Howdy hunters,

Last week saw no status update, with quite a few people on the team, including myself, having been mown down by disease. It’s good to be back though!

Testing dem bears

The Open Beta for Polar Bear that started off last week is still ongoing and will run until Monday. This is the thread for your feedback as well as updates from us. As always, your testing and feedback have been of incredible help to us, and we are busy working on making some changes on the bear’s model, plus bugs, that we gathered from your posts and comments. Once we’re done with the final tweaks and fixes, we’ll be ready to go!

Polar Bear during Open Beta, image by Hardtree

The feedback about the Polar Bear and the event-based game design we’ve received so far has been mixed and we’re of course taking all of it into consideration. A lot of people have been concerned about the frequency of events during which the bear will be huntable as a “normal” species. We’ll make sure to run those events often enough for everyone to have their chance to hunt these magnificent animals, as well as announce them well in advance, so you can prepare. Among the majority of concerned people, one of the most common questions seems to be whether the special hunting events will happen often enough for everyone to have a chance to participate in them. We can assure you that we’ll be planning them very carefully and will aim to find the sweet spot for everyone.

About cheaters – again

Recently we’ve seen a lot of highly toxic threads on the forum about cheaters, so we thought it’s time to address it once again.

For one, we hate cheating as much as you do and we ban people who do it with no trepidation. We are aware of the situation with the increased amount of them lately and we are by no means ignoring the situation or taking it light-heartedly. We do have special anti-cheating software in place that detects abnormal player behaviour, however, as with any software, it’s not perfect, and cheats do slip through the cracks. That’s why we are extremely grateful when you help us to find culprits. Having said that, we are strongly against “witch hunts” on the forum as these kinds of discussions bring more harm than good to the community and for that reason the forum staff removes them. Here is what you should do instead, if you want to help us to deal with cheaters as efficiently as possible.

If you suspect someone plays the game in any way which is not intended, please report them to support. By “not intended” we mean using third-party programs and exploiting bugs to gain a game advantage. There are a couple of things that should make you suspicious when you look at someone’s hunting history; for example, an unusually high amount of animals shot in a very short time frame, from the same place etc. We greatly appreciate your reports and we try to deal with them as fast as possible. Thank you for your cooperation on this.

New competition division for guests

Staying on the topic of cheaters, there have recently been an increased amount of reports about guest accounts placing at the top of competitions by means of cheating. A competition might sometimes end before we are able to tackle the culprits which as a result robs honest hunters of their em$ and trophies and we get that this is really frustrating, especially for some who have been supporting the game by buying memberships.

As an interim solution we’ve decided to separate competitions for free animals into guest and member divisions, and this separation will happen as soon possible. We’ll also be looking into how we can further improve the situation.

Bits & pieces

A short recap of the Valentine’s event – the final leaderboard for that one can be found here, congratulations to all the winners and participants! Since this event design and implementation has received a fair amount of improvement suggestions, the plan is to repeat it soon, taking that feedback into consideration.

The community contest to design competitions and missions is now over (at least the submission phase) and we are busy going through your entries. The battle is fierce, especially in the bison mission department, and it’s a pretty tough job to pick the best designs, as there are a lot of real gems there! We’re going through all the submissions right now and are hoping to announce the winners in one of the next status updates.

Team news

Our client programmer Josef will be leaving us in a couple of weeks, he has done a great job with cold weather gameplay, Polar Bear and many, many more cool things during his time with theHunter. We are super grateful and sad to see him leave, but we already have a new programmer who will fill Josef’s shoes. Meet Patrick!

Hello everybody! My name is Patrik Andersson and I’ve just joined the theHunter team as a Junior Gameplay Programmer. I’m really happy and excited to be here, and I’m looking forward to all the challenges that lie ahead!

Before I started here, I have been working as a system developer at ABBA the Museum (though it was a touring exhibition when I worked there) developing interactive applications. After that, I worked for 5 years as a system developer at Saab AB (Security & Defense Solutions) where I was in a team developing a simulator used by military forces for virtual training (briefly, almost like a 3D-game). I worked mainly with the graphics engine and other graphics/gameplay related programming.

In my spare time I enjoy playing games, work with my own programming projects and hang out with friends. I also have a thing for tabletop games, so I enjoy painting and playing with miniature figures (Warhammer 40.000 mainly).

That’s is from us for now, happy hunting!

Discussion

Hello hunters,

Welcome to a new status update in which we have some important things to tell you.

