Welcome to the 32nd issue of the Community Crunch! To those unaware this is a topic which primarily consist of content to share, made by the community, for the community! As well as any little changes I want to make survivors aware about, which happen within our community ;).

Fan Feature!

This is the section of the Crunch dedicated to sharing some of your guys' artwork, screenshots, and other content you've cooked up!

Those disgruntled Procoptodons by taroamaro

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=589336517

Kirstenly’s Icon Portrait

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=589713722

Dodo-Rex by Mr Jurassic

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=593536346

Deadpool visits the ARK by ClipZ

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=592285518

Irritator Concept by DracoSepentor77

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=592133167

Carno Armspin by Kirstenly

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=488123366

Now even though the holiday season has ended, here are some cool shots created by some Survivors on the ARK!

Merry Christmas from Fearful Snake

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=584009014

Christmas Tree by Scorpicon70

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=578562315

Rarzak celebrating 2016 in his festive gear!

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=588400799

Winter Wonderland at the Dodo Dojo by GamerPerfection

Sentoki’s ARK Fanart Doodles

Jedi Evolved by GamerPerfection

Virtual Realm’s Ranger Chronicles: Penguin Rescue!

Fanmade Dossier: Human Specimen by artsbyespi

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=537779258

Fanmade Dossier: Confuciusornis by [ESA] Parrotmarauder327

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=580045388

Fanmade Dossier: Estemmenosuchus Profitalis by SkaarSmashKikou

Fanmade Dossier: Hurdia by Amongo

Fanmade Dossier: Sugar Gliders by Seria602

Fanmade Dossier: Acrocanthosaurus Maximum by Tasfariel

Fanmade Dossier: Siats Meekorum Orcus by Tasfariel

Fanmade Dossier: Australovenator Venenosa by Tasfariel

Fanmade Dossier: Megaraptor Velocius by Tasfariel

Fanmade Dossier: Wiwaxia Mollusca by Blackfrog

Community Crunch Contests!

ARKitect

This is an award given to Survivors to celebrate the amazing structures you build. These bases are judge based upon a number of different factors such as their creativity, uniqueness, how fun of a base it is, the difficulty of building it, the functionality it provides and much more!

The ARKitect for Community Crunch 32 is..

It’s a tie!

DNrednex’s AT-AT

Valoule’s Simpson House



and we've also like to give a special shout-out to the following Survivors as they are the runners up for this week!

FataL1ty’s ARK-mas!

Cookie’s Christmas Tree!

Thank you to all the survivors who entered this week's ARKitect contest! We'll be in touch with the winners above to get your prizes out to you and congratulations once again!

ARKArt

This is an award given to survivors who have created beautiful work of art for that week! As always, the artwork is not being judged on the quality of the screenshot or the graphical settings used, but instead what you have managed to draw and produce in game.

The ARKArtist for Community Crunch 32 is…

It’s a tie!

±’s Raptor Claus!

Okim wishes you a Happy ARKmas!

and we'd also like to give a special shout-out to the following Survivors as they are the runners up for this week ARKArt contest!

FataL1ty’s Bronto-Stockings!

Observable’s Snow Argent Warpaint!

Thank you for all the entries this week guys! If you'd like to take a look at all the submissions, you can do so here:

Workshop Spotlight!

Workshopper: Spanj.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=527788936

Survivors, this week we're joined by Spanj. and they're here to answer some questions and talk about their mods with us. Thanks for joining us! Do you think you could introduce yourself to the community, and let us know about what you're currently working on?

Quote Hey! I'm Alex (Spanj.), a second year computer science student at Warwick University in the UK, and I'm currently working on a total conversion mod, Eggrassic Park! This mod really represents my first strides in actual modding and (if you can call it so) game development - I'm really enjoying it! But sadly, amidst studying, working on the bar and getting 'white-girl-wasted' with my pals, I haven't had nearly as much time to devote to my mod as I would've liked - for this reason, it's my New Years resolution to work on the mod that much more throughout 2016! How delightfully egg!



A giant egg

Tell us more about Eggrasic Park, what sort of mod is it, where did you get the idea for it and what are your thoughts about the future of the mod?

Quote So EGGRASSIC PARK is a total conversion I've been developing with my buddies over at Two Angry Gamers (check them out, they're hilarious!); we ran a server for several months from release through the summer with a number of us sinking hundreds --if not clipping the thousands-- of hours into the game before gradually hitting end-game and (as much as it pains me to say it!) running out of things to do! For that reason, amongst others, we laid the server to rest and I began toying around with the ADK to explore ways we could extend the end-game content, as well as introducing a number of improvements and changes we felt suited the playerbase on our server. We also felt that ARK required a little more giant egg. The first major project I set my grubby mitts on was a server arena - originally I built a big in-game structure for server events which TAG would stream for the community - it was good fun, but had a number of flaws…



The Original Arena



Being an in-game structure, it required some degree of protection…..

