Status Update

Posted on April 30, 2014 by admin

Hello hunters,

There was no status update last week, since we were busy with the beta test, so we’ve packed the news from the last two weeks together. And here you go:

Stress test on beta: Heads up and thanks

Last week we ran a stress test of our new server environment on Google App Engine, which many of you joined. Huge thanks to everyone who found time to participate, we really appreciate your help! In general, the test went well, the server managed to cope with the load. We’ve found some bugs and issues, which are being worked on right now. To release fixes for those, we’ll be doing server maintenance in the next couple of weeks, the exact date and time will be communicated well in advance.

New video competition: theHunter video trailer

It’s has been a while since our last video competition, so let’s do it again. This time we’d like you to create a short video trailer of the game. The trailer has to highlight the hallmarks of theHunter: stunning scenery, the tension of shooting an animal, action-packed gameplay. The winner will receive 5000 em$ or a ‘Pathfinder’ membership bundle, not to mention all the fame and glory. You can read the competition rules here.

Introducing changes in the bug handling process

Lately there has been growing frustration within the community regarding the way in which bugs and bug reports are handled. We appreciate your willingness to help us find and resolve bugs and we do acknowledge that there were some annoying issues that fell between the cracks in the past, so we’ve evaluated and revamped our process for collecting and documenting information about bugs.

There is a lot of internal work going on, but for you the most significant change is the new rules that apply to reporting bugs in the forum. From now on all submitted posts will undergo thorough pre-moderation, to ensure that only real issues with sufficient and relevant information find their way onto the development agenda, allowing the team to address bugs in a more efficient manner, without having to trawl through loads of often unrelated discussions. You can learn more about the changes in this announcement. We’ll also try to provide timely feedback in bug forum threads on the status of the issue, so the whole bug fixing process will hopefully become more open and transparent.

Like with any new process, there might be some bumps in the beginning, so we’re asking for your patience.

German forum volunteers wanted

As the highly valued admins of our German community forum MonacoSteve and Welsch are leaving their posts in favour of other duties, we are looking for volunteers who would be willing to step in and help us manage huntertalk.de. We are looking for Admins / Mods who speak fluent German and good English, are keen theHunter players and preferably have some experience with phpBB forum platforms.

If you’re interested or have any questions please send me a PM on the English or German forum.

That’s it for now, good hunting all!

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Game Update

Posted on April 24, 2014 by admin

Changes
* You can now shoot closer to another player. (It makes it easier to shoot at waterfowl when several players are close to each other)
* Updated localization

Bug fixes
* Fix for bug spooking animals far away
* Fix for .30-06 Lever Action Rifle iron sight (it was backwards)
* Fix for crash when client shoots a 3D animal target at Red Feather Falls
* Fix for crash when host plays in Russian and a non Russian player joins
* Fix for gender not showing if clicking a trotting clue before any other clue
* Fix for being able to move the camera in the background while viewing a Profile Photo
* Fix for sometimes seeing a “white” reticle when lowering a weapon

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Call for server stress testing

Posted on April 22, 2014 by admin

There haven’t been any news from us for a while about the server move. We can tell you that the work is moving forward and we’re starting to see the end of it. As a part of the final preparation phase before the actual move, we’ll be doing some extensive testing of the new server environment, and we’d like to ask for your help. Everyone is welcomed to join, the more the better. Here are the details:

The testing will occur on our beta server and will run for 48 hours, starting from tomorrow, April 23rd, around 13:00 CET. If you try to login to the beta before then, you’ll get a error message ”your account was banned”.
Players will be able to hunt all animals, regardless of whether they are members or not, and will receive 20,000 em$ for testing purposes.
Please note that items you’ll have bought on our beta server won’t be transferred to your actual game account and you won’t be able to keep them or the remaining beta em$ once the test is over.
Testing on beta won’t have any impact on your actual game stats, hunter score, leaderboards etc.
Because it’s a stress test, server hiccups are likely to happen, so your game could crash or get disconnected, response time might be longer etc. There is no need to report those issues, the aim of the test is not collecting feedback but creating a huge server load.

How to participate in the testing:
1. Go to https://www.thehunterbeta.com/ and log in with your theHunter login details
2. Download and install the beta game client from Downloads
3. Hunt!

Happy hunting!