Time to confirm the sixth species coming to Whiterime Ridge. Well, it’s not exactly a secret anymore since a recent update to one of the reserve locations. The mighty Polar Bear it is! It was one of the top choices in the post-WRR survey and we thought that the arctic ice floats would remain pretty empty without someone jumping on them. However, naturally, we had some major concerns about introducing this animal to the game, given our stance on ethical and responsible hunting, and a Polar Bear is a vulnerable animal, the hunting of which is highly restricted in real life. We wanted to do it right. So, we tried to simulate real life conditions for hunting the Polar Bear as much as possible and the result has become the event-based game design which will be unique for this species at this point. According to the design, a handful of Polar Bears will spawn in Whiterime Ridge reserve, which you will not be permitted to shoot unless they attack you. Polar Bears killed in self-defense will not yield any score, nor will there be a harvest screen. Our good old Doc will of course send you an educational message on the matter too.

From time to time there will be special events in the EHR during which the Polar Bear population will increase due to various natural influences and animal control. During such an event the aforementioned restrictions will be lifted and players will be permitted to hunt Polar Bears like any other animal. Those events will run for long enough for players with not so much time on their hands to take part in and they of course will be announced well in advance.  I am sure that you all have a lot of questions about this game design, so please ask away in the forum and we will try to address them all.

To test the Polar Bear, we will be opening our beta servers for everyone, more details will follow early next week.

The EW team has now diligently responded to all of the questions in Ask us Anything – you can find their replies in this thread and can discuss them here. It is a bit of a lengthy read I am afraid, so make sure you have a drink and are comfortably sat before you embark on the reading journey. It has been a good exercise for us all and we are hoping to do it again some time!

Valentine’s Event or, to be more precise, the option of giftable points, has received some critique whereas you seem to like collecting our cute balloons and the ushanka “Mishka”. All feedback, both positive and negative, has been duly noted.

Finally, almost 2 years later than supposed, we are thrilled to present you the new trophies that will replace the old coins (the ones you have already received will not be replaced). The design for these trophies has been created by Captain Munch in our trophy design competition and here is what the final trophies made by Tomas look like:

That’s it for today, see you next week at the open beta!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

Another week has (almost) passed by and here’s what we’ve been busy with.

Server-based population
Calle and Josef have been working on a new feature under the working name server based population. Right now adjusting animal population or making any other change to that requires a separate patch, which is cumbersome and resource hungry, since each patch needs to be built and extensively tested before being released. By moving population control over to the server we’re making it super easy for us to make those changes when needed, which gives us much more freedom. Why do we need it? Glad you asked! For one, this new feature has something to do with the new species that is soon to appear on Whiterime Ridge (which will be revealed very soon, a tiny bit more patience!) and another idea we’ve been toying around with is special events during which, let’s say we increase the amount of rares, or non-typicals, or rare non-typicals, or high scoring bucks, or let’s say release hordes of kangaroos to Hemmeldal (kidding on that one). Does it sound like something you would enjoy?

Heart$ and all that

Early next week we are kicking off our traditional Valentine’s event that will last for one week and will be filled with hearts of all sorts, sales, and of course hunting challenges. You know the drill. Check back for more on Monday.

Design a mission or competition for theHunter!
Many of you have been asking where missions and competitions for the newest species are. The truth is that our game design department has been short-handed for quite some time, with only Daniel-san working on everything and anything, so he understandably hasn’t had a spare minute to spend on them. So, our community member Pappy1 (and, as I’ve been reminded, some other wise community people before ;)) had a million dollar idea – why not let the community help out? We thought it would be fun, since a lot of you know our missions and competitions intimately, have great storytelling skills and excellent hunting expertise – so here’s your chance to try on a game designer’s hat and write your name into the history of theHunter.

Here you can find detailed description and rules and ask any questions you might have. We are looking forward to your designs!

And other tidbits

The team has made a heroic effort to reply to all 113 questions we received in the Ask Us Anything (excluding duplicates and suggestions). We are still waiting for some late comers, but we are hoping to be ready to present them to you next week.

Some people have been experiencing the issue with patching (“Failed to extract NSIS sfx archive” error) since the last update. Our QA manager Dennis is on it and we’ll hopefully be able to solve it soon, until then feel free to turn your steps to Steam for getting your update.

And lastly, in case you missed it, yesterday we released .30-06 Bolt Action Rifle, another gem in our gallery of the classic old weapons, a true 20th (ehm) century icon. The store picture does not give it credit, so make sure to check it in the game (video courtesy of ronMctube) – it’s a rare beauty and a great weapon in all possible aspects.

See you in the forums and happy hunting!

