Howdy hunters,

It’s Thursday here and it’s time for another status update from the EW team.

The main news today is the release of the 21st animal of the EHR and the 6th resident of Val-des-Bois –

Mr. European Rabbit!

As we mentioned in the last status update, it’s a variation of our existing species, Cottontail Rabbit, and it’s free to hunt for all guests as well. Apart from new looks, it also got unique gameplay. Here is some information from our game designer Björn which should help you when hunting this coy cute little critter.

Burrow Gameplay

The European Rabbit shares many traits with its North American cousin but there is one major difference – Burrows. When a Cottontail spooks it tries to find thick vegetation to hide in but the European Rabbit has taken it a step further by digging elaborate burrow systems to which it can retreat when threatened.

In theHunter European Rabbits live in colonies tied to burrow systems, randomly generated throughout the fields of Val-des-Bois. It’s rare that a group of rabbits strays farther than 100 meters away from their burrows, which makes them easier to locate than other animals. The problem is though, that when spooked they retreat into a nearby hole and thus become unreachable by would-be hunters. But fear not, our rabbits have a notoriously short memory and they’ll eventually surface from a randomly selected hole in the burrow system. Patience and massive amounts of airborne pellets are the king when hunting… The Wabbit!

By tradition, with the release of the European Rabbit we also throw in a new weapon – the slick and beautiful 20 GA Semi-Automatic Shotgun “Carbon” and a special competition in which you’ll get to shoot them bunnies. Regular missions and competitions for the European Rabbit are already in the works too.

Apart from the European Rabbit, the backend and client programming teams have been working on bug fixes (check out the full list of them in today’s game update). The new reserve is slowly taking its shape and awesomeness in the crafty hands of our artists Tomas, Sandra, Oscar and the game designer Daniel. Peter has started working on another long time community request which we’ll hopefully be able to tell you more about soonish.

And last but not least, today and tomorrow we’re running a special campaign – you can get a Deployable Hunting Tower when buying a 3-month membership or a Wayfarer bundle.

That’s it from us for today, now go let yourself loose on those wabbits!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hey hunters,

Welcome to yet another week with the most realistic hunting game ever created. The EW team has come up to speed and work in the office is once again humming. Here are some nuggets of information on what we’ve been busy with:

• The programmers and backend guys have been digging into client and web-related bugs, glitches, issues and similar annoying stuff. On Tuesday we released a game update with a bunch of fixes, but the digging continues and we are hoping to be able to bake some more patches for you in the next month.

• We thought it’s about time to tell you about the next big thing we’ll be working on. The art team has taken a first stab at our new reserve! As usual, we won’t be revealing the location or giving any hints until the time is right. As you must know, a reserve takes months of work from the whole crew. Similarly, we can’t announce the release date yet, it will be ready when it’s ready.

• There is something else you can also start looking forward to. Another new animal! To be fair, it won’t be a completely new creature but a variation of an existing species we have in theHunter, but it will add a fresh touch to Val-des-Bois, where it will reside. The new animal is currently being tested and tweaked and we’re hoping to release it to the EHR quite soon(ish). Now, what might it be? 😉 Share your thoughts and guesses in the discussion thread.

• The last Ask Me Anything with our client programmers Andres and Danny took a while to close, sorry we kept you waiting for replies. The guys have been really busy these last months, plus they received a record number of questions – 91! Well, it’s better later than never, so here are their replies: on the engine, rain and all the discreet charm and challenges of being a client programmer. Check them out – cool stuff!

That’s it from us for today.

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy Hunters,

We are back from our winter break and are now catching up on everything and anything that happened with and about theHunter during our absence. Here is a round-up for you:

• Many players have been reporting multiplayer issues when people were not able to join MP games. We implemented a fix yesterday and will continue monitoring this. If you’ve been experiencing the problem, please make sure to let us know, either in the forums or on our social media channels, whether the issue has been resolved for you.

• On December 19th, right after the team signed off for the vacations, a major bug occurred, which broke the functionality of scope reticles and HUD GUI elements (blinds, tents etc.) Our programmers fixed the issue on the next day, but the game was pretty much unplayable for about 24 hours. To reimburse you for this interruption, we’ll add 1 extra day to all memberships. We’re bummed about this unfortunate incident and especially its bad timing and we’ll try to prevent this from happening in the future.

• As per the special Primal deal, all the shotguns and extra memberships have now been added. If you still haven’t received your membership and have fulfilled all requirements, please contact our support and they’ll sort it out for you.

• We recently have become aware of a malicious phishing web-site: “playthehunter [dot] net”, which looked exactly like our official thehunter.com‘s first page. (Huge thanks to our community members who alerted us!) We’ve investigated this and it looks like the purpose was to lure our players into entering their theHunter usernames and passwords in order to steal/abuse them, so called phishing. There was also a link to a file hosted on a Google drive account, which most likely was ridden with malware and viruses.We’ve contacted both the hosting provider of the site and the domain registering company (the domain was registered with false information), and the site has now been taken offline.

