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

Howdy hunters,

Welcome to a new year at theHunter! The Expansive Worlds squad are back from their holiday breaks and so are our weekly status updates. We’re kicking off the new year by welcoming some new team members. QA manager Dennis, Executive producer Anna and an animation intern Morris. You’ll get to know these guys better next week.

Here are some snippets of what else we’ve been up to so far.

Ask Us Anything

Do you have some questions for us? I imagine many of you do! Here’s a unique chance to receive a reply to a question you’ve always wanted to ask. Our Ask Us Anything is back! Unlike our previous sessions, this time you can direct your questions to the whole team and I’ll do my best to coordinate the team’s response efforts by relaying them to right people. The AUA thread will be open for 5 days, starting at 15:00 CET on Wednesday, January 13. All questions will be moderated and supervised by myself and the moderation team. I’ll do my best to get you the answers to your questions by within a week of the AUA session closing.

Here’s a reminder of our AUA rules:

• Our Code of Conduct applies
• No tech support and bugs related questions, as these usually require a thorough personal investigation and we have specific channels for those type of queries (customer support and Bug Reports forum)
• Try to avoid opinionated questions, eg. ”Why does the new gun suck?”
• Do not repost your question multiple times
• All questions may be asked, but not all questions may be answered, although we’ll do my best to reply to everything we can. If I the answer is unknown or can’t be revealed, I’ll let you know. Questions will be answered not necessarily in the order in which they’re posted.

The Ask Us Anything thread is now open

Regarding cheaters

We’ve noticed an increase in the amount of reports on cheaters as well as heated discussions regarding this controversial subject in the community forum. We hate cheaters as much as you do and in accordance with our zero-tolerance approach, they do get banned immediately once we have obtained the necessary proof. However, we want to discourage people from accusing other players publicly and indulging in what can only be described as “witch hunts”. We don’t allow and won’t tolerate such behaviour within our community platforms because we don’t want innocent people to suffer unnecessarily. If you suspect someone of cheating, please file a report at support.thehunter.com and we’ll check all the information provided and, if the case stands, that person will be banned. Thank you for your cooperation assistance, which offers tremendous help in fighting dishonesty within theHunter!

Holiday Event results

Our Holiday event is over and you can find the leaderboard with top 50 here. Congratulations to all the winners, you should by now have received your prizes and trophies. If you haven’t, please contact support at support.thehunter.com and we’ll sort it out as soon as we can.

We’ve also raffled two more revolvers among all the participants and here are the two lucky winners: HaruoRhs gets a Mule and BearsBack gets a Stallion

Missions and competitions

There have been some questions about missing missions and competitions for the newer species. We are planning to add them, it’s just that our game designers have had their plates full over the last few months, so it’s been taking longer to develop them than usual. We hope to be able to release something fun and engaging for you soon.

Downtime over New Year’s eve

We received reports about a lot of players not being able to play for hours during New Year’s eve. Our backend developer Calle has dug into this matter and has advised me that there was a problem with Google Cloud and certain certificates. The problem self-corrected after a couple of hours. Sorry if your New Year’s eve was affected.

Mungo667 and Morpheus visiting Expansive Worlds

And finally, a wee bit belated, but we received a very nice visit back in autumn. Our German community member Mungo667 visited us with his dog Morpheus on his way to hunting in the Swedish municipality of Åsele. Mungo667 met the team, learned about how we work, did a QA session with our game designer Phil and got a theHunter T-shirt for his dog. It was great to have you Mungo667!

Here is the sweet Morpheus rocking his theHunter T-shirt!
That’s it from us for today, check back next week for more news from us and don’t forget to ask your question in the Ask Us Anything.

Happy Hunting!

Discussion

Hey hunters,

Welcome to our last status update of 2015!

In this update we’re going to be looking back at the year gone by, and introducing new members of our team!

Let’s sum up 2015!

The year has been one of a kind in theHunter’s history. We’ve released a record number of reserves, species and game features, not counting minor pieces of content and fixes. It’s been a great, albeit occasionally bumpy, road and we are so grateful for your continued loyalty, ongoing support, participation in events, sharing of happy and angry posts in the forum and, in general, being the best gaming community out there. We appreciate you very much and we’re looking forward to spending 2016 together with you.

Here are some numbers for everything that has happened in 2015:

• New reserves – 2
• New species – 9
• New game features – 6
• New weapons – 15
• New pieces of equipment / scope / lures / consumables – 30
• New wearables (for a hunter & dog) – 57
• New missions – 131
• New competitions – 86
• Bugs fixed – 210+
• Special events – 10
• Community created competitions and prize draws – 44
• New people joined the community forums – 1 889 (+11%)
• Social media following increased – 20 261 (+33%)
• Supports tickets resolved – 14 209
• Player surveys created and replied to – 3
• Store Discounts / Sales / Bonus gifts / Special promotions– 70+
• Free species hunts – 6
• Open beta – 1

We’ve asked the community and the team about their personal highlights of 2015, and here are some of the answers (with Whiterime Ridge and dogs having won the polls in both camps):

IzDaPat – Community member

1) The quality of work EW’s ‘art department’ has put out. Most notably: fur (finally!), new animals in general, but especially the Bisons’ and Dogs’ 3D models, textures and animations, WRR’s level design and the models and textures of some of the new weapons, e.g. the Bouquetin.