Discussion

Hello hunters, here’s what we’ve been up to:

Improving guests’ experience

Yesterday we rolled out what may be one of our biggest updates ever, aimed at significantly improving our guest hunting experience. Guests can now hunt five species (Whitetail Deer, Pheasant, Snowshoe Hare, Cottontail Rabbit and European Rabbit) with their 12GA Single Shot Shotgun which they can grab in the store for free (in addition to .243). All three types of 12GA ammo now automatically replenish for all players, which will come in handy for other 12GA shotguns too. If you still have some friends waiting around to join in on the hunting bonanza, now’s the time to bring them along to the EHR! To ease the transition between Mule and Whitetail, Mule Deer will remain free to hunt until February 3rd. The overall community reaction to this update has been overwhelmingly positive, which has made us super happy. As always, we value a community thumbs up for important changes.

Planning ahead

Yesterday’s update aside, the EW team has spent this week preparing for the big server move, working on the new animal functionality (it will be slightly different from what you are used to), as well as planning the development for 2016. We thought to give you a small sneak peek into how we work with planning. So, yesterday the team got together and spent two hours brainstorming and then voting for ideas. All ideas were organized into six main buckets: Reserves, Animals, Features, Improvements (of the existing content and functionality), Events and Items – and weighed against three main criteria: 1) Must be fun for players / requested by the community; 2) Be in line with the existing tech (our engine limitations put constraints to a lot of cool ideas); 3) Be fun for the team to work on.

Ideas with the most votes landed on producer’s and game designer’s desks who will make the final call after having done another reality and community check. You’ll see the first results of this planning exercise in the second quarter of 2016, since everything up until March has already been decided upon.

Ask Us Anything update

We’ve received oodles of questions from you in the Ask Us Anything thread, and I am still busy organizing them into a comprehensible format before sending them over for the team members to answer. I don’t have an ETA when replies will be published, but we’ll do our best to do it soon.

Stock up on unique items

Good news for those of you who like hunting from towers – tomorrow, on January 29th, we’ll be kicking off a weekend membership campaign: when buying a three month membership or a Wayfarer bundle you’ll get a new Deployable Hunting Tower – Bare Wood (won’t be released in the store), when buying a 6 months membership or a Pathfinder bundle – 2 Bare Wood towers and a classic tH t-shirt (won’t be available in the store any more), when buying a 12 months membership or a Trailrunner bundle – 3 Bare Wood towers, the classic theHunter T-Shirt and a skunk hat (not buyable). The promotion will run until Monday, February 1st, so hurry up, this is a good chance for you to stock up on some unique items for free while prolonging your memberships. Make sure to follow our updates to know when this campaign kicks in and please note that this offer is only valid when buying memberships via www.thehunter.com (not Steam).

News from the EW squad

Today we are welcoming yet another new team member. His name is Greg and he is our new sound designer, read his intro below and say welcome in the forums, he has already started to lurk around and is very impressed with the quality and passion of discussions. We are also on the lookout for more awesome people to join our team – check the openings on the Avalanche homepage (look for Expansive Worlds) and if you or someone you know fit one of the openings, we’d love to hear from you!

One of the EW team New Year resolutions has been to hunt more on the live server, so we did an impromptu hunt last Friday. Some people were able to join and we had a blast. We’re planning to run those from time to time, mostly on Friday afternoons, and everyone is welcome to join. Keep an eye on the Multiplayer section of the forum to know the date and time 😉

Meet Greg

Hi everyone!

My name is Greg and I am happy to start off this year 2016 as part of theHunter Team, where I will take on the position of Sound Designer. I was born in Northern France and I moved to Stockholm in 2011 after having lived a couple of years in Barcelona.

Usually I spend my spare time playing music or trying to decide if my favorite beer is the Grimbergen or Brooklyn IPA (probably the Grim, let’s be honest). And I really like to hike as well, thanks Sweden for your amazing lakes and forests!

I am looking forward to making your game experience even more awesome!

Cheers!

That’s it from us for today!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hello hunters,

Time for our weekly status update. We’ve got lots of news for you in this one, so read on and let us know what you think in the discussion thread.

The new year has started with three new team members joining the fold. You can find more info about Morris, Dennis and Anna below. Make sure to read their intros and say hello, they are a cool bunch!

Improvements for guest hunters

So, as luck would have it, over the last weekend the 12GA single shot shotgun suddenly became free. It was a mistake on our part and we apologize for the confusion. To clear the things up a bit, this was part of a bigger update that went live prematurely. The upcoming update has been based on a lot of feedback we’ve received and is a part of our effort to make the theHunter experience more enjoyable for our guest players.
What will happen:

1. The 12GA single shot shotgun (now available for both em$ and gm$) will be given out for free (all three types of 12GA ammo will automatically replenish in the same way as .243 ammo). This variety of ammo will make it possible to hunt all current species in the game, except bison.
2. Whitetail Deer and Pheasant will become free to hunt, together with our old buddies rabbits and hares), whereas Mule Deer will become a “premium” animal (huntable only with a membership or a license). Tutorials and missions will be adapted accordingly. This change will allow guest players to hunt in more reserves  (those which contain Whitetail) with more diversity (upland fowl).

