Status Update

Hello hunters,

Most of the team is back from their holidays, fresh and well-rested (and annoying to those of us who haven’t had a chance to go on their vacations yet), and the work on the new reserve and species is humming here. In the meantime, we’re planning to release more of exciting stuff, such as a new weapon and more goodies. If everything goes as planned, in the next status update we’ll be able to share some sneak peek screenshots of the new animal with the community. Until then, since some of you have asked for more hints, I can reveal as much as it has four legs and one tail 😉

August Fiestivities

The Summer Fiesta event and grand sale started on Monday, much to the joy of the community. Since the event has been highly appreciated, and because some of you have already completed all the missions, we’re thinking to spice up the Fiesta a bit, more news about this to come!

AMA with NAOutdoors

NaoutdoorsIt’s time to bring back the popular Ask Me Anything, and this time it will be with David Lucas, a.k.a NAOutdoors, our support champion, one the oldest veterans of the game and all-round cool guy. Please note that, although he is our support manager, support questions will not be allowed, as we have a special channel for those.

David’s AMA thread will be unlocked for 48 hours, starting at 9:30 CEST on August 8th. All the questions will be moderated and supervised by the moderation team, the standard AMA rules apply.

UPDATE: NAOutdoors’s AMA thread is now unlocked. Welcome with your questions!

That’s all from us for today!

Happy hunting!

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Status Update

Hello hunters,

Here comes a usual status update from us.

Ballistics Tweaks

Following our yesterday’s game update, lots of you asked for more details on the ballistics tweaks that had been introduced for a number of weapons. As promised, Björn wrote down some information for you explaining what had been changed and what those changes would mean for the gameplay. Please read it in a separate post.

Summer Fiesta

summer-fiesta-splash

To make the rest of your summer hunting a bit jollier and to help you savour the waiting for new species and reserve, we’ll be throwing a small event with a bunch of special challenges from Max the Taxidermist, Doc’s madcap buddy. The announcement and rules of the Fiesta event will be posted in the forums on Friday, so stay tuned.

German forum

German forum huntertalk.de is currently being inaccessible due to an update error. We’re working on bringing it back, our apologies for this inconvenience to the German community!

Twitter milestone and #thehunterart

We’ve recently reached a milestone of 4000 followers on Twitter, so we ran a small screenshot competition called #thehunterart to thank you for your support.

Here are the 4 winning shots, senders of which received some em$ from us, plus the fifth (the lowest one) which got a special token award for the funniest screenshot:

@AndySedyGaming

AndySedyGaming

@RynDaniel

ryndaniel

@Tactical_Mango

Tactical_Mango

@FunnySquirrelTH

FunnySquirrelTH

@jonnyk420x

jonnyk420x

Make sure to follow us on Twitter to learn about upcoming competitions and prize draws.

Happy hunting!

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Server Update

Bug Fixes
* Fixed issue where avatar photos were not set as uploaded in the database causing avatar photos to disappear after some time.
* Added some missing translation to competition, mission and leaderboard pages.
* Fixed issue with all attachments to weapons being called “6,5×55 Nosler Accubond” when hovering over them.
* Added the score sheet page to animals even if the score is 0.
* Correct language is now used when starting the game from Steam.
* All goose decoys are now being counted on the map.
* Clicking the Bundles category no longer opens the Mallard License subcategory in the menu.

Features
* Added translation to variation names for items in the Store (eg. ‘Huginn’, ‘Carbon’, ‘Liberator’ etc.)

