Fix for the jittering of weapons and other items – Thanks to a heroic joint effort by the Primal and theHunter teams we have finally been able to solve this age old bug that manifested in the player appearing to have shaky hands, it was especially visible when aiming down iron sights of weapons and when wielding bows.
Fix for the bird feathers having an unintended black outline
Fix for Silver tipped female fox being labeled as Melanistic in hunt statistics
Terrain fixes
Spawn map at Val-des-Bois updated to prevent other animals than Alpine Ibex from spawning in the mountains
Fix for the forum signature widget (missing animals added)
After the release of Bushrangers Run last week we’ve received a lot of feedback from you, mostly in terms of what animals inhabit it, but also other aspects, such as sound and art, thanks for that! We really appreciate how engaged and passionate you are about everything happening with theHunter and you can be sure that we’ll take all the feedback seriously and discuss the possibility to implement some of your suggestions. As usual, we can’t promise anything at this point, because we don’t want to raise any expectations. Just keep in mind that while a lot of suggestions might sound like great fun and that is the only factor that might seem to matter to you, like any other game development studio out there, we have a bunch of other factors to consider, for example scientific lining behind the game design, game engine functionality, development roadmap, resources and budget and other boring stuff which still dictates our everyday work.
The weekend following the release of Bushrangers Run a lot of people experienced downtime on our web and game servers. To make up for your lost game time, we’ll be adding 1 extra day to all active memberships. We’ve also conducted an internal investigation and taken measures to prevent this from happening again in the future.
We are now in the process of revamping our forums, in order to bring you a more slick and user-friendly community experience. Any suggestions on what functionality you’d like to have will be very much appreciated. You can share it in this thread and expect to hear more on this later.
And the last tidbit about the EW team. You might remember the story of our client programmer Robin, which we shared a couple of months ago. He suffered a stroke back in August 2014 and at the time when that status update was written he was still in the hospital. In the last couple of months Robin has made some tremendous progress, he is back on his feet already, has visited the office a couple of times and said Hello and Thank you to all the people who were sending him their best wishes and asking about him. Robin still has a long recovery journey in front of him, but he is already chirpy, back to his sense of humour and playing theHunter (hopefully soon back to coding it too!).
Another staff notice – we have a new team member, his name is Hannes and he has joined us as a producer. Check his intro below and say Hi:
Hello All,
My name is Hannes Rhodin and I have just jumped onboard the Expansive Worlds ship as a Producer. It is exciting times; full steam ahead on both theHunter and theHunter: Primal, and some very interesting ideas are in the making.
I’ll try to introduce myself, I live in Stockholm with my girlfriend (since 15 years back) and two kids… yes, I’m old. My hobbies are storytelling, movies, art, pulling weights and sculpture, with focus on sculpture right now. Here is a work-in-progress picture of my latest piece:
I have been in the computer game and digital graphic business for more or less 25 years, mainly focusing on the art, animation, level design, story and cinematic parts of it. Working in lead positions have got me in to the Producer craft. In my role as a producer at EW I will be focusing on theHunter and theHunter:Primal, great products with great possibilities and with a healthy connection to the community… to you, all the hunters and the hunted ;), this communication is something I value and think I can learn a lot from.
Cheers!
That’s it for today, see you around and happy hunting!
A very short update from us regarding the upcoming reserve. We’ve considered all name ideas you suggested and after some internal debate we decided to call it Bushrangers Run. This was one of the anonymous suggestions we received by PM and the team really liked it. A Bushranger is an Australian outlaw/bandit, often held in high esteem and considered iconic to Australia, and a run is the path drovers take their cattle when migrating the herd. We thought it would be appropriate for the EHR.
To give you a sneak peek at Bushrangers Run, we are organizing a pre-release livestream. As previously with Val-des-Bois, the streamed hunts will take place on our beta server, it will still be WIP. The stream will be offered in English and German and will be organized completely by our community members Pratze, HooCairs, Killertut and our game design intern Pär.
Here is a cool announcement video by Pratze. You can find the dates and times of the livestreams below.
Times and dates of the pre-release livestreams:
English: Tuesday, 24th at 20:00 CET
Streamed by Pratze, joined by HooCairs and Pär
You can watch it on this channel
In this status update we’re closing the Valentine’s event and giving you a sneak peek on the new species. Let’s go.
