First off, happy Thanksgiving to all our friends in the US celebrating tomorrow! Weve already started getting ready for our CHKN Team feast...


Step 1: Finding the right turkey or is it TRKY?

Before were full of way too much food, weve put out an update to Pre-Release with more improvements as we prepare to push to the Live branch. (Note that your previous Pre-Release saves are invalid and wont load.) Patch notes are below and, as always, bugs are expected in these work-in-progress builds so we really appreciate your help testing and reporting feedback on the Pre-Release forum. * If youre not familiar with Pre-Release, its the unstable developer branch we use for testing new stuff. More info here.

If youre not a Pre-Release tester, check out this video for a look at some of the features and updates coming to the Live branch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVDvnlrgxfY
Well also be playing the Arena on our developer live stream today, Nov 21st @ 3:30 EST on Twitch and YouTube. Come hang out! Help us build creatures and see who comes out victorious.



And now, patch notes!

Creatures & Abilities

• Multiple body sizes added for the octopus and carnivorous plant blocks
  
• New feather and fur block accessories added
  
• New traits (blind, diet types) added to provide feedback when building creatures
  
• Stuns can no longer be applied in consecutive hits preventing stun locking
  
• Additional text added to abilities to show how to unlock them
  
• Ability preview images implemented
  
• Creature block voxel system re-enabled
  
• Reviving a creature now automatically spawns it
  
• Creature AI is now more reactive to incoming threats
  
• Friendly creatures now attempt to walk around the player
  
• Implemented a system to detect creature to creature collisions. (Creatures no longer run through each other.)

• Chicken Armor added!
  
• New Items: crab axe, pig slingshot, spider bow
  
• Logs from felled trees now appear as a single log bundle so theyre easier to see
  
• Added recipe tracking: pin recipes to add them to the HUD
  
• Adjusted some crafting recipes for resource and progression balancing
  
• Item recipes are now granted when first building and placing a crafting structure, or by finding crafting tomes when defeating or breaking a resource in the world
  
• Trough removed (non-functional temp item was confusing players; may return in the future when properly implemented)
  
• Creative mode spawn eggs are functional again

• Gameplay
  
  • Temporary shelter added: use as a temporary respawn point
    
  • Hunger status added if low on energy
    
  • Crush damage removed if a creature collides with the player
    
  • Multiple mushroom types and pumpkins added to the world
    
  • Death message added for all damage types
    
  • Lifeshaper upgrading now requires defeating a Guardian before it can be obtained
    
  • Time based creature spawns and creature respawning implemented
  
  
• Balance
  
  • Loot drops tuned
    
  • Damage dealt to trees changed
    
  • Creature block drop rates tuned
    
  • Creature fall damage tweaked
    
  • Changed stamina regen to be percentage based and added AI routines for creatures to back off and regain stamina. (Results in fights that have a natural rhythm and more creature builds that are viable!)
    
  • Poacher toughness buffed
  
  
• Journal
  
  • Descriptions to world entities added
    
  • Descriptions of items tweaked
    
  • Badging added to the Journal
    
  • Data organization improved
  
  
• Quests & Onboarding
  
  • Tutorial quests and onboarding prompts added
    
  • Quest UI overhauled
  
  
• Map
  
  • Beacon added, use to tag a location on the map
    
  • Map functional. Location of death tagged and other placed objects automatically are added to the map

• Tournament mode added to the arena
  
• Arena camera tracking improvements
  
• Optional night lighting added to the arena

• Temple art tweaked
  
• New creature head icons added to the creature builder filter for easier identification
  
• Many missing icons added
  
• Spear animations added
  
• Improved sunset/sunrise lighting
  
• Holding E while walking over items will now pickup all items
  
• Ability to place torches removed
  
• Hitting foliage SFX added
  
• Effects
  
  • Life Shaper and ability scroll FXs added
    
  • Item FX more obvious
    
  • Particle FX improvements for fire and water hose
    
  • Implemented temple checkpoint FX and creature revive polish
    
  • Stun FX improved to read clearer as a stun
    
  • Party creature death particle tweaked
  
  
• UI polish
  
  • New loading screen implemented
    
  • New main menu implemented
    
  • New options screen implemented
    
  • Moved multiplayer options within tab menu
    
  • Ability browser UI reimplemented
    
  • Many other minor changes to create consistent look

• Replaced foliage system with a new performant tech which reduces stutters
  
• Level of detail levels reimplemented for creature animation system to improve frame rates
  
• Improved pathfinding navmesh generation performance
  
• Texture streaming added to the options screen; currently a beta implementation. Disable this if you have a video card with 4gb+ of ram!
  