Quote For example, gearing teams within the arena was a difficult process, requiring you to manually craft/spawn items for each round, as well as spawning and taming dinos to battle with; all in all this was particularly time-consuming between rounds and got rather tedious for players, viewers and us admins trying to manage the whole show. A main concern of mine has been to improve that process, making it easier to manage for event-runners as well as more entertaining for gladiators and spectators, introducing a number of systems within the arena structure to this effect; from item-spawners, giving infinite supplies of weapons and armour for use in the arena; player-gearers, chests which the admin team fill with items which can then be punched by players within the respective ready rooms to immediately fill their inventory with the required loadout; automated doors, which are opened/closed with just a single button; a "beast vault", spawning a number of modified gladiator-dinos which can be instantly tamed for use within the arena; and more!



Punchable loot-box; filled by an admin to copy loadouts into each of the gladiators' inventories without needing to spawn a new set of items for each player



Beast Vault

Quote In the interest of preventing theft (as the item-spawners do spawn a number of end-game items), all the weapons, armours and dinos spawned at the arena have all been modified to last for only a certain period of time (generally 20) before despawning, and ammo types are only compatible with weapons handed out at the arena - hopefully this'll ease the immediately-wary minds of any server admins out there! All this has been implemented within a large set-piece structure which, unlike the original arena we had built, is actually a part of the map, making it indestructible (suck on that, griefers). It's also about twice the size. Bigger's better, no foolin' around here.



The new arena

Quote Built atop the volcano, right in the heart of the island, I've gone to painstaking lengths to make the place look awesome, from its grand size to intricate detail, it's certainly a great place to host server-events. To aid that further, I've also implemented a number of spawn points actually atop the volcano, allowing players to easily reach the arena location regardless of their level or means of transport.



Arena floor detail



Obsidian statues atop the ramparts



View from within the victors’ balcony

Quote There's even an archery range for wannabe Legolas' to train their bowmanship, complete with glow-in-the-dark targets and free bows and arrows (only usable at the arena).



Archery Range

Quote Aside from the arena, I've also been implementing a "grand egg hunt", a trail of clues hidden around the map which lead to a unique reward: an obsidian raptor mount. The goal here was to implement something special, something unique which players would actually have to strive to find, and which would take a lengthy period of time to complete, as well as requiring a considerably high level. I hope an event like this will give tribes a decent and challenging goal, as well as a reason to scour the map further than just the outskirts of their own bases to gather resources - also, once the final prize is found, it must be tamed akin to how bosses in SotF are tamed, with its location becoming common knowledge to all players on the server; if anyone's read Ready Player One, my aim was to create something like the search for Halliday's keys, with battles ensuing the location's reveal in order to claim the prize. Each egg found gives the player a key, written on which is a clue to the next egg; there are four eggs to find which lead to the final tomb of the obsidian raptor. The eggs are scattered across the map, lost to the jungles and sunken in the ocean, so it certainly won't be an easy task to complete! Here - because I'm feeling generous, I'll show you where the first egg is! Best of luck!



Hidden location of first egg

Quote The unique reward mount is a start on an area I'm keen to delve into, giving players more reward for completing certain tasks within the game - being the first to reach the end of a cave, for example, or defeating various bosses. I feel it important to make the rewards actually have use as well as holding value. As nice as things like flags are, they're nothing but decoration; introducing a breed of "reward" mounts, which are powerful (but balanced so as to not be too overpowered) and unique, or perhaps a set of reward armour or weapons which have higher stats than the base items grants a real trophy for completing these tasks, one with value not just from rarity, but also from usefulness.



"Onyxia", the obsidian raptor (you'll note a fair few WoW references within the mod…)

Quote Another project I'm working on, and have a temporary small-scale showcase of, is an in-game economy, introducing a new currency item and a number of "shop" points at which you can buy and sell various items/resources for currency. Though not currently fleshed-out to represent all items, it's my aim to create a number of different shop buildings scattered around the map which each trade a different item-set; for example, eggs and meats in an organic farm shop (only the finest locally sourced goods, after all), construction items sold in an architect shop, different armour types in an armory, or guns and weapons in an arms-dealer. It is also worth noting that, currently, the first clue to the Grand Egg Hunt can be purchased from the shops at the arena. I also plan to use this currency as a drive for further realms of play within the game - perhaps things such as being the first to reach the base of a cave without dying or travelling to a number of different locations/vistas within a certain amount of time - hopefully even a form of questing system some way down the line! It will require a lot of work as well as careful planning in terms of balance, but I hope that these new areas of gameplay will lead to a much expanded end-game beyond the norms of base building and raiding.



