Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch!

ARK is coming to PS4 December 6th!

If you haven't already heard the news, PS4 is finally going to be joining the ARK Tribe!

You can read the full announcement here which has all the details:

ARK Digest 43!

Here is our question and answer session with Lead Designer, Lead Programmer, Co-Creative Director of ARK: Survival Evolved, and Co-Founder of Studio Wildcard: Jeremy "Drake" Stieglitz!

Survivor, WatcherCCG asks, “Could we perhaps get an admin command to bypass the need to have materials on hand for crafting. When I do creative base building in single player, it's always a massive hassle juggling all the giveitem commands for the various items I need to build, and this would probably be super helpful with that.”

Quote Yes, we’ll do it in v253!

Survivor, Avios asks, “Will carnivores ever get a "hunger" sort of system to them, instead of them being a bottomless pit and eating everything in sight?”

Quote Not by us, but a Mod could pretty easily add that! Would just require adding a networked float “Hunger” variable to the base Dino Character BP, increase it slowly over time, and toggle the dinosaur’s targeting and eating values depending on whether the hunger value is over a certain amount -- and reparenting various Dinos to that (or use a TC).

Survivor, BIRVM asks, “How will the Tek Cave work? Will you find the materials to make Tek tier objects, or will you find the objects itself in the cave? And will it have guardians to defend the cave? I'm so excited for the Tek cave”

Quote The Tek Cave is a super-challenging end-game cave prior to the final sequence-boss. Oh damn, spoilers! :-P

Survivor, HilmZech asks, “I was wondering if we could have something to store our dinos in probably digital format. they will require expensive things to maintain probably, and maybe a build limit? a person/tribe cannot build more than 3 of these, and if the device is destroyed the dinos are gone too”

Quote Tek Tier!

Survivor, ImpureFrost asks, “With the Lycanthropy and Vampirism being a halloween disease, Will we eventually see more Holiday themed diseases?“

Quote You’ll definitely see Lycanthrophy and Vampirism next year, and hopefully we’ll do more Holiday-themed crazyness as we get our feet on the ground with how to keep the console versions in sync throughout limited-time events!

Survivor, ImpureFrost also asks, “The Arthropleura was given a turret mode AI attack, will we see more types of Dinos that have this AI?”

Quote Yep, most/all of the projectile-tossing dinos should be getting that option.

Survivor, OnePotatoChip asks, “Smoke grenades. Would it be difficult for them to also work on animals? ie. a properly timed smoke grenade to a Giga's face could offer a few precious seconds needed to escape or confuse a pack of Raptors that're hounding you. Also, any chance for cherry grenades for distraction purposes? More ways to interact with AI in general other than 'kill' or 'go around' would be nice. “

Quote That’d be cool, and yes I think we can make that happen soon.

Survivor, DomiDarko asks, “With tek tier upcoming will there be anything we have a better/clear underwater vision?”

Quote Tek Helmet.

Survivor, Codebreaker asks, “Would you consider, adding a personally owned, personally snap, admin demolish - governance setting. Same with dinos as well. This way if a tribe member up and leaves it can be demolished by an admin without having to wait out the timer. Also protects the tribe against a bad/troll recruits”

Quote I’d love to, but sadly when someone leaves your Tribe with the personally-owned Structure system, we don’t retain information about the previous Tribe they were in, so we’d have no way to know who the previous Admins were to be able to have rights to instantly destroy such newly-independent Structures… it would be a significant overhead to store such additional information even after you’ve left a Tribe, so it isn’t going to be in the near-term plans.

Survivor, Codebreaker also asks, “Could you add Chitin to the Feeding Trough to feed the Archies”

Quote Yes, we’ll do so in v253!

Survivor, Valentine asks, “Can we also have improvements to the players ability to fight? Like sprinting, dodge rolling, blocking, heavy attacks, charging attacks and other such things as well as better animations and character customization? =D I feel like the dinosaurs and new maps have really overshadowed the survivor part of the game!”

Quote To begin with, hair customization is coming ;-) We do plan to do a further animation-mechanics pass as well prior to launch.

