Howdy hunters,

Welcome to another Thursday at theHunter Classic, where it’s status update time.

Hunter Score 2.0

Earlier today we released a new updated Hunter Score system. It features ranks, Steam achievements, special badges and header images for achievement collectors, as well as a new avatar presentation in your profile. You can find all the details about the new system in these game design notes. This has been a big feature for the whole team, Luna has been working on all the backend magic, Johan has created the great art and our new client programmer Linus has sorted out the code for the Steam achievements. Thank you guys, you’ve done a tremendous job <3

We are going to closely monitor our servers in the next days and jump on any issues that might be likely to occur when a feature of such magnitude is implemented. We’ll be answering any questions you might have, listening to your feedback and keeping you in the loop about the progress in the respective forum thread.

New Animal

As you know, we have been working on a new species for quite some time now. It is indeed headed for the outback of Bushrangers Run and it will be a Feral Goat! We chose them because we thought they would fit well in that reserve, and they offer what we believe will be some very interesting trophy hunts. The horns and fur can look in all manner of crazy ways, making hunting Feral Goats a unique experience every time, plus they make really great sounds. We are hoping to be able to share some sneak peeks with you in the upcoming weeks.

Baiting Changes

In response to your feedback, we have taken a stab at our baiting game design. David and Roberto have been digging deep into the code and trying to find ways to tweak the system. We even went as far as consulting our previous game designer Björn, as well as Danny, the client programmer who implemented the system in the very beginning. The conclusion is that bait sites have never worked as designed, so what we are trying to do now is find a way to make baiting gameplay more rewarding without compromising the integrity of the game. All I can say right now with certainty is that we will not go back to they way it used to be before, when you could have 10 bears at one barrel and 20 pigs at the feeder, climbing over each other trying to get to the bait. This was simply not good hunting in our book, so we are aiming to find a reasonable compromise.

Game Design Competition Winners

A while ago we ran a game design competition for missions and competitions for the animals of Timbergold Trails, and now it’s time to announce the winners!

• Bighorn Sheep competitions – Cityzen
• Bighorn Sheep missions – freck1es
• Grey Wolf competitions – tbug
• Rocky Mountain Elk competitions – Ash1302
• Rocky Mountain Elk missions – Dillakiller
• Grizzly Bear missions –  drakle
• Grizzly Bear competitions – BuiuRei

You might notice that there is no winner for grey wolf missions. This is because we felt the quality of submissions was slightly below that of the other species, and we feel this species deserves a high quality mission pack. Our internal game designer Patrick is going to work his magic on this pack of missions, making the set complete.

We are going to post the winning entries in the competition thread shortly and hope to introduce the mission packs and competitions soon, and take this opportunity to thank you all again for your participation and creativity in this competition. The winners will receive their rewards and coveted “almost Dev” jackets as soon as they contact me via private message to specify whether they want em$ or membership days, as per the original post.

Womanly Woman Event

And finally, please do not miss the last hours of our Womanly Woman competition – those foxes aren’t gonna harvest themselves!

That’s it from us for today!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

Hunter Score 2.0

Good to see you! It’s another exciting week at theHunter Classic and everyone is working hard.

Luna is finishing off the overhaul of the Hunter Score system, the sneak peek of which I shared with you last week. We’re hoping to be able to deploy it so you can see it firsthand very soon. In the meantime, if you spy some fishy achievements on Steam, don’t fret. They’re currently locked and sitting waiting for their time to be released properly and unlocked by you.

New Species

Ami and Moe have been busy working on our new species. Things are moving along nicely, albeit with some occasional hiccups as we’re trying out some new things here and there, but overall we’re making good progress. We hope to be able to share a first look with you soon, in the meantime, here’s a guessing game for you! Which reserve do you think our new darling will populate? A hint: the reserve in question was added after I joined theHunter team.

Baiting System Review

The client code team has also been keeping themselves busy getting our species to work in the game, working closely with our backend team on how we can make our baiting system more attractive for bears, pigs and, well, our players. All while poking into some new exciting but yet top secret stuff.

Reverse Draw Crossbow & Crossmania

This week we released a Winter Camo version of our popular Reverse Draw Crossbow and launched a Crossmania competition. Tons of EHR species, high harvest value requirements, all those things that you like 😉 Give it a shot. It’s divided into tiers based on Hunter Score, so no excuses for not trying out your skills and luck.

