Game Update

Features
* .30-30 Lever Action Rifle

Changes
* The Roosevelt elk now has a new Call animation.

Bug fixes
* Fix for crash at loading (as client) regarding waterfowls
* Fix for waterfowl decoys attracting wrong species
* Fix for trophy shot (it was possible to “throw” the animal up in the air and outside of the “invisible box”)
* Fixed bug – player wasn’t able to pose animals in water
* Fixed crossbow cocking bug
* Fixed tutorial bug where player couldn’t confirm animal after restart
* Fixed mute waterfowl ai groups bug in sp
* Fixed wrong stance shown in status bar when climbing towers or fast travelling
* Share on facebook checkbox only visible if connected to facebook (via theHunter.com)
* The huntermate map can now show more than five icons of the same type
* You can no longer be knocked down by an animal if you are in a tree stand
* Game server communication improvements
* Fix for texture bug with all scopes
* Fix for help messages in Trophy Shot not disappearing when exiting Trophy Shot
* Small terrain fixes

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Status Update

Hello Hunters,

Here are a couple of news for you from the drizzly Stockholm:

It’s cloud o’clock

… at last. During our maintenance yesterday, as the final step of implementing a new server solution for theHunter, we moved our game server to the cloud. It’s been a long and rather complicated process and it’s not completely finalized yet, as we’re continuing putting out fires, smashing bugs and indulge ourselves in other exciting activities to ensure the game runs without a hitch. It will take a while once the new environment works as smoothly as intended; we’ll keep monitoring the server performance and resolve issues on the fly. As always, your help in reporting bugs is appreciated, you can do it in this thread, detailed descriptions are mostly welcomed.

We want to thank you for all your patience and support during this process of server move. To make it up to you for a downtime yesterday and game disrupting issues, we’ll be adding an extra day to all active memberships.

AMA with Björn

björn öjlertIt’s time for a new ‘Ask Me Anything’ session and now it’s our game designer Björn who will be answering your questions. You can think of Björn as the director of theHunter who oversees the overall picture and knows game’s every nook and cranny. He is the guy to ask ”big” questions, like gameplay, environment, balance, story etc., but he is also able to give thorough replies to more specific inquiries.

Björn’s AMA thread will be unlocked for 48 hours, starting at 12 p.m. CEST on May 9th. All the questions will be moderated and supervised by the moderation team, the standard AMA rules apply.

 

Trailer competition reminder

In case you missed it last week, we have a trailer competition running, and it’s a bit less than one week left to submit your video. You can read the rules and enter the competition here.

That’s it for now, happy hunting!

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Scheduled Server Maintenance

On Wednesday, 7th May 2014 at 06:00 CEST, we will take down the servers for scheduled maintenance work. The estimated downtime is about 3 hours. During this period you will not be able to login to your game accounts nor start any game sessions. All sessions active at this time will be terminated, so please make sure to finish your hunts before 6:00 CEST to avoid losing your stats.

After the maintenance is complete we will continuously monitor the servers and take an immediate action if any irregular behaviors are identified. We will do our best to make sure that the downtime is as short as possible but, as with all server work, there might be uncertainties and setbacks.

You can stay updated during the downtime by monitoring our Facebook page and Twitter handle, as well as our temporary landing page on www.thehunter.com.

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

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Status Update

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.

2014_05_movie_challenge

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

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

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

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!

2014_april_happy_easter

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

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

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.

easter_2014_gold easter_2014_silver easter_2014_bronze easter_2014_hematite

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 …

.300 Bolt Action Rifle

… 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:

easter_2014_set_1 easter_2014_set_2 easter_2014_set_3

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 Rifle3-9x40mm 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

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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