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Game Update

Features

* .50 Inline Muzzleloader

2014_07_inline_muzzleloader

Changes
* If you try to climb a very steep slope, you may slide back a few meters
* Trajectory, Penetration & Damage tweak for increased realism of:
.300 Rifles
.30-06 Rifles
8×57 Rifles
.308 Rifle & Handgun
.270 Rifles
.243 Rifles
.357 Revolvers
.44 Revolvers
.454 Revolvers
.50 Cal Muzzleloader Round Ball
12 GA Shotgun Slug
12 GA Buckshot

Bug fixes
* Fix for scent eliminator not always working for clients in a multiplayer game.
* Fix for missing localized “unassigned” text in the F3 team view
* Fix for turkeys responding to turkey box caller
* Fix for Waterfowl Blind message having a Ground Blind icon

Discussion

 

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Turkey hunting receives an overhaul

Today we’re introducing a couple of significant changes to turkey hunting, with a new “locator” caller, turkey decoys and tweaks in the species’s AI. Our game designer Björn has put together some notes for you, make sure to read them through before grabbing the new lures and setting off for Settler Creeks or Whitehart Island.

Decoys

decoy_turkey_female_01_256 decoy_turkey_male_01_256

Turkey decoys work a little differently than the previously released waterfowl decoys. While the latter ones are primarily used to get high-flying flocks to land, the Turkey decoys are in the first place applied for attraction and distraction purposes.

The attraction component is similar to that of scent and callers, however detection is affected by the birds’ field of view, which means that they need to be fairly close to, and have an unobstructed view of the spread to have a chance of being attracted.

While this can be considered a serious downside compared to the traditional “Box Caller”, there are some very nice advantages to using decoys.

Turkeys stay longer at decoys than they do at a call location and, since they do not require active engagement from a hunter, decoys can also be used to draw the birds away from hunters rather than straight to them, which naturally decreases the chance of detection as they approach.

The final and possibly most important advantage to using decoys vs. a caller is that in addition to attraction they also provide distraction. Birds attracted by decoys are highly focused on their target and thus are less likely to detect hidden hunters. This can be thought of as an additional camo bonus being applied to hunters for as long as a bird is at the decoy site.

The attraction and distraction effect stack over multiple simultaneously detected decoys up to a maximum of three.

Locator Caller

caller_turkey_01_256The turkey locator caller functions in a similar manner to that of the Pheasant caller. The call sound does not attract Turkey but creates a chance of a response from any male Turkey in the area, which in turn allows the hunter to track it down using the corresponding audio clue on the HunterMate.

Response chance is tied to the score of the individual, with higher scoring Turkey being less likely to respond than low scoring individuals.

Turkey AI Adjustments

Most animals in the game get more spooky and thus harder to hunt the higher they score. This creates a nice relationship between effort and reward, when skilled hunters can increase their chance of better trophies through the way they play. Turkeys have never been a part of this system but this has now been changed as a part of this Turkey flavoured revamp. Higher scoring males are now somewhat more spooky while females and low scoring males remain at the previous difficulty level.

A Final Advice

Since decoys are detected visually, Turkey have to be fairly close to notice them. To increase your chances, try using the “Box Caller” as a means to get them within visual range of the decoys. Decoys always override all other lures, which means that they will forget about walking to your call location as soon as they’ve detected the decoys and leaving you to focus on taking that epic shoot with your favourite close range weapon…

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Status Update

Hello hunters,

There was no usual status update last week, since we communicated all the releases and changes in the game updates, so here comes a double portion of news from us.

What’s cooking?

Half of the EW team is still out of office, but the work on the new species is moving along nicely, albeit slowly. With all the work to be done down the line, we are not ready to tell you the release date yet. I know that most of you are waiting impatiently to learn what it is, but it is still too early for us to reveal. The first drafts of the new animal look stunning, and I can’t wait to share some screenshots with you at a later point.

There is yet another new thing we’ve started working on, which is a far more colossal project than a new species and which is, hopefully, will get you even more excited. Namely, for the last weeks our art team has been busy working on the new reserve, yes! We can’t share yet what kind of terrain it is or when it’ll be released, but the work is pretty much in the inception phase right now. According to our art guys, the new reserve is going to be ”glorious”, and it’s something we all are looking forward to.

