a hunting session between today and the end of Monday, August 1st (CEST). Go crazy on those ridges and don’t forget your medkits.

“What about the Willow Ptarmigans?” I hear you ask. We are still working on those little ones. There are some small issues to be ironed out before we are 100% satisfied with their quality and performance. You may come across some traces of their presence on the website, such as achievements, but we’ll make a proper announcement once they are officially released.

Summer Fiesta firing up

On Monday we kicked off our traditional Summer Fiesta. Lots of challenging missions, a competition with a new format and, of course, sales, trophies and prizes. Tons of hunting fun to add some thrill and excitement to your month of August 😉

A few people have already completed all the missions, woop woop! So we’ll see whether Doc will need to step in again and stir the things up a bit. Today the new animal entered the competition, and I hope you’ve been using your attempts sparingly, since there will be lots of jokers later on 😉

You can find the description and discussion of this event in this forum thread.

Community design competition #2

It’s time for the second part of our hugely successful game design competition. There are still three species missing their specific challenges and we are calling for your imagination and game knowledge! It will be a bit different this time, as your task will be to create a set of missions or competitions for all fours duck species. Mallard, American Black Duck, Northern Pintail and Gadwall. The rules can be found in this forum thread and you will have ten days to submit your design for a chance to win 5,000 em$ / 90 membership days, a very special Contributor membership (that will remain with you for the rest of your life in theHunter) and an exclusive “Almost DEV” jacket!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hello good hunters,

Welcome to our weekly status update!

Musings on game crashes

Starting with the big news, in case you missed it yesterday. We released a game patch which has been one of the most celebrated and welcomed game updates in the last months, both in theHunter team and the community. At least for people who were affected by repeated game crashes. In the patch we implemented the community-found and tested fix that we communicated in our last status update. The result is heart-warming and inspiring. Not only do we keep getting reports from people who have been plagued by those crashes that are able to play again with no problem after the patch, but we also see a huge drop in the numbers in our crash reporter tool.

Why just a drop and not a total elimination you ask? That is the million dollar question. The truth is that in any game, especially such an old and complex one like theHunter, with such an immense amount of content, there will always be crashes. Different combinations of software, hardware, actions performed in the game, Internet and server hiccups along with a host of other factors can cause the client to crash. The roots of those rare, random crashes are exceptionally difficult to locate. Although we are 100% committed to fixing as much as we can, especially when it comes to serious bugs and issues, we need to make our peace with the fact that the game will crash for some players once in awhile.

More bits and pieces about the patch

With the last game update we also included a fix for Sitka Deer that capped their antlers and made them too small. On your next hunt, drop by Whiterime Ridge to check them out and, while you are there, why not do some of the Sitka Deer missions created by Mills?

Continued bug fixing

Some known issues that we are looking into right now are disappearing climbing ropes on Val-des-Bois, Arctic Fox footstep sounds as well as weapon wobble on the towers. We are aiming to release a smaller patch with fixes for those very soon. Stay tuned!

Time for a new animal?

If you say so! While fixing stuff, we haven’t stopped working on new stuff for you to continuing experiencing theHunter as a constantly-evolving game. Yes, a new species is coming soon! Well, better to say, not one but two different species, which are variations, coming to two different reserves.

Dying for a hint? I thought so. As we never like making it too easy for you, make sure to come and watch our Lock&Learn today at 16:00 CEST on our official Twitch channel. This time Johanna will be accompanied by our User Acquisition Manager, Sacha, who joined us a couple of months ago and is now taking his first steps into the EHR. They will be hunting on one of the reserves where one the (two) new subspecies will reside, while also dropping some hints on what it will be. To spice the things up, the first person to guess the species and announce it in the livestream chat will get 1500 em$ on the spot. Hope to see you there!

Hunt ‘em all in Hemmeldal!

We continue releasing bundles with community loadouts that won in our competition, and it’s now time for Hemmeldal’s “Hunt-em-all” loadout by SloNeZ. You can pick it up here at a pretty great 53% discount!

That’s it from us for today!

Happy hunting!

Discussion