Survivor, ShiningAmaterasu asks, “Will the ankylo have something like a cripple effect when he its large creatures with its tail maybe not permanent but if an ankylo hits for example a rex it could move slower for a short period of time i dont know maybe 60 seconds or less?”

Quote Yeah some Dino’s getting a leg-break feature like that during the TLC pass (which will, interestingly, only work against larger dinos)

Survivor, Driska asks, “Will it be possible to fish on the pelagornis?”

Quote Hmmmm I love that idea. Sittin’ on my bird, fishin’-all-day... I will make it happen!

Survivor, JonSwagSnow asks, “Do you plan on adding a Titanosaur trophy head so we can display it as a notorious hunter?”

Quote Absolutely.

Survivor, Shrekasaurus suggests a huge weapon list:

Thoughts?

Quote That’s a good read, thanks for the thoughts. Various of those are already on the todo list. It would be spoiling to tell you all of the ones though! Ok, as a quick preview, here are two (among the others we will be doing): Plasma Short Sword and the Lance, for example!

Survivor, GuiterRocker1 asks, “With the addition of the megalosaurus sleep mechanic will we see sleep functions for any other dinos? Maybe a nap feature that could heal dinos faster with a "groggy" feature after that is similar to the "hangover" feature when you consume a beer jar? Would be awesome for herbivores as an alternative to the tasty cakes since they take so long to heal up.”

Quote Herbis are getting a buff: explosion and flame resistance, along with much better veggie cakes. Will consider adding a general sleep cycle, at the very least we’re doing further experimentation with such a mechanic on the Troodon!

Primal Survival Questions:

We’re running through them with that project’s development team (Instinct Games) and will have an info drop on it next week!

ARK: Evolution Event Weekend!

To celebrate this festive period, and with the weekend coming early - as does the Evolution Event!

From Friday the 2nd of December at 3PM ET until Monday the 5th of December at 12PM ET the Official ARK Network will be affected by an Evolution Event! Survivors playing this weekend will get to experience the following bonuses:

2x Harvesting Rate

2x Taming Rate

2x EXP Rate

So be sure to log in and enjoy the increased rates whilst you can!

Sandboxr 20% Off!

Sandboxr is offering ARK figures at 20% off until December 24th (with the code LOOTCRATE) and free global shipping until December 12th! Make sure to pick one up during this great sale period!

Community Contests!

Player Procedurally Generated Maps!

The Procedurally Generated Map system allows players to make their own ARK maps by determining a myriad of landscape options from the heights of mountains, depths of valleys, and the number of lakes, rivers or oceans, to the kinds of each biome they want, and more! Let's check out the entries for this weeks contest! The winner for this weeks contest is...

Lake Islands by KishK0!

If you'd like to run this map yourself, here are the necessary PGM settings!