We really enjoyed following your heart$ fights in the Valentine’s event last week and it was a great success, especially the new “Share the love” feature. With people generously offering their heart$ to “those in need”, it’s become an amazing celebration of community spirit and one more time revealed what an awesome community we have at theHunter. It was very touching to watch the whole community put their hearts (both game points and real ones) together to raise the player Rcnitrodad to the top of the leaderboard. For those of you who don’t know this story, Rcnitrodad is a single dad taking care of his son James, who is 14 and who is fighting his second cancer battle. theHunter is one of the few things that can put a smile on the boy’s face these days and his dad plays it for him while James is watching and giving directions. We’re sending our best wishes to Rcnitrodad and his son. We hope you’ll get better soon James and can start bagging those trophy bucks by yourself! The thoughts of the whole theHunter community are with you, as the Valentine’s Event has shown so beautifully.
Here’s the Valentine’s event leaderboard for top 10 places, congratulations to all the winners:
Apart from the top 10 winners, another 509 hunters received the plaster trophy and we also established a special prize for most generous hunters who have shared their heart$ with the largest amount of people. These three players received this unique “Most loving hunter” trophy:
RiffRaff24 – shared his heart$ with 18 different hunters Mysen – shared heart$ with 15 different hunters Swampfox – shared heart$ with 13 different hunters
Once again, thanks for the great community event everyone. Let’s do more of this.
And now to the new reserve news. We are still going through your suggestions trying to pick a suitable name for it (that’s a tough one), so we’ll let you know what we decide later on. There have been lots and lots of speculations, suggestions and general ramblings about the species present in the new reserve, so here you go: apart from your old acquaintances Feral Hog, Red Fox and European Rabbit we could not not put this cool guy in the Australian reserve –
the Red Kangaroo!
Here is a small sneak peek of the kangaroo’s model and animations from Simone and José, enjoy! The video and screenshot below are still work in progress and the things will be changed and tweaked.
Red kangaroos in theHunter, as in real life, will move extremely fast, so taking a shot will be extra challenging.
In this status update we’re finally spilling the beans about our upcoming reserve, so read on!
Last time I mentioned “a couple of lovely non-mammal creatures populating this new area”, and many people assumed that they would be huntable. That was a bit of a sneaky hint, I admit, as those by all means lovely creatures are spiders and scorpions (they would be similar to rats in other reserves, actually, you can still shoot them if you want) and the new reserve we’re working on is
*drum roll*
the Australian Outback!
Since the new EHR location is inspired by the outback in western Australia, it will be our first “dry” reserve which will feature a completely new color scheme in the general vegetation. There will be many semi-open fields, some interesting rocky hills, collections of low Acacia trees, mainly around the old river areas, and many bushes, to mention some. We are aiming for a slightly hostile feeling but with many warm earth tones. Our art wizards have also added some small features typical for western Australian outback for you to discover, both in vegetation and in the soundscape.
Now I’ll shut up and let you savour these early preview screenshots (still work in progress, so things might change down the line).
By tradition, we’d like to ask for your input in choosing an appropriate name for this dazzling beauty. Think of something that would capture the essence and feeling of the new Australian reserve AND will align nicely with our other reserves’ names. This is the thread for your suggestions.
No wonder that the Aussie theme has been dominant here in the office lately; a stuffed kangaroo head mount has almost found its place between Hoggy and Roey and our artist Marcus has created a wicked Outback outfit which should set you in the right mood for the upcoming reserve and probably remind you of some mate who is known for being flat out like lizard drinkin’ and carrying around a real cool knife. The new set has it all – beyond awesome shoes, hat with gator teeth and great camo combination! Go check it out.
That’s it from us for today, time to stop reading and go hunting!
It’s been amazing to see your feedback to our newly released Non-Typical antlers, some people even said that this was their most favourite update ever, sweet! Despite their rarity, a lot of nice non-typicals have already been bagged, here are some of the trophies we find exceptionally cool:
By LiquidOnyx
By Tim020
By winzu52
New reserve
The work on the new reserve is coming along, with all the rocks, trees, grass and other pockets of beauty slowly starting to look as they should. We’ve just started testing it and the look and feel is fantastic and truly unique, although there is still plenty of work to be done. You can expect more new on this pretty soon, for now we can tell you that there will be a couple of lovely non-mammal creatures populating this new area. Can you guess who those might be and what reserve are we working on?
Time for a heart game
Our popular Valentine’s event received a revamp this year and will come in a slightly new form. There will, of course, be Cupid Arrows and heartshots, which have already become classic, but also some absolutely new things for some extra injection of affection in the community. We’re kicking off this hearts fest on Monday 9th and will be going on for the rest of the week, until February 15th. Check back on Monday to learn more and take a direct plunge into the party.
Free species hunt
The last tidbit from us is a free species event – from today until the end of Sunday, February 8th, Mallard Ducks and Roosevelt Elk are free to hunt for all guests. Make sure to enroll into our special Mallard & Elk competition to make the best out of this event.