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Status Update

Posted on April 17, 2014 by admin

Hello Hunters,

We’re in spring mood here in the office, like Hemmeldal bears coming out of hibernation, so don’t mind the short update (the sun is shining, holidays are coming, you know…). Here’s what’s new at the EW office:

”New” team members

One of the highlights of the week has become the transition of our interns Daniel, Oskar and Robin into fully fledged team members and joining us as Designer, 3D Artist and Game programmer respectively. You mostly know Daniel’s work by our competitions, missions and witty names to them, Oskar is the mastermind (and the ”masterhand”) behind most of the weapons (including the latest community crush – K98k), and Robin was the one who created the popular trophy shot mode with a player in it, emotes, and other game features.

Peter about animals in game, night hunting and how he got to be so tall

Our Main Artist in Charge Peter has spent some fun hours yesterday coming up with answers to the questions you posted in his Ask Me Anything thread. Check out his exhaustive replies to get a better understanding of how things work in the art production here, as well as learn about the past, present and future of theHunter from the art director’s perspective.

Happy Easter celebrations!

Last but not least, we’d like to wish a happy Easter to those of you who celebrate and nice Easter holidays to everyone (because a couple of days off in spring are always a win!). Our Easter competitions will be running up until Sunday, hope you’ll get a chance to join.

Today our whole team is going on vacations, we’ll be back on Tuesday, ready to continue serving you with more of theHunter magic.

Good hunting all!

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Game Update

Posted on April 16, 2014 by admin

Changes
* Item loading optimizations. Items belonging to other players are now only loaded when close to other players.
* Trophy Shot, Profile Shot and Reticles have been revamped to the new GUI System
* Old GUI system has now been replaced by the new system
* Increased amount of placed stands and blinds limit from 5 to 10 per reserve
* Waterfowl blinds and ground blinds do not share limit anymore (you can place 10 waterfowl blinds and 10 ground blinds per reserve)

Bug fixes
* Lever action iron sight model fix
* Fix for player not holding an item after teleporting
* Fix for player getting stuck when placing the character in obstructed areas while using Trophy Shot Edit Mode and then exiting the mode
* Small terrain fix on Rougarou Bayou. (Animals could get stuck in the water)
* Score sheet registers waterfowl blind as platform (it said ground blind before)
* Scent Eliminator “has worn off” message now displays the correct text
* Ground blind exit message is back
* Enterable Items (such as Ground blinds, etc) no longer say “…exit item” and instead now say “…exit ground blind” (or the corresponding item name)

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Announcing Easter Events 2014

Posted on April 14, 2014 by admin

Today we’re starting our Easter Events, which will run for the whole week and consist of 7 daily challenges. Each day there will be different species for you to hunt and you may feel free to use any ethical equipment, but it’s only 100% Harvest Value that counts, so choose your weapons wisely. (It might be helpful to refresh you knowledge on how the Harvest Value is calculated.) To make your life a bit easier, we’ve put together bundles with suggested weapons for each day, at very generous discounts.

10 winners of each day will receive em$ and these sweet Easter eggs trophies.

The overall winners will be chosen based on the combined performance of each day of the event. The first three places will be awarded a brand new .300 Bolt Action Rifle – Carbon …

… and 1-month membership, places from 4 to 10 will receive Scent – Mega Mix Pack bundles. All 10 overall winners will receive the unique trophies:

Happy Egg-Hunting!

April 14th – Bear Day

Details: The combined score of your top scoring Black Bear and Brown Bear with 100% Harvest Value is your score.

Sales: Suggested weapons bundle – 35% off. Includes: 9.3×62 Anschütz 1780 D FL Bolt Action Rifle, 3-9x40mm Anschütz Rifle Scope, 3 x 9.3×62 Nosler Partition. All bundle items are also available at a separate 10% discount.

Licenses to hunt Brown and Black Bear – 25% off.

RESULTS

April 15th – Lightweight Deer Day

Details: The combined score of your top scoring Mule Deer, Whitetail Deer, Blacktail Deer and Roe Deer with 100% Harvest Value is your score.

Sales: Suggested weapons bundle – 25% off. Includes: 6.5×55 Blaser R8 Bolt Action Rifle, 3-9x42mm Rifle Scope with Blaser Saddle Mount, 3 x 6.5×55 Nosler AccuBond. All bundle items are also available at a separate 10% discount.

Licenses to hunt Whitetail, Blacktail and Roe Deer – 25% off.