To whet your appetite for this upcoming change, we’ve added some very special rare pheasants to Hirschfelden and Logger’s Point. Go and find some!

Update for Windows XP users

We’ve been digging into the issue affecting Windows XP which makes it impossible for some players to play the game and, as we are still struggling to pinpoint the problem and, taken into account fact that support for Windows XP will cease in one and a half months, we had to take the tough decision not to spend any more resources on trying to solve the problem. We sincerely apologize to everyone affected. You can of course apply for a refund or a membership transfer right away (see the details here). We learned a lot from this lesson and we will do our absolute best not to let something like happen again in the future.

We’ve prepared detailed instructions on the next steps for our players who still use Windows XP or Vista. Please make sure to read through them carefully here. We’ve tried to tackle all possible scenarios and we hope that no one will feel left out. If you do, please let us know and we’ll look into your particular case on an individual basis.

Something old and something new, on something blue

On a final note, here’s some major things we’ve been working on in the first weeks of January. Our backend guys have been tinkering with the move of our forum and wiki to a new server (there will most likely be downtime for these services which will be announced later), our programmers have been fixing old bugs and almost the entire team has been working on something new –  a sixth species for Whiterime Ridge! It was one of the most popular animals in our latest survey and we are planning to release it after an open beta, similar to what we did with the ducks which was incredibly successful. Check back for more news on that later!

Meet Anna, Morris and Dennis

Anna

Hiya,

My name is Anna Bouveng and I joined theHunter team a couple of weeks ago as an Executive Producer. I will be developing and growing theHunter as a franchise – looking at our existing games, optimising and evolving them but also deciding where we go next. Despite a more top-line approach I still work closely with the dev teams to ensure that we are making the right decisions and working on things that you (hopefully) want. 🙂

Prior to joining Expansive Worlds I was at Spotify but have also spent 4 years at EA/DICE where I worked as a Marketing Manager on games like Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield 4, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and other fun projects.

I’m a gamer at heart and also did some programming way back when, though I leave that to the pros these days. My ‘passion for gaming’ started at the age of 5 on my SV-328, then the NES came and change my life with Super Mario Bros (yes, it’s my fave game and I still have my old NES plugged in at home). Gaming is part of my DNA and even though I’m new to theHunter I look forward to giving it a good go! I already learnt that the Battlefield run-and-gun approach does not seem to be the right way to get close to our gorgeous animals, but I’m getting there. 😀

Apart from my job I like to play games (currently a lot of LoL and Tomb Raider), read books, watch good action movies (and sometimes bad ones as well), solve crossword puzzles and I also workout frequently. I really look forward to working with the fantastic teams here at Expansive Worlds, meet all you players when out touring our reserves or talk to you in the forums.

Game on!

~Anna

Dennis

Hello everyone,

My name is Dennis Borg and I am the new QA manager as you might already have read about last week. I have been playing games for a very long time which feels like forever. I started out playing a lot of console games which I did for many years but then I started playing pc games too. When I am not working then I spend my time by playing games, watching movies and series, meeting people and writing. Before I started to work in the gaming industry I spent 1 year in Tokyo studying Japanese and after that I spent 2 years studying game design at PlaygroundSquad. After my education I worked for the company called Paradox Interactive as a QA.

Right now I am working hard to learn everything that is new to me, there is always a lot of things that I want to do and too little time. I am looking forward to get to know everyone much better and make this game much better. Happy hunting!

Morris
Hello hunters!

My name is Morris Belfrage and I’ve just started my internship as an animator here at Expansive Worlds.

I’ve been studying game development for quite a while now; first I did three years (bachelor’s degree in Game Development) at Stockholm University and after that I went to Future Games Academy, where I am currently doing my second year – which is meant to be spent at a company as an intern.

Other than games I spend my time reading books (I’m a sucker for fantasy, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic settings) or trying to complete one of my increasing piles of unfinished projects. Currently the project I’m working on is bleaching images onto T-shirts, which I’ve had some mixed results with :/

I’ve been reading a lot on the forums lately and I am really excited to begin working on a game with such an awesome community! Although I am not a real hunter myself, I do my research, and I put a lot of effort in making it as realistic as I can. Hopefully you will enjoy the animations I will make, and if not I hope you will tell me (especially when I animate things incorrectly, so that I can learn from it!) 😀

That’s it from us for today!

Happy hunting!

Discussion