An old iteration of the shop nodes; they've seen QUITE an interface change since this!



Current shop node interface (pending graphical & UI improvements)

Quote Of course, this is just the start of what I plan to include in the mod! With time, I'd like to extend various parts of the economy and arena to include a form of gambling system within the confines of the arena. I also plan to build further set-pieces across the map, including dungeons and castles to explore the mysteries of. I also want to create a small-scale SotF arena within the map itself (perhaps hidden under the sea somewhere), allowing admins to host SotF or Hunger Games-style events without requiring a different server or having to faff around finding an official server large enough to host everyone involved with the event. Of course, the mod won't end here; I hope it will be an on-going effort to improve and expand the in-game systems for communities and players alike, but yeah! I also have plans to extend some of the items in the TC into stand-alone mods - notably the economy and the arena, allowing server admins to introduce them to their servers without requiring the full TC overhaul. It'll take some time as, due to my learning how to mod whilst modding, the stuff I've done so far is pretty messy and certainly not clean, but I'm sure that, with time, I'll be able to piece it together into coherent, clean, stand-alone modules.



That is an incredible amount of information and work you’ve done so far! Thank you for being so detailed in your answer. It’s very impressive. Something that I want to enquire about which had come up during our Alienware Spotlight stream was that different teams had a difference in terms of what they could get/start with and the inventories too. I believe we had selected which weapons we’d go through to try and make the fight more balanced. Could you explain how you expect the arena to be played out and how you’ll do work on balancing?

Quote We always envisaged 3 main game-modes in the arena: normal PvP (which can be divided into two types; one in own gear with their own dinos, perhaps to settle a turf war between two tribes; the other being as I've described above, with weaponry and armour provided in a gladiatorial fight to the death between two teams), PvD (a sorta wave-mode players vs dinos, where a team -or a single brave, but foolish, soul- valiantly battles against waves of increasingly difficult, admin selected dinosaurs) or Pokemon style DvD, where tribes would bring their own tamed battle-pets to do war in the arena. With this in mind, the dino-vault is foolishly, on my part, limited to just one side of the arena (at least in terms of ease of access), making it difficult to have rounds of PvP where both sides have dinos provided. I'll have to figure a fix for that!



Gladiator Beasts

Quote To make it easier for teams to tell who's who, the armour sets provided are in team colours, and combatants in the arena (as per Jat's suggestion, actually!) are given team-coloured name tags above their heads, helping gladiators separate friend from foe as well as aiding spectators in telling who's winning. Balance-wise, I've done the best I can to make it as fair as possible for both teams (ignoring the reptilian oversight), with the provided sets of armour and weapons all spawning at the same basic quality level, so no one side has a minor advantage. The loadout boxes also ensure that every gladiator is equipped with the same items - unfortunately I can't easily account for items players take into the arena with them; I toyed with having all players' inventories stripped the second they entered the ready room, but I don't want people accidentally entering with their prized Sunday shoes on and having such precious goods sucked outta their inventories into the void. Temporary storage of items is possible on the server, but where the server to go down during a round, all the server-stored items would be lost. All-in-all, I felt it less of an emotional roller coaster to just try and trust people than run the risk of causing upset. Beyond that, there's not a whole lot I can do without imposing wild restrictions on how the arena games MUST be played out, and that's really not what I was gunning for. My aim with the arena, first and foremost, was to aid and ease the process of hosting server events, allowing communities and streamers to enjoy this far better by providing a flexible framework for people to play around with, and I hope (pending some minor changes over time) that this is what I have achieved!

Cheers for the insight! It would be a shame to lose your precious Sunday shoes, that’s for sure. It’ll be interesting to see how battles play out, perhaps people will enforce their own rules for their specific servers. Sp Spanj. is there anything else you’ve got up your sleeve in terms of Eggrasic Park’s core-features?