RESULTS

April 16th – Upland Fowl Day

Details: The combined score of your top scoring Turkey and Pheasant with 100% Harvest Value is your score.

Sales: Suggested weapons bundle – 35% off. Includes: 12 GA Blaser F3 Game O/U Shotgun, 3 x 12 GA Birdshot Shells. All bundle items are also available at a separate 10% discount.

Licenses to hunt Turkey and Pheasant – 25% off.

RESULTS

April 17th – Waterfowl Day

Details: The combined score of your top scoring Mallard and Canada Goose with 100% Harvest Value is your score.

Sales: Suggested weapons bundle – 25% off. Includes: 20 GA Semi-Automatic Shotgun, 3 x 20 GA Birdshot Shells. All bundle items are also available at a separate 10% discount.

Licenses to hunt Mallard and Canada Goose – 25% off.

RESULTS

April 18th – Pig Day

Details: The combined score of your top scoring Feral Hog and Wild Boar with 100% Harvest Value is your score.

Sales: Suggested weapons bundle – 30% off. Includes: .30-06 Lever Action Rifle, 4-8x32mm Rifle Scope, 3 x .30-06 Nosler Partition. All bundle items are also available at a separate 10% discount.

Licenses to hunt Feral Hog and Wild Boar – 25% off.

RESULTS

April 19th – Varmint Day

Details: The combined score of your top scoring Red Fox and Coyote with 100% Harvest Value is your score.

Sales: Suggested weapons bundle – 35% off. Includes: 12GA Side By Side Shotgun, 3 x 12 GA Buckshot shells. All bundle items are also available at a separate 10% discount.

Licenses to hunt Red Fox and Coyote – 25% off.

RESULTS

April 20th – Heavyweight Deer Day

Details: The combined score of your top scoring Moose, Roosevelt Elk and Red Deer with 100% Harvest Value is your score.

Sales: Suggested weapons bundle – 30% off. Includes: .300 Bolt Action Rifle, 3-9x40mm Rifle Scope, 3 x .300 Nosler AccuBond. All bundle items are also available at a separate 10% discount.

Licenses to hunt Moose, Roosevelt Elk and Red Deer – 25% off.

RESULTS

OVERALL WINNERS

1. Paf_Paf
2. Nonogt
3. davvious & Francis95
4. oliveratomix
5. Onkel666
6. Altering
7. CootDawg
8. elcore07
9. SchattenWolf
10. Bambinuccio

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Game Update

Posted on April 10, 2014 by admin

Features
* 8×57 IS K98k Bolt-Action Rifle
* 4x42mm Classic Rifle Scope (fits K98k Bolt-Action Rifle)
* Added ‘Contextual Mode’ option for the GUI Status Bar. This option will only show newly updated information for a set time.

Changes
* Reload for Lever action, pump shotgun and semi-auto add ammo at the end of the looping animation instead of the beginning (the ammo counter was increased before the player had inserted the bullet)

Bug fixes
* Gui optimizations (fps should increase)
* Fix for animal ragdolls intersecting a lot with the ground
* Fix for bear dying in water (some settings were missing)
* Fix for GUI interaction message not disappearing
* Added possibility to press ENTER to ‘OK’ center notifications (like the rune stone or the messages in the tutorials)

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Status Update

Posted on April 9, 2014 by admin

Howdy Hunters!

Here is our weekly status update with snippets of this and that:

Easter on theHunter

On Monday we’re launching our one week-long Easter event, with 7 daily competitions for any taste and liking, some special challenges and, of course, dainty trophies and prizes. Don’t miss our Monday update!

AMA with Peter

As the survey results have shown, you’ve found our first ‘Ask Me Anything’ useful and asked for more of those, so we thought it was time to do it again. Now it’s our art director Peter who will stand up to the interrogation, and you must know that ‘eloquent’ is his second name, so it’s time to start pondering over some interesting questions for him 😉

Peter’s AMA thread will be unlocked for 48 hours, starting at 12 p.m. CET on April 11th. All the questions will be moderated and supervised by the moderation team, the standard AMA rules apply.

The thread is live

Account theft warning

Lately we’ve been receiving reports of stolen accounts, with dishonest people contacting players via private messages and announcing that they allegedly have won free em$, offer free em$ or weapons; and in order to add those to player’s account they’d need their login details. After gaining access to an account, they often use game hacks and cheats, which leads to a permanent ban of the account. It’s sad when such things happen, especially if a player has ivested time and money in the account. So, we are asking you to be highly suspicious when it comes to any ”free” stuff and never give your login details to anyone.

