Dear Hunters,

We’ll start off with an apology, since we’ve been so terribly busy with the new reserve, new species and server fixes we didn’t have time to write a status update last week. We hope you’re not to upset about this.

Payment options
We know some of you are not very happy with the fact that mobile payments have disappeared in your countries and neither are we. We haven’t removed these on purpose, they were automatically removed due to the network operators not being able to support our price points with the new payment solution. We’re working on fixing this, but it looks like it will take some time. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s working again (hopefully soon).

Missing in action
Last week Robert left us to explore the world. Even though he moved to the other side of the Atlantic, he’s still within the company group working in Avalanche’s New York office. Robert will be replaced by a new star, Adam, within weeks, so we won’t lose too much momentum. Adam will hopefully not be too shy when he gets here and will introduce himself as soon as he’s started.

Server problems
We are well aware of the server disturbances some of you have experienced over the past weeks. It is the web teams top priority to fix these issues right now.

More pretty pictures
We appreciate all the great suggestions you all came up with for naming the new reserve. We’ve decided to name it Rougarou Bayou since we felt it was really suitable. You can read up on the two words here: Rougarou. Bayou

Say hello to my little duck
So that cat’s out of the bag. The new species will be the Mallard. So we’re introducing a completely new type of gameplay. For those of you who have hunted ducks in real life knows that it’s very different from e.g. hunting Pheasants. We’re super excited about ducks coming to theHunter and judging from some of comments we’ve seen in the forums so are some of you.

Happy hunting!

Comments

It’s that time again and as fate, or rather careful planning, has it this status update correlates with the release of a new patch that adds a brand new feature to the game that should put a smile on the face stats loving players everywhere.

Before we delve deeper into the mechanics of this new mathematical wonderland we want to recognize the work of our programming intern Robin that made this new feature possible as an introductory task while learning our tools.

Now lets get into what this new stat is all about!

Harvest Value

Harvest value is a new way to score harvested animals that focus on how the animal was harvested rather than how it looks.

The aim of harvest value is to reward practices that lead to less animal suffering and that prevent unnecessary trophy damage. This is achieved by balancing two new stats against each other; Wound Time & Trophy Integrity.

It’s important to note that harvest value does not in any way replace the regular trophy score nor CSS (which is derived from the regular score).

Wound Time

Wound time is the time from first wound to death. To gain high harvest values you need to keep this time as low as possible which in turn means less animal suffering. The best wound time results are achieved through proper shot placement using a weapon with enough penetration to damage critical organs such as the heart and lungs. As most of you probably know by now a penetrated heart in theHunter leads to instant death which in this case means the best wound time that can be achieved, 0.

Values range from 0-infinite seconds where 0 is awesome and more than 60 is horrible.

Trophy Integrity

The second variable to make up harvest value is trophy integrity. Trophy integrity simulates how damaged the trophy is. The real life counterparts are things like meat, pelt and antler damage which lowers the monetary value of the harvest. Note that we use a simplified method to calculate this which means that it is not directly translatable to all real life situations.

Trophy integrity is affected by weapon type, distance to target and species. The rule of thumb is that the less damage the target takes the higher the integrity value.

Values range from 0-100% where 100% is awesome and 0% is horrible.

Balance Game

To calculate the final Harvest Value we simply multiply the two. This means that the highest possible harvest values can only be achieved when maxing both of them. This leads to a balancing game where you need to find the optimal caliber with just enough damage to take down the target as quickly as possible.

High caliber weapons are thus not suitable for small game (bad integrity & good wound time) while they excel vs. big game (good integrity & good wound time).

Low caliber weapons on the other hand are not suitable for big game (good integrity & bad wound time) while they excel vs. small game (good integrity & good wound time).

That’s nice but what is the point?

First of all we have a couple of fun new stats attached to each score sheet that you can marvel at. While this is enough for many players we do not stop there, we also plan to include this as a new condition for things like new competitions, missions and achievements.

Happy hunting!

Comments

So it’s Halloween week and we’ve kicked off a week-long event. We’re really excited about this and we hope that you are enjoying it.

Exciting news, Pim managed to pass his Swedish hunting exam this Sunday, so he’s now free to hunt and purchase weapons for hunting (as soon as he’s gotten his licences approved by the police, something that usually takes 16 weeks when you live in Stockholm).

We’re wondering if we have any, preferably Swedish, hunters in our community that would like to donate any antlers or head mounts to us. We’d love to decorate the office walls with new friends for Hoggy and Roenny. We feel that we’re lacking a proper hunting feel in the office. Please PM a member of the dev team if you’d like to donate something.

Work on the new species and reserve are going as planned. We still have a long way to go before anything gets released. Andres and Daniel are working on the new AI, José is animating like a mad man. Peter and Tomas are creating new vegetation. Peter’s said that if you all behave he might show you some screenshots from the coming reserve next week.

Herman and Emil are looking into ways to speed up loading of the inventory. Something we hope will happen very soon, but we can’t promise anything just yet. And we’re also about to add more payment options, since we know that many of our players can’t purchase things in the game today due to our payment options not being available in your countries.

Happy hunting and beware of the beast bear!

Comments

Today we released a new game update for all of you!

The main feature added today is the possibility to share your trophy shots on Facebook directly from the game client. All you need to do is check the check box you’ll see right before accepting the trophy picture. At the same time as adding this feature we have change the way you accept trophy shots a bit, instead of right or left clicking your mouse, now you’ll have to click on one of the two buttons on the screen, accept or discard.

You can connect your theHunter account with your Facebook account here. 

We’ve also added a new clothing line called “Casual”, featuring two t-shirts, two trucker caps and a pair of jeans. Hope you like them!