Trophy Shot Competition Winners

After the release of our Trophy Shot 2.0 and premium character poses we ran a Trophy shot competition and received oodles of entries in both premium and standard categories. You are endlessly creative and the quality of the submissions made it super difficult for us to pick the winners. We shortlisted 10 trophy shots in each category and then ran anonymous voting, but even then the battle was really tight. Anyway, the votes are in and we managed to decide on three winners in each of the categories as well as a bunch of runners-up who were extremely close! All runners-up will receive a 500 em$ prize.

Here are the breathtaking winner line-ups. Amazing job everyone, congratulations and thank you, it’s been a pleasure to judge your work!

Standard category:

1. Granti

2. hunterfisher

3. TheSheWolf

Premium category:

1. HooCairs

2. MewKitty

3. Rammstein59

Runners-up:

• heartslice15

• Pittie

• kahuamp (my personal favourite <3)

• jeanmouloude

That’s it from us for today!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hello hunters,

It’s Thursday in theHunter-verse and it’s time for our weekly update.

Trophy Shots 2.0
Yesterday we released a game patch with changes, fixes and a new feature. We call it Trophy Shots 2.0. For one, we added five versatile camera filters as well as animal freezing functionality to make it easier for you to position your trophies. Secondly, we also introduced a bunch of character stances which will let you further enhance your trophy shots by striking cool poses and showing off your weapons. Character poses are a premium feature and are available for purchase separately or in a bundle. Our animators Morris and Moe and programmers Patrik, Robin and Roberto have done a terrific job on this feature and we are thrilled to see that you are enjoying it.

Here are some of the trophy shots taken while testing the new feature on beta:

You can see more of the “new generation” trophy shots in this thread where we are running a competition in which you can win the whole pack of premium character poses, or, if you already have them, some ever-useful em$.

Manly Man Event

Today is the 23rd of February and as you might know (or remember from the event we ran a couple of years ago), there is a tradition in Russia and Russian speaking countries to celebrate all men on this day. Since a lot of theHunter Classic fans come from those countries, we are once again tapping into this tradition. To pay tribute to this day in a “manly” manner and with style, we’ve prepared a special Manly Man competition for you. Fierce bears, no safety of platforms, shortest range counts, all that sort of fun! You can also find a Manly Man bundle in the store. Our special February 23rd edition Ushanka with a bear paw emblem is also making comeback! It will be available in the store until the end of the week, grab it while you can. And a shameless plug; it’s my most favourite headwear in theHunter, here is me rocking it during the last year’s Movember

HunterScore Overhaul
In an attempt to improve the existing systems, we took a stab at our existing HunterScore and tried to make a couple of tweaks here and there to make it a bit more interesting and rewarding. Our backend programmer Luna has been working on it for a couple of months now and we are moving into the testing phase as we speak. There will be some new things for you there, including the long-awaited Steam achievements. Here is the sneak peek a.k.a. first iteration of some of the new features that will come with this update. Please bear in mind that this is just a work-in-progress and the design might change, but we will follow up with more details soon!

Lock&Learn is back

After the short hiatus Lock&Learn is back. Tune in at 16:00 CET today to watch Johanna and Stefan taking it to Redfeather Falls to try out their luck in the Manly man competition against Black bears.

That’s it from us for today, see you in the forums!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

Welcome to another status update!

Exclusive rifle with theHunter: Call of the Wild!

Today is a big day. Our younger brother, theHunter: Call of of the Wild has released into the wild (pun intended). If you’ve diligently followed the pre-release news announcements and streams, I’m sure you’re psyched to try it out. You can buy it on theHunter: Call of the Wild Steam store page.

To celebrate the new creation from the EW furnace, we’re running a promotion in both games. If you buy theHunter: Call of the Wild in the first three months after release you will receive this exclusive .270 Bolt Action Rifle “Call of the Wild” in theHunter: Classic. This rifle will never be released in our store and hence will have no achievements attached to it. theHunter: Call of the Wild is also offering unique rifle and Ghillie Suit for active and loyal theHunter: Classic players. You can find more details on how to participate in this promotion and redeem your rewards in both games on this page.

Valentine’s Event

In the meantime our Valentine’s event is well underway in its usual hearty fashion. We still have 4 days to go and the battle for the teddy bear trophies is wide open. If you are not a competitive soul, you might want to check out the missions for a special teddy bear collectable challenge and its reward (a Deployable Hunting Tower in bare wood).