• World object colliders optimized
  
• Fur settings added to the options

• Networking
  
  • Clients stunned properly
    
  • Clients flinch when damaged properly
    
  • Party creature death and revive fixed
    
  • Client save game fixes
    
  • Weather set for clients properly
    
  • Creature names no longer reset for clients
    
  • Adventure games now always show in join lobby. Error message prevents players from joining if they did not complete start of adventure mode
    
  • Clients now get proper notifications
    
  • Guards added to prevent game from glitching if null connections are detected
    
  • Treadmills now animate properly for clients
    
  • Treadmills now show attached creatures for clients correctly
    
  • Clients now properly see health bars
    
  • Fix to clients items becoming stuck which prevents them from interacting with the world
    
  • Egg crack and stone breaking sounds can now be heard by clients
    
  • Fix to clients flashing damage indicator endlessly
    
  • Fix to doors breaking chunk loading
    
  • Fix to clients not loading world data correctly
    
  • Fix to duplicate creature created on revive
    
  • Projectiles now display properly for clients
    
  • Quests are now networked
    
  • Fix to creature tamed status not saving properly when joining or leaving a networked game
    
  • Clicking store all on chests now works properly for clients
  
  
• Fix to bad rotation on crab eyes that did not allow them to see correctly
  
• Fixed dog tail clipping inside of parent block
  
• Graphical fix to many materials that did not handle depth correctly
  
• Fix to obtaining multiple Lifeshapers
  
• Fix to mechdino neck offset
  
• Fix to elephant ear offset
  
• Fix to chicken eye scared blend shape
  
• Fix to hatchery texture
  
• Sleeping creatures properly close eyes
  
• Rain volume hooked into master volume
  
• Ranged weapon throw height fixed
  
• Crab claw ability animations fixed
  
• Fix to using the whistle with the hotbar/offhand
  
• Fixed hopping creatures becoming stuck in place
  
• Fixed bug in damage formula that made per frame damage to become highly reduced
  
• Fixed bugs in animation system that caused an ability to become stuck
  
• Fix to creature building cursor seemingly randomly disappearing
  
• Shader fixes for OSX
  
• Rocks shader replaced (was causing server staggers on some hardware)
  
• Fix issues where save state was not being cleared when starting a new game after playing a saved game
  
• Bug fixes to creature revive UI
  
• Fix to creature stat previewer showing incorrect values
  
• Structure block removal grace period now works again
  
• Fix to breakables not respecting what item it was struck with causing damage to be applied when it shouldnt and vice versa
  
• Creatures will no longer eat lifeblocks
  
• Sign structure item fixed
  
• Loot bags can no longer be damaged
  
• Fix to double headed creatures having bad angles
  
• Fix to post-processing transitions that caused colors to pop instead of smoothly transitioning
  
• Fix to temple render settings becoming stuck on infinitely
  
• Water rendering now properly draws fog over it
  
• Journal 3d renders for trees, rocks, bushes, and items positioning and rotation improved
  
• Removed some duplicate/broken creatures from the default creature collection

• Were aware of decreased performance on computers with integrated graphics cards (which are common on some laptops and lower-end computers) and Macs. Were working on fixes for this now.
  
• World streaming issues can cause an incremental drop in framerate regardless of your computers specs. We have a fix ready to implement in December.
  
• The radial UI for Observing is glitchy and doesnt always register what youre pointing at. Fix is in the works.
  
• If you have a 4GB+ video card, textures may be blurry due to new texture streaming tech implementation in progress. Go to Options -> Performance and turn off Texture Streaming.
  
• Autodetect will do this automatically on fresh installs of the game but current players will need to do this manually to overwrite the existing setting.
  
• Weve been unable to replicate a bug where the game gets stuck loading while syncing creatures so we believe its been fixed through other changes. But if youre still experiencing this bug, please let us know!

• If you want to see whats new on Pre-Release, here are the instructions
  
• Please post your bugs and feedback on our forums
  
• You can also join us on our CHKN discord to post bugs, feedback, or questions (or just hang out!)
  
• Check out our Trello board development roadmap to see whats coming