  If you visited this site, or fear that you may have without realizing it, we suggest that you run a virus scan on your computer and update your account information with a new password.

  If you’ve become a victim of the culprits behind the website, please contact our support from the email address you used when registering at theHunter and we’ll help you to get your account back.

  only thehunter.com and Steampowered.com are official publishing platforms of theHunter. It is of course very important for us to protect our players and our own brand from evil doers, but we do not have control over and, thus, can not help about anything happening outside our official publishing platforms, even if it’s somehow related to theHunter.

• And last but not least… Meet Sandra – our latest addition to the art team who joined us yesterday. Read her intro below and say hi in the forums.

Hello!

My name is Sandra and I’m super happy to be joining the team at Expansive Worlds where I’ll be working as an environment artist. Previously I’ve worked at Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam but being back in my hometown Stockholm is a real treat!

I have a background in fine arts and graphical design but a few years ago I started to dabble in 3D and of course I got hooked. It’s just so much fun! I did my studies at Futuregames here in Stockholm from where I graduated in September last year.

When I’m not working I like to cook, and especially eat, food. Playing games, watching a movie or just having a cold one with my friends are also things you might find me doing on my spare time.

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hello hunters,

Welcome to the last status update in 2014! Tomorrow our team is leaving for Christmas vacations to spend quality time with their families which means there will be no updates or newsletters for the next two and a half weeks. We’ll be back at the office on January 7th, ready to start another chapter in the theHunter history. Please note that our support hours will also be reduced during the holiday season.Thank you for your understanding!

Peter on the art in theHunter

Our art director Peter Johansson has recently made a long in-depth interview for a 3D art magazine 3D Art Direct. In it he is sharing how an artist designs 43 square miles of real-time 3D wilderness (to us known as EHR), and make it convincing enough for experienced real-life hunters to enjoy. If you want to get fundamental behind-the-scenes information on theHunter art, this is definitely a must for you to check out. You can read the interview by registering on the magazine’s website. You’ll receive an online version in your email inbox.

Looking back at 2014

It’s been a truly amazing, mind-blowing, flabbergasting year for all of us at theHunter and we want to thank you, our community, for spending it with us, playing the game, sharing your thoughts and stories in the forums and guiding us in the development. We hope that you’ll stay with us in the next year as well, we’ve already planned a bunch of stuff and we can’t wait to hear what you think of it.

We’ve looked back at 2014, at everything that has happened in theHunter and crunched some numbers to make an end-of-the-year wrap-up.

Here is what has been achieved in 2014:

• New reserve – 1
• New species – 4
• New weapons – 15
• New pieces of equipment – 26
• New items of clothing – 39
• New special event items – 38
• New game features – 3
• New missions – 130
• New competitions – 114
• Bugs fixed – 150+
• Special events – 13
• Tutorials – 1
• Community created competitions and prize draws – 46
• New people joined the EW team – 10
• New people joined the community forums – 3 405
• Supports tickets resolved – 14 351
• Release on Steam nailed – 1
• Player surveys created and replied to – 2
• Questions answered by Devs in Ask Me Anything – 264
• Store Discounts / Sales – 57
• Free species hunts – 8

I’ve also asked the team and community members to share their personal highlights of 2014, and here are some of them. For more of team and community highlights of 2014 check your inbox for the theHunter newsletter, holiday edition.

Daniel Jansson, EW Game Designer: My favorite was the Summer Fiesta because it was really fun to make difficult missions and then seeing people on the forum helping each other out by posting tips and strategies.

JackRbbt, community member and Romanian translator: The new additions: Val-de-Bois, Alpine Ibex and, of course, new rifle for it: Stambecco. Also, but this is something quite personal, Romanian localization.

Andrés Hansson, EW Lead Client Programmer: The highlight of 2014 was when we released theHunter on Steam and got a lot of new players.

TundraPuppy, Community member and Forum moderator:

My favorite theHunter related thing was the release of the air rifle and rabbits in May. It was an excellent belated birthday present because it represented an interesting change for theHunter – not only did we see a move towards smaller prey (as opposed to deer) which also required more careful and precise aiming (as opposed to the more twitchy sky-filled-with-lead shooting of birds), but we also got a new weapon which isn’t a traditional gunpowder based weapon – it has excellent range, is very precise, and was tailor made for small prey which means we could see more small prey added with an existing valid weapon to use on them. It was an interesting shift for the game which helped add variety and options for people who were tired of the same-old same-old hunting options we previously had.

Jose Diaz, EW Animator:

Interaction animations between the Ibex made by Hampus. More of that!

Blind Mole, Community member

Official: new map Val-de-Bois
Non-official: caledonianblues’s competition “Gotta hunt them all”

Magnus Eckers, Frontend Developer

Pratze, Community member and Video creator:

That’s it from us for today and this year, happy holidays and see you in 2015!

Discussion