We hope you’re enjoying heart$ hunting, teddy bear collecting, stocking up on bargains in the store and all the other stuff that makes this week in February special in theHunter.

New Website Features

Today we’re releasing a long-awaited function on our website and launcher. You can now delete images from your photo gallery! Not only that, we’ve also added a sharing function, which makes copying and sharing URLs of your trophy shots on the forum or elsewhere much easier (right in time for the upcoming Trophy Shot poses!). Give it a try and go crazy with all those weirdly shaped mooses and shameful kills that you’ve been longing to get rid of for years. Please bear in mind that deleting images is irreversible, so think twice before hitting that delete button.

Following your feedback to the friends list after the last game update, we’ve also improved its functionality with three small tweaks. You can now delete your friends from the friends tab on your profile (but please keep Doc there as he might feel lonely), we have tweaked the online status when you view someone else’s profile, and we have increased the limit of friends from 1000 (an old restriction from years ago) to 2000. If any of you are so popular that you have, or expect to have more than 2000 friends, please let us know!

One thing to note regarding the online status of friends is that there can be a short delay after a player logs in before you see them as being online. There can also be a long delay in them appearing offline after they log out. This can be attributed to people not logging out but just closing the launcher or website. We might try to tweak this again in the future but for now, try out the new features and let us know your feedback!

Ask Us Anything Replies

And finally, here is something bedtime reading for you all. The replies to Ask Us Anything with the theHunter: Classic team! Read on to learn about how the clothes camo works, our thoughts about the developmet stage of reserves in theHunter, and who is the most fun dev.

That’s it from us for today!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hi there hunters,

Another Thursday, another status update. Some things never change 🙂

Shooting rest in town!

Today we released a game patch with a brand new feature – a Shooting Tripod Rest. A “shooting stick” has been a popular request in our Thoughts and Suggestions forum, probably since the very beginning of the game and understandably so, as weapon wobble is the main culprit behind those questionable shots. In the past we had some doubts about introducing this pretty powerful feature to theHunter, taken into account our skill system as well as already existing world items which offer significant wobble reduction. Nevertheless, we felt that there was a place in our game for a more portable and lightweight, well, stick-thingy that you can carry around and use with the majority of your weapons on the fly, especially on terrain where long grass or bushery doesn’t allow for going prone to take that perfect shot.

We went for the tripod version due to some technical obstacles with the one-legged tool and after many hours of coding, animating, testing and tweaking we are proud to present the result and are curious to hear your field reports. This nifty piece of equipment works as a world item, so you can put it out and dismantle similarly to tents etc. As with any other world items, only hosts can place them in Multiplayer games (but guests can of course use the host’s shooting rests) and we will be investigating the possibility for guests to place their equipment too (no promises yet, but I will keep you in the loop on our progress, if any).

Shooting tripod rests will temporarily add +7 to the skill of the weapon being used. For weapons that are already leveled to skill level 13 and higher, it will add additional wobble reduction beyond what you can expect at skill level 20.

You can check the tripod rest in action in this video that HooCairs kindly made for us in the beta environment during the last stages of our testing:

If you are looking to test the new toy, make sure to activate the special Deer Sniper competition beforehand, to give your tests more fun and purpose!

Valentine’s Event

Next week on Monday we are starting our traditional Valentine’s Event that will last for one week and will be filled with daily competitions, nice prizes and who knows, maybe an astray mission or a sale will also sneak in. Make sure to check back to our communication channels on Monday so as not to miss the most hearty hunting event of the year 🙂

Some of you might have noticed that the Valentine’s competitions were inadvertently released over last weekend. This was of course unintentional, they were untested and sneaked onto live by mistake and we sincerely apologize to those of you who lost time participating. By the time we discovered the mistake it was too late to remove them as it would have caused serious game problems to the people already enrolled, so we decided to let them run their course to the end. We tried to compensate those of you who lost their (incorrect) trophies and who have contacted us, but I hope that your time won’t be wasted any way, since you can see it as getting an extra weekend of practicing 😉 We will of course make sure that this won’t happen in the future.