PGMapName=ProceduralARK20161201162758 PGTerrainPropertiesString=MapSeed=943;LandscapeRadius=1.0;Water Frequency=3.898665;Mountains Frequency=4.617451;Mountains Slope=2.195431;MountainsHeight=0.915787;Turbulence Power=0.0125;Shore Slope=1.0;WaterLevel=-0.72;GrassDensity=1.0;JungleGrassDensity=0.02;ErosionSteps=4;TreesGroundSlopeAccuracy=0.5;DepositionStrength=0.5;ErosionStrength=0.75;OceanFloorLevel=-1.0;SnowBiomeSize=0.122782;RWBiomeSize=0.222367;MountainBiomeStart=-0.552533;MountainsTreeDensity=0.01;JungleBiomeStart=-0.727392;IslandBorderCurveExp=4.0;MaxSawnPointHeight=0.1;SnowGrassDensity=0.25;MountainGrassDensity=0.05;SnowMountainGrassDensity=0.15;UnderwaterObjectsDensity=0.5;SnowMountainsTreeDensity=0.01;TreeDensity=0.003;JungleTreeDensity=0.66;RedWoodTreeDensity=0.35;SnowTreeDensity=1.0;RedwoodGrassDensity=0.1;ShoreTreeDensity=0.05;SnowShoreTreeDensity=0.025;DeepWaterBiomesDepth=-0.24;InlandWaterObjectsDensity=0.5;ShorelineStartOffset=0.01;ShorelineThickness=0.0015;MountainGeneralTreesPercent=0.1;TerrainScaleMultiplier=(X=1.0f,Y=1.0f,Z=1.0f);SnowBiomeLocation=(X=0.2f,Y=0.2f);RWForestBiomeLocation=(X=0.5f,Y=0.5f);NorthRegion1Start=(X=0.25f,Y=0.0f);NorthRegion1End=(X=0.416f,Y=0.5f);NorthRegion2Start=(X=0.416f,Y=0.0f);NorthRegion2End=(X=0.582f,Y=0.5f);NorthRegion3Start=(X=0.582f,Y=0.0f);NorthRegion3End=(X=0.75f,Y=0.0f);SouthRegion1Start=(X=0.25f,Y=0.5f);SouthRegion1End=(X=0.416f,Y=1.0f);SouthRegion2Start=(X=0.416f,Y=0.5f);SouthRegion2End=(X=0.582f,Y=1.0f);SouthRegion3Start=(X=0.582f,Y=0.5f);SouthRegion3End=(X=0.75f,Y=1.0f);EastRegion1Start=(X=0.75f,Y=0.0f);EastRegion1End=(X=1.0f,Y=0.333f);EastRegion2Start=(X=0.75f,Y=0.333f);EastRegion2End=(X=1.0f,Y=0.666f);EastRegion3Start=(X=0.75f,Y=0.666f);EastRegion3End=(X=1.0f,Y=1.0f);WestRegion1Start=(X=0.0f,Y=0.0f);WestRegion1End=(X=0.25f,Y=0.333f);WestRegion2Start=(X=0.0f,Y=0.333f);WestRegion2End=(X=0.25f,Y=0.666f);WestRegion3Start=(X=0.0f,Y=0.666f);WestRegion3End=(X=0.25f,Y=1.0f) PGLastPreset=0

Congratulations to our winner! Looking forward to the next set! We'll be creating a new thread for the next contest which will be running immediately - so get generating!

And to learn more about PGMs and on how to get started, check out this guide here:

NVidia Ansel Photography Contest

Super Resolution Version: http://images.nvidia.com/ansel/SuperResolution/ARK-SuperResolution1/ARK__Survival_Evolved_HighRes_2016_09_01_-_14_38_36_55.html

ARK: Survival Evolved and the Scorched Earth Expansion Pack now include support for NVIDIA Ansel -- a revolutionary new way to capture in-game shots. Compose shots from any position, adjust with post-process filters, capture HDR images in high-fidelity formats, and share the screenshots in 360 via a smartphone, PC or VR headset.

Learn more about these features from the NVIDIA blog.

Now let’s get to the contest!

There were 3 potential categories for survivors to enter their shots into and they were the following:

Three Categories

Super Resolution: These should be taken at 8x Super Resolution. Players can optionally use Depth of Field effects accessible in Spectator mode by pressing the [Delete] key.

Panoramic 360 Stereoscopic 3D: These should be taken at 4x Super Resolution, in 360 Stereoscopic 3D mode. We will crop them to 2D for web display, while also providing the 3D version for viewing within VR display.

Freeform: Any settings, whacky and creative use of Ansel filters are encouraged. Adding humorous titles/captions in Photoshop is also acceptable for this category!

And now without further ado, here are your entries!

You’ll want to click on the image title to be able to download the maximum size image, we’ve resized them for display purposes

Super Resolution!

Winners!

GravesAJ - Didn't See It Coming

Wolf Angelus - Ancient Times

Runner Ups!

Kovko - Homewrecker

Wolf Angelus - Taming 101

GravesAJ - Water Gliding

Honourable Mentions!

GravesAJ - Are we there yet

EXFIB0 - Looks good from up here

EXFIB0 - First Ride

EXFIB0 - Night Rider

GravesAJ - Can You See Me Now

GravesAJ - Escape

GravesAJ - Freedom

KISHK0 - Close Call

KISHK0 - Fighting off the Onycs

KISHK0 - Flames

KISHK0 - Triple Team

Kovko - Hunter

Kovko - Old Fiends

Kovko - One Last Hug

Kovko - Stonescape

NakedZombo - Crystal Mysteries

Wolf Angelus - Enchanted

Wolf Angelus - Hot

Wolf Angelus - Icy Wonderland

Wolf Angelus - Unexplainable Life

Panoramic 360 Stereoscopic 3D!

