Introducing Community Crunch #52!
Featured Fan art!
Artwork Raptor Skin by Levia Draconia
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=705537291
Godzillark Progress by pepezilla
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701908020
Hungry Sarco Is Hungry by Decayist
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=702215783
Idea: Plant Species O by TheLegendaryArkaius
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=702218134
Leviathan – Ark: Survival Evolved concept by hamsterbluebow
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=700846935
Harbour City II by Sharkking
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701602515
Fanmade Dossier: Bunyip by Shadlos
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=703336917
Fanmade Dossier: Lopho by Scarecrow
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=702379229
Fanmade Dossier: Jersey Devil by Shadlos
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=702129353
Fanmade Dossier: Shunosaurus by robbie7
Fanmade Dossier: Anomalocaris by KAMIKAZY
The Ranger Chronincles – Journey To The Center of the ARK by ranger1presents
Batman! ARK SoTF Highlight by typeForced
ecoInWonderland Mod by eco
DODOREX vs THE BOSSES by GamerPerfection
Community Contests!
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 52 is…
TRanger for their ARKCraft Carrier Ship!
Congratulations TRanger for this awesome and creative ship! We’d also like to give a special honourable mentions to:
Valoule for their Bioshock Infinite Themed Airship!
With a link to the full album here: http://imgur.com/a/Lwjef
And..
Monkeypuzzle for Western Towers!
Congratulations to all 3 of you for your impressive ARKitecture entries!
ARKVideo!
This new Contest will be open for 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!
The ARKVideo winner for Community Crunch 52 is…
Nakedzombo for their ARK Cinematic
Hilarious! Hope Jimmy ends up alright
And we’d also like to give a special honourable mention to:
RagingCyanide for their film
Workshop Spotlight!
Ced: “Welcome to another week of the mod spotlight! This week I’m with PommieGamer, the creator of the Homing Pigeon! Welcome! So this mod seems like it took off. I saw when it was released in late March and a few weeks later it was in the most popular mods. Tell me a little about yourself. Do you have a background in game design?”
QuoteHi everyone, it’s great to be here, thanks for the opportunity ComplexMinded. My name is PommieGamer, originally I’m from London, England, but I’m now living in the beautiful city of Sydney, Australia. I don’t have a background in game design (that would be a dream job though!), I do however work as a software engineer by day, so like any developer I like tinkering around with new toys, figuring out how stuff works – which is how I guess I fell into modding.
To be honest with you I’m a little blown away by the success of Homing Pigeon, we now have over 105,000 subscribers to the mod, which is an insane number! – especially when you consider this is my very first mod for ARK: Survival Evolved.
Ced: Well the success is much deserved. I think you tapped into functionality that many people have been looking for in the main game. For those who aren’t aware of the mod, briefly explain what it is and what your goal for the mod is.
QuoteHoming Pigeon at its core is an AI mod. Flyers equipped with the Homing Pigeon Leg Ring will automatically attempt to return to the closest Homing Pigeon Flag owned by the tribe, in the event that the rider dies. The motivation for the mod was to assist early-game players in retrival of their flyer (as they are so valuable at that stage of the game), and also because I have a habbit of accidentally pressing ‘E’ whist in mid-flight. Oops! ?
My plan for Homing Pigeon is to add additional functionality to enable players to manually send flyers to a tribe owned or allied Homing Pigeon Flag. This has great potential to open up new forms of trading and communication (especially on RP servers) between tribes. In addition I also plan to add support for a number of the other mods in the community which add custom flyers to the game.
Ced: It sounds like you have a lot planned for the future of this mod! I can tell you that I’ll definitely have my eye out for it. Its something that a lot of people wanted in the main game. Who knows, maybe this will become an official mod! I can definitely see the purpose for it. So what helped you get started in the development kit?
QuoteFingers crossed ? I would be thrilled if this became an official mod! While I have modded for other games in the past, I had never modded with the Unreal Engine, so I started by doing a ton of research on how the Blueprint Engine works and what sorts of things are exposed via that interface by the ARK dev kit. The forums were a great resource for getting started, so I had a number of threads bookmarked. In addition there are a ton of great video resources on YouTube, and we now have Discord chat which has been super helpful at getting quick info, or finding help to debug an issue. In terms of my own personal learning, the biggest hurdle for me was understanding how network replication functions in the Unreal Engine.
For anyone wishing to learn, this video playlist really helped me understand that subject:
Ced: “Thanks for that awesome resource!! I’m sure that will help get some people started. So do you have any plans for any other mods or do you plan on investing most if your time into this one. Any other cool ideas?”
QuoteI want to focus on finishing everything I have planned for Homing Pigeon before I move onto my next mod. But as a teaser, I do have an idea for another AI based mod which I think is going to be super useful and exciting, especially for ARK: Survival of the Fittest. But for now, my lips are sealed on exactly what that is ? .
Ced: “Ah I love the suspense.. Well I think that wraps it up for this community crunch! Any parting words?”
QuoteThank you to everyone for your continued support! …and if you would allow me a shameless plug; checkout my ARK: Survival Evolved video series on my YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/c/PommieGamer . Thanks again Complex!
Ced: “Thanks for that awesome resource!! I’m sure that will help get some people started. So do you have any plans for any other mods or do you plan on investing most if your time into this one. Any other cool ideas?”
I want to focus on finishing everything I have planned for Homing Pigeon before I move onto my next mod. But as a teaser, I do have an idea for another AI based mod which I think is going to be super useful and exciting, especially for ARK: Survival of the Fittest. But for now, my lips are sealed on exactly what that is ? .
Ced: “Ah I love the suspense.. Well I think that wraps it up for this community crunch! Any parting words?”
Thank you to everyone for your continued support! …and if you would allow me a shameless plug; checkout my ARK: Survival Evolved video series on my YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/c/PommieGamer . Thanks again Complex!
That’s it for this week’s post 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!
All the best,
Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival Evolved Team!