Concerns about future

With the release of theHunter: Call of the Wild less than a week away, many of you have been holding your breath in anticipation but there are also many who expressed concerns about what it will mean for the future of theHunter Classic. We had a good discussion about this in the forum the other day, and I would like to reiterate my reply, addressing those concerns here again, for those who might have missed it:

This is a really good question [how can you be sure that theHunter Classic will have resources to continue developing and maintaining the game if people would leave for theHunter: Call of the Wild?] and definitely the one I’ve heard a lot in the last couple of months. I am confident that theHunter Classic will continue to stay relevant and attractive to the community for years to come, alongside our bigger (or, in some respects, smaller) brother, theHunter: Call of the Wild. The reason is that we offer different hunting experience with a deeper gameplay and around-gameplay features, significantly more content, established and passionate community that has time and money invested into the game and strong personal bonds with each other. After 9 years (8 years of live operations + development) theHunter Classic is bigger than a game, at least for many of us.

Another thing is that we have an exciting roadmap ahead including some things that we have never done before, and the team is on fire.

Yet another thing is that theHunter: Call of the Wild simply has very much higher system requirements, which are too high for a large percentage of our community. Sure, some people will leave for theHunter: Call of the Wild, some people will play both games, some people will stick to theHunter Classic. But all in all, I don’t see any real danger or serious competition for theHunter Classic in the long run. I’ll say it again, both games are supposed to complement each other, not compete with each other.

… and one for the road

I wanted to share with you another sneak peak of the upcoming feature we’ve been working hard on recently. Premium trophy shot poses! You will soon be able to use these to showcase your trophies and weapons in a more classy way. This is just one of many, the work is ongoing and we’ll keep you posted when they are ready for your EHR adventures!

And on that note, I wish you a nice hunting weekend and hope to see you next week!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

Welcome to another status update! I am taking over from Stefan this week to give you a slightly deeper insight into what has been happening behind the curtains in the EW headquarters, well, at least the Classic part of it. For all the exciting news and developer blogs on theHunter: Call of the Wild, make sure to join their official community hub.

What’s cooking

Both December and January have been extremely productive for the team. We released the beautiful wolves and crows onto Timbergold Trails, made a complete overhaul of our Black and Brown bears, gave your dogs and backpacks an upgrade in form of pouch vests, polished some animations, upgraded and added new membership bundles as well as released duck missions and competitions. With the exception of a couple of short server hiccups we have been keeping the game stable, and the amount of crashes has been at an all-time low. There are still bugs and minor crashes in the game, as there always will be, but we are committed to fixing as many things as possible as we continue working on new stuff.

Speaking about which, I wanted to give you a small insight into what has been keeping us busy in the last month. We’ve started this year off by brainstorming and putting together a roadmap of releases for the next half a year and, if we manage to pull off everything we have planned, we will be looking at a truly remarkable period for theHunter Classic. Fingers crossed. A lot of things are already work in progress, for example we’ve started working on a new interesting species as well as a new and even more interesting feature. In the meantime we have been poking at some existing things that we wanted to improve for quite some time, so we took a stab at Whitetail and Blacktail Deer animations as well as deleting images from the trophy gallery and more things that are a bit too early to reveal. Our main goal for the upcoming months is to try to find a balance between adding more depth to the game in the form of new features, as well as improving the general quality of the game by fixing bugs, while at the same time releasing content and running lots of events on a regular basis to keep the ship afloat and players engaged.

Free Extra Equipment

As I’ve mentioned, last week we updated our good old membership bundles and added a couple of new “special” ones. At the same time we also put together a small sweet pack with extra consumables that every hunter needs in the EHR. You can grab it for free on our Steam page here (you would need to connect your theHunter account to Steam to get the bundle, but you can disconnect it any time later on). Naturally, you can buy it only once and we would appreciate if you could leave a comment on the bundle store to let us know what you think about it.

Bits and bobs

In case you missed our new beautiful .308 Bolt Action Rifle “Carbon” that we released this week, make sure to check it out! We also have a special competition running right now to celebrate its release and hopefully encourage you to try the rifle.

We’ve received a great deal of fantastic submissions to the game design competition for Timbergold Trails animals, thank you for your creativity and engagement on this one! We’ll be going through the entries over the next week to pick the best and most fitting for theHunter. We’ll keep you posted about the results!

We haven’t forgotten about the Ask Us Anything (although it might feel like we have) that we did last year. The team has started going through the long list of questions and we are hoping to be able to release the responses soon.

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

Discussion