2) The social aspect of the game: more awesome people in MP games and on the forum, established groups of friends to hunt with, great discussions and debates on the forum, lots of great ideas and suggestions, more & better community competitions.

Carl-Oscar Löhn – Client programmer

I loved the Labrador Retrievers, both as new content and as work experience. Working three programmers on the same thing is really fun.

MonStarHunting – Community member

New Crossbow and increasing weapon/animal achievements (blowing the dust of my parker python).

Xan Williams – Sound designer

Watching the live stream pre-release of Whiterime Ridge and seeing how much the players loved it.

Lawger – Community member

First, the bison. I love bovines, and I hope to see them on a temperate map as well. Second, the new ducks, because it was totally unexpected for me and it added a lot of much needed variation to water fowling on RB.

Hannes Rhodin – Producer

2015 has been a great year for us and I think we have proven not only to ourselves but also to our players that we can push theHunter into the future with new and existing content. The Labrador Retrievers and Whiterime Ridge are by far my favourite additions to the world of hunters…

And as I look into 2016, I can smell blood on a rocky road…

FR_Bugs – Community member

Summer fiesta model event based on missions with several difficulty levels and NT’s release and special missions about them.

Team update

And finally, onto some real life news. In the last couple of months the theHunter team has undergone a number of changes. Amongst the people who are currently working on theHunter you will recognize a bunch of old faces and see some new ones. You will miss a couple of our old colleagues since they have moved on to pastures new, but theHunter force is strong with our team and our passion to bring you an even better game experience is bubbling.

Here‘s the current theHunter team:

• Hannes Rhodin – Producer
• Daniel Jansson – Game Designer
• Philipp Strecker – Game Designer
• Daniel Gutierrez Gustafsson – Lead programmer
• Carl-Oscar Löhn – Client programmer
• Josef Sundberg – Client programmer
• Xan Williams – Sound designer
• Tomas Lif – 3D artist
• Sandra Parling – 3D artist
• Timo Väisänen – 3D artist
• Frida Thoren – 3D artist
• Markus Tuomi – 3D artist
• Calle Gustafsson – Backend programmer
• Emil Bjurström – Backend programmer
• Magnus Eckers – Frontend programmer
• Hampus Linton – Animator
• Dick Sjöström – Animator
• David Lucas – Support Manager
• Maria Fritzell – User Acquisition Manager
• Alena Rybik – Community Manager

Those of you who have been with us long enough have probably noticed that we have a few new team members. Frida Thoren and Timo Väisänen have joined our art team, Josef has strengthened the client programming team, Xan Williams has been working on the sounds and Maria Fritzell took on a new role within Expansive Worlds, user acquisition manager. Here are the intros of the three of them; say hi to the guys and make them feel warm and welcomed.

Maria

Hi, my name is Maria and I recently joined the Expansive Worlds team in Stockholm. My job is to try to get new players on board through different marketing activities. The more players we get the more resources we’ll have for further improvements of the game.

I’m originally from Gothenburg on the south west coast of Sweden. After having lived in a few different countries I have now moved back to Sweden and to the beautiful Stockholm. I have yet to explore the city and its surroundings properly, but I have been out in the archipelago where I am planning to spend more time next summer. Travelling is my passion and I’m always on the look-out for new destinations. One of the things I love about theHunter is the stunning scenery and visuals.

Timo

Hello there,

My name is Timo Väisänen and I’ve joined the team at Expansive Worlds as a graphics artist, building everything from weapons to animals and doing a lot of texture work.

I have been working at Avalanche Studios for over 10 years now, on projects like Just Cause, Mad Max and now for a time on theHunter.

I live in Stockholm and have lived here or around my whole life. I´ve been in the game development business since 1998 when I started as a graphics artist with Crytec that just started back then. We were a group of people from all over the world, working from home and submitting our work to a server in Germany. Only when they got their new offices in Coburg Germany I opted instead to start working at a Swedish company Paradox Entertainment on the games like Europa Universalis and Svea Rike.

My interests are music and playing the guitar. I’m into the Gibson Historics line of guitars and I’m kind of a nerd when it comes to all things guitar gear.

Josef

Greeting everyone!

I’m Josef Sundberg and I recently joined theHunter as a client programmer. As many others on this team I went to The Game Assembly and was in the same class with Danny, I remember we did a text adventure game about a janitor way back in our first year there.

I started at Avalanche Studios as an intern four years ago and have most recently been working on Mad Max as a gameplay programmer with the vehicle combat.

In my spare time I like to play video and board games with friends. I also enjoy watching sci-fi and fantasy tv-shows and reading fantasy novels. And I often go and play badminton with my coworkers.

That’s it from us for today. Please be aware that the team will be on vacations until January 7th 2016, so during that time communication will be scarce. See you all in 2016!

Happy hunting and happy holidays!

Discussion