Known issues

Because of the holiday season, there has been a backlog of mostly web-related issues, which have been an annoyance for lots of players, including ‘Previous competitions’ not working properly, avatars disappearing etc. You can find the complete list here. Once our backend staff is back to the office this week, they’ll be looking to start working on them. We apologize to those of you who have been affected and had to wait for those problems to be resolved!

Turkey hunting revamp

2014_07_new_turkey_equipment

Today one of our most unpopular, although unjustly, species has received an overhaul, which will hopefully help it to rise to theHunter stardom. To be specific, we’ve released decoys, a new ”locator” caller and introduced some tweaks to the bird’s AI; the details can be found in Björn’s release notes. Go give the new equipment a try and let us know your feedback!

That’s it from us for today, happy hunting!

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Game update

Features

* Turkey Decoys

* Turkey Locator Caller

Read the release notes

Changes

* If you buy items while the game is running, you now get a message in the top left corner telling you when they are available in the Lodge / Tent Inventory.

* Rifle & Revolver trajectory improvements. Adjustments for increased realism in regards to to calculations of air resistance. The result is a tiny bit less bullet drop for rifles and a lot more for revolvers. Zeroing & damage remains the same for all weapons.

Bug fixes

* Fixed the .454 scope bug. (it jumped around when looking at another player firing)

* Fix for feedback message saying “Ground Blind” instead of “Waterfowl Blind”

Discussion

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Game Update

Following community feedback, we have made a number of tweaks and changes to a number of existing weapons:

Changes
.454 Revolver – Increased penetration
.454 Revolver – Now permitted vs. Feral Hog & Wild Boar
.454 Ammo – Capacity cost increased to reflect calibre size
20 GA Bird Shot Ammo – Capacity cost decreased to reflect calibre size
.44 Revolver – No longer permitted vs. Turkey

Bug Fixes
12 GA Pump-Action Shotgun (Royal Edition) – Now correctly contributes towards all missions that require a 12 GA Pump-Action Shotgun

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Game Update

Features

* .454 “El Toro” Revolver

2014_07_454_revolver

* 12 GA “Royal Edition” Pump Action Shotgun (given to those who have purchased the German cap in the Football Jamboree event, NOT available in the store)

2014_golden_shotgun

Changes
* You can no longer take photos while a photo is uploading to the server. A text is now shown in the left bottom corner of the screen when the game is uploading a photo to the server.

*EDIT: Increased penetration power for .30-30 Lever Action Rifle.

Bug fixes
* Fix for the pink screen on the huntermate when confirming clues when playing the game with Dutch language.
* Fixed animation bug that caused the player to do a small rotation to the left when walking backwards while crouching

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Status Update

Howdy Hunters,

Here comes a small batch of updates from us:

Football Jamboree – Awarding prizes
We know that those of you who have bought Jamboree caps can’t wait for the end of the event to lay their hands on the shotgun with gold engraving. Although the event ends on July 14th, the shotguns and trophies will be awarded to those who qualify two days later, on July 16th. We sincerely apologize for this short delay, but the people who will be issuing awards are on holidays until then.

Known issues
A bit more on the topic of holidays; there are a number of bugs and small issues waiting to be fixed until people responsible for that area of the game are back to the office. These include disappearing avatars, not being able to ban members from multiplayer games, problems with buying memberships via Steam experienced by some players and a couple of others. We’re asking for your patience when it comes to those things, we’ll do our best to fix everything once we’re in full power again.

New community feature – Tip of the week

2014_07_tip_of_the_week

Today we’re launching a new community feature – Tip of the week. If you have a helpful, insightful, hilarious or even just unique tip, share it with the community in this nomination thread or tweet it with the hashtag #thehuntertip. If someone else’s great tip has been an invaluable help in your hunting adventures, feel free to nominate it as well. The best tips will be featured on our communication channels on a weekly basis and collected in theHunter tips database for everyone’s use.

That’s all from us for today.

Happy hunting!

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