Winners!

KISHK0 - Cave Lake

NakedZombo - Hidden Treasures

Runner Ups!

KISHK0 - Redwood Bliss

KISHK0 - The Center

KISHK0 - The Prize Room

Wolf Angelus - Another World

Honourable Mentions!

EXFIB0 - Adventure is my second name

EXFIB0 - Crystals

KISHK0 - A Paradise

KISHK0 - An Oasis

KISHK0 - Cave Landscape

KISHK0 - Redwood

KISHK0 - River

Wolf Angelus - Lava Cavern

Wolf Angelus - Pride Rock

Freeform!

Winners!

Kovko - Just wyvern jokes...

Wolf Angelus - Land Before Time [All Kid Dino's]

Wolf Angelus - Land Before Time [Family Photo]

Honourable Mentions!

GravesAJ - Welcome to Poop Towers!

Congratulations everyone! Great entries

ARKitect!

This is an award given to Survivors to celebrate the amazing structures you build. These bases are judged 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 74 is…

Jurassic Ark by Valoule!

ARKVideo!

This contest is open to all types of video be they funny, epic, scenic, stories, whatever inspires you. Just a general reminder that they should remain safe for work, think of the children!

And without further ado, the ARKVideo for Community Crunch 74 is...

ARK WTF? NEW CAVES ARE OVERPOWERED! (Ark: Survival Evolved) 252 by ThickFreedom

Thanks everyone who entered again, awesome submissions as always. You can check out the rest of the entries here:

Fan Feature!

ALL NEW AND UPDATED CAVES IN 4K, EPIC GRAPHICS [Showcase / Cinematic] - ARK: Survival Evolved by KISHKO

MANIC MEGALOSAURUS - ARK Bites by Lame Wolf Productions

ALL ARK: Level Up / Cuddle Animations! Survival Evolved | The Island & Scorched Earth v252.4 by ShipWrekt

KLEPTOMANIA - ARK Skits by Lame Wolf Productions

ARK - Mythbusters ep.10 - Doedicurus roll; Ballistas Underwater; Etc. by EXFIB0

ARK MYTHBUSTERS Ep.11 - Rock Elementals vs Turrets, Focal Chilli + Battle Tartare Stacking and more! by KISHKO

PACHYRHINOSAURUS MAGIC DINO!!! How to tame/Everything you need to know! Ark: Survival Evolved 252 by ThickFreedom

Ark Building Tutorial :: The Log Cabin :: How To Build A Canadian Cabin In Ark by UniteTheClans

Building the Rambler Hut :: Scorched Earth :: Molten Iron Ep 33 by Arahli The Geek

HIDDEN LOOT BUNKER BASE (HOW NOT TO BE A NOOB!)- ARK: SURVIVAL EVOLVED by H.O.D GAMING

Ark Glowing Lighthouse!- Ark Building Montage Monday EP 4 by RYANT1UM

MEGALOSAURUS | ARK Survival Evolved by GamerPerfection

MOSCHOPS DEADLIEST KILLER? How to tame/Everything you need to know! Ark: Survival Evolved 252 by ThickFreedom

Anyone want some grilled sausages? by Cela



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=806821660

Tapejara Imperator Doodles by Violet



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=808091280

Sea Camo Diplocaulus by Sharkcat



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810149783

Fire Salamander Diplocaulus by Sharkcat



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810193049

Pokemon Quagsire Diplocaulus by Sharkcat



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810149783

Ceratosaurus WIP by milokamilo



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=808769132

I'm so fashionable! by Morgengrau



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810249511

That's it for this week's Crunch, we're hoping to post a Digest a little later this weekend, so stay tuned for that! Thanks guys!

As always if you’ve got anything to share please get in touch and be sure to follow us on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/survivetheark

Facebook: www.facebook.com/survivetheark

Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/playark

Imzy:

Much love,

Wildcard Jen, Jat & the ARK: Survival Evolved Team