Quote So beyond the arena, the shops and the egg hunt, I'm currently working on a bank. Which is weird. To cut a long story short, when we last had our server, our community was divided between those who wanted nought than a pleasant bit of PvE and those who enjoyed playing PvE but also wanted to wreak some havoc, raid some bases and generally engage in hot PvP . To get the best of both worlds, we've been running a base protection plugin, which prevents any base damage at times other than weekends, when people could at least be around to defend their valuables from burglars and home invaders, as well as introducing the arena to satisfy those who just wanted to spill some blood. It worked, initially, but we found those who wanted to play PvE were still getting pretty upset at the prospect of losing their stuff, even if they were around to look after it, so with the rebirth of our server on the horizon, I've been looking at ways to BETTER please both worlds. We looked into the new PvE war declaration system (great idea btw!) but felt it was a bit too rigid; a burglar wouldn't call you a couple hours before he breaks into your house, would he, it's just not spontaneous enough. So instead we fell back on the defined raiding hours strategy -having protection through the week to rest, regroup and rebuild- and looked at ways to improve this. A bank seemed the obvious choice, but it's been a weird one to code. I'm still playing around with things (in fact the first iteration of the bank code is compiling as we speak) so I'll have to see how it plays out, but I feel that if players have the option to safely store x number of items before any raiding begins then it will considerably lessen the blow of having your base raided. Couple this with the shop system and you realise that, over time, converting your spare resources to currency could greatly aid the rebuilding process down the line, giving you that financial buffer to rebound and buy exactly the resources you need without having to grind and gather it all again. That's the plan at least; I'll have to let you know how it turns out...



Bridge to the bank



Inside the bank vault

Quote Oh, giant egg you say? Well. It appears I've shown you two of the four eggs in the hunt. How generous. Good luck!

You’ve done quite a lot so far and we’re really looking forward to the progression of the mod. How is your experience with modding? With what you’ve done so far - this doesn’t look like your first project, you’ve clearly got some skills!

Quote I've been a gamer my whole life and, as a kid, used to make silly platformers with my friend on Game Maker 8 (don't knock it - Worm & Blob Adventures was QUITE the game, accompanied by some crappy 8-bit Smells Like Teen Spirit soundtrack, we were real proud of ourselves), but other than a couple of simple mods and reskins for old games like Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis (loved that game!), I really haven't delved into modding all that much; in fact I'd say that working with the ADK really constitutes my first steps into the mod-creating scene. It's been an interesting process for sure. UE4's forums and the wealth of tutorials and information online have certainly helped me along my way but I'm still constantly learning with each new project I attempt to implement. I've just spent a grand amount of time figuring out why my so-thunk sound coding wasn't working on dedicated servers, presenting a wealth of "accessed none" errors and general incompatibility. In fact it wasn't until I came to put EGGRASSIC PARK on a server that I realised 'replication' was even a thing, so off to the forums and user guides I went and, sure enough, it's taken some time, but I've managed to work through all my issues! Needless to say, it's an area I enjoy fiddling with - though I'm new to it all and there's a lot of learning to do, I'm already finding myself more and more confident with the whole process and I'd recommend anyone else who hasn't dabbled with modding to give it a go!

As a large total conversion creator, do you have any tips for upcoming modders on what they can do when working with UE4 and ARK itself?

Quote I'd say just jump straight into whatever you wanna do; the best way to learn is to do, so attempt everything you can and work through problems as you encounter them. It's a pretty gun-ho approach to things but it's served me pretty well so far! You'll find a lot of the problems you encounter are often well documented on the UE4 forums and a lot of the tasks you wish to achieve will have guides and walk-throughs in how to achieve them all over the web. Your best bet is to just search some keywords and see what you find. If all else fails, just ask! Making an account on the UE4 forums is certainly a great place to start seeking help, and the modding community will almost always rally to your aid! Besides -- what's the worst that can happen!?

This. This is the worst that can happen.

See guys? That’s the worst that can happen! Not scary at all :). Thanks for the tips buddy! Is there anything you’d like to end with before wrapping this up?

Quote Thanks for having me on here! I hope I haven't bored you all to death with my babbling and that some of you may even like what you see - be sure to stay tuned on the EGGRASSIC PARK mod page over the next week or so for details of when our server is going live and when the launch event will be! I look forward to seeing as many of you joining us at the arena for some Tom-foolery as the server can hold! For more info about it all, follow myself (@spanjaythelion) or TwoAngryGamers (@2AngryGamers) on Twitter - feel free to shoot us a message, too! Thanks again and I can't wait to see how the game continues to flourish!



Come join us at the arena soon!

That’s it for this week’s Crunch guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share please get in touch and be sure to follow us on Twitter at @survivetheark - Facebook at www.facebook.com/survivetheark and Reddit at www.reddit.com/r/playark

Thanks everyone!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK Survival Evolved Team