Terms of Service reminder

Since we’ve recently had an incident of sexual harassment on the forums, which resulted into a permanent ban of user’s game and forum accounts, we’d like to remind that we do not tolerate such behavior, regardless whether it comes from a guest or a paying member, and that applies to all communication tools on thehunter.com, including chat, private messages and forum.

According to our Terms of Service, ”you may not post, upload or link to any sexually explicit, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive imagery or content.”

Happy birthday & holidays to Pim!

On a more joyous note, today we’re sending Pim away on vacations to sunny Florida (why yes, we’ve sworn not to break anything while he’s away) and having a Swedish ”fika” to celebrate his departure and, by the merest accident, also his birthday – Pim turns 40 this Sunday!

See you around and happy hunting!

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Status Update

Posted on April 3, 2014 by admin

Hello Hunters!

This week we’re introducing our new team member and presenting some results of the latest player survey.

Meet Dante

Hi everyone,

My name is Dan “Dante” Thronström and I joined the amazing theHunter team a week ago as a Senior Producer, which is a very fancy title for a Project Manager. My job is to support and work with the development team to make sure we have clear production plans and goals, so that we can keep making the best hunting game out there even better.

So a little background information is in order I believe. First of all, I have been playing theHunter since Beta (I actually started to play before Peter) and I have always been eager to work on the game myself. In fact, when I was studying game design at university I designed a hunting game that was very close to how theHunter looks and plays today.

I have been working in the gaming industry for about 8 years. Some of my employers in the past have been Lockpick Entertainment (Dreamlords), GRIN (GRAW, Bionic Commando) and Crytek UK (Crysis 1 & 2). During the last 3 years I have been working at Avalanche Studios, and when I got the chance to join theHunter team I just could not resist.

In my spare time I try to have as much fun as possible (which is how I like to work as well). I am a very active competitive pinball player (yeah, I have one in my living room) and I enjoy playing loads of other games (including theHunter of course). I also like to fiddle around with some of my many unfinished hobby game dev projects.

I hope that I get to talk to you on the forums and to see you in the game!

Player survey – Results

We’ve had a record of almost 3,000 people filling in our player survey, thank you for your invaluable input everyone! Although we can’t publish all the results, we’d like to share with you some numbers that we’ve found interesting. About the unpublished results, you can be absolutely sure, that every single answer will be carefully evaluated and taken into consideration when planning the future of theHunter.

So, according to 3,000 players who have completed the survey:

Most of you play theHunter to enjoy the game experience. The second most popular answer was working on hunter score and skills, closely followed by having fun with friends.

As for the issue of bugs in theHunter: 37.45% of players experience them occasionally or not more often than in any other game, 30% – seldom, 16.65% – quite often, 8.66% – almost every session and 7.11% – never.

You’ve evaluated our efficiency at dealing with bugs with 6.92 as the average score, on a scale from 1 to 10:

97.52% of our players would recommend theHunter to a friend, this figure has made us very happy …

… as well as another one: 95.32% players who have made a purchase in the game would consider buying something again:

You are mostly satisfied with our communication, the average score being 3.68 on the scale from 1 to 5:

Almost 80% of our players don’t play any other hunting games:

Curiously, the hunter/non-hunter in real life ratio of our players is very close to 50/50:

Our players who are hunters in real life have evaluated the level of realism of theHunter as high as 6.64 on average on a scale from 1 to 10:

And finally, here is the word cloud with the most important words used by respondents when answering what are three best things in theHunter (the bigger the font of the word or phrase is, the more often it has been mentioned):

As promised, we’ve randomly chosen three players who have filled in the survey and added them 1000 em$ each: the lucky winners are pedroserra, Dron26 and Papajetz, congratulations!

That’s all for today, happy hunting!

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Sneak peek: Ultimate hat for the ultimate goose hunting experience!

Posted on April 1, 2014 by admin

Howdy Hunters,

As you know, we’ve always been striving to make theHunter the most realistic hunting game ever, so we thought you’d share our sheer excitement about the release of a new item, which is going to bring genuine, cutting-edge realism to your goose hunting experience.

This video is just a sneak peek for you to know what we’re up to, the actual release date will be announced soon.

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