It’s here! The Adventure Update (v0.2.0) is now released, just in time for the holidays. There’s still some work to do but we really want to get the update out to everyone and start getting your feedback on the new features.
You’ll find some build highlights and the full patch notes below. We’ve also added a link to our bug/known issues list for your reference. Onward!
What’s New
There are a LOT of improvements, updates, and brand new features in this build, with a big focus on Adventure Mode and creature interactions. Here are just a few of the highlights.
All New Map
Remember to bring a creature or two with you while exploring. You never know who you might run into.
Creature-Powered Structures
Put those creatures to work for you powering your homestead’s treadmills. (You only have to pay them in food.)
Survival Progression in Adventure Mode
Get stronger and build larger, more powerful creatures to take on more difficult challenges as you explore the island.
Here we see the rare three-headed dragon dance-fighting technique.
Creature Stat System
See your creature’s strengths and weaknesses as you build it! Experiment with different lifeblock combos to see what stats you get.
New Contextual Interactions and Prompts
Interact with your creatures and the world in different ways depending on what you’re holding. You’ll have your creatures eating out of the palm of your hand.
New Adventure Mode Starting Area
Make your way through the temple ruins to learn the ropes and build your first creature!
First-Person Hands, Items, and Animations
Even the chickens are jumping for joy.
New Creature AI
Completely rewritten for more intelligent and emotionally responsive creatures... including scaredy cats.
New Whistle Command Radial Menu
Point and click, then select from a set of contextual actions. Your creature will take care of the rest.
New Creature Animation System
Better movement and improved performance! Everything an angry creature chasing you over uneven terrain could wish for.
Avatar Armor
Protect yourself and look snazzy at the same time. Your creatures are sure to be impressed by your fashion sense.
New Weather System
Poor soggy chicken. Maybe we should have made him his own house?
A Whole New UI
Menus, inventory, health and hunger meters -- everything’s been upgraded! See how your creatures are doing at a glance.
“Hey guys, I heard there were donuts over here?!”
There’s a lot more! For a full list of updates, you can check out the...
Patch Notes
- NEW FEATURES:
- Brand new environment: 5 unique biomes (tropical beach, forest, desert, swamp, volcanic) and points of interest to explore
- New wild creature combos, with unique “mini-bosses” to challenge
- New Adventure Mode intro experience (tutorial)
- 4 mysterious temples added across the map (look for the beams of light to investigate!)
- Magic eggs and lifeshaper relics added: unlock the ability to build more powerful creatures by finding the lifeshaper relics in Adventure Mode
- New creature stat system: Important stats are displayed on screen while you build a creature
- Creature-powered structures: craft building blocks and higher tiered items by putting your creatures to work
- New whistle command radial system with contextual commands
- First person hands, items, and animations for better immersion when using the first-person camera
- New contextual interactivity system: available actions change depending on what you’re pointing at with the crosshair
- Brand new UI/HUD throughout the game
- Environmental effects for each biome added
- Weather: relax on a raining evening or find your way through the rolling fog
- New, completely rewritten creature animation system for improved performance and visuals
- AI completely rewritten for improved performance and more intelligent creatures
- New pathfinding implementation: allows creature to accurately transverse structures and uneven ground
- New tools added: like the club and hammer
- Player armor added: craft new armor to protect yourself in the wild
- All new food items added: like meatloaf, donuts, sushi and, of course, PIE
- Procedurally generated trees: different types of trees found in different biomes for environmental variety; also provide new types of tree blocks when chopped down
- New plants/foliage found around the island in different biomes
- Game difficulty setting added: Explore in peace or challenge yourself by giving your enemies the advantage. Choose from “easy”, “normal”, or “hard”. Creative Mode defaults to “peaceful”.
- IMPROVEMENTS / CHANGES:
- Creatures now respect diet type: herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore; they will get sick if feed the wrong food type
- Creatures that have been commanded to attack another creature will no longer eat the lifeblocks of their vanquished foe
- Creatures will now automatically help break things: start chopping down a tree, for example, and your creature will come assist
- Creatures can now pick items up in their mouths: they’re helping!
- While building a creature, removed blocks no longer fall to the floor and need to be picked up; instead, blocks are magnetized to the player and picked up automatically
- Cooking now requires a fuel source (like some wood) and time for the item to cook
- Camp fire is now a low-level tool: can only cook low quality foods (get a furnace for higher quality cooking!)
- Creature lifeblocks and tree blocks drop rate has been reduced in Adventure Mode for survival progression balance
- Tamed creatures burn energy when using abilities
- Breakable objects now regenerate “health” if left alone for a period of time: for example, your walls will “heal” up soon after you stop a raid on your homestead
- Breakable objects now have a minimal attack value required to break them, and any damage that’s too weak will bounce off: for example, your fist doesn’t do enough damage to break an iron deposit; you’ll need to use a strong creature or craft a stronger tool
- Drag/drop added to inventory
- Improved flying speed
- Off-hand slot improvements: now easier to use items in your left hand
- World interactions reworked: now based on where the crosshair was placed when you first interacted to help prevent misclicks
- Explicit “Rotate Block” key added when building/place (R)
- Can't hurt tamed creatures while riding or if multiple valid hits
- Tooltip descriptions added to all items
- Partial controller support added and inputs cleaned up (NOTE: Only tested on Windows 10 with Xbox 360 controller so far. Please let us know if you test this out and have any feedback!)
- Lifeblock values adjusted for progression
- Structure block values adjusted for progression
- Item values adjusted for progression
- All new creature leg animations
- Smoother chunk loading
- Object pooling expanded to all objects in game to help improve chunk loads
- BUG FIXES:
- Sound fall-off values tweaked
- Tooltip now stays on screen near edges
- Floating structure blocks fixed
- Optimizations to many core systems
Known Issues
We’ve got a list of known bugs and issues over on our Trello board, and we’ve made it public so you can see them, too. If you encounter anything on the list, you’ll know that we’re working on it. If it’s not on the list, please let us know so we can investigate!
View the known issues list here.
Here are a few of the important ones we want to make sure you’re aware of:
- For anyone on a computer with 4GB of RAM or less, there will be some memory issues: lengthy black screen and slow loading at startup, and a lower framerate while playing. We recommend exiting any other big apps while you have CHKN running to help alleviate this. We’re looking into it!
- Creature collision detection is still in progress, meaning that sometimes creatures collide with objects in the world (walk through a huge boulder, for example).
- If you’re on a 32-bit OS, you may have noticed we increased the minimum requirements to 64-bit. This is temporary! We added a lot to this build and went over the limit, so we’re researching the best way to bring 32-bit back.
- You may notice a change to the multiplayer menus. We’re in the process of adding Steam peer-to-peer networking with lobby support for the next update, but it’s unfinished at the moment. We recommend avoiding multiplayer for now!
Tell Us What You Think
We need your help to make CHKN better here in Early Access so please don’t hesitate to send your feedback along to us. We’re very happy to hear from you guys, whether you have comments to give, bugs to report, or just want to show off the stuff you’ve made.
- Bug Reports: Submit bugs to this forum and we’ll take a look.
- Feedback: Let us know what you think about CHKN, or post your ideas and suggestions.
- Share: Tweet us @chkngame or upload your screenshots to Steam. We’d love to see what you create!
“Sup?”
More to Come
We’re excited to share this update with you and we hope you like what we’ve added so far. We’re still hard at work on the known issues, as well as some other things we want to get into this update before we move on to the next one, so look out for another build in a few weeks.
Thanks, everyone!
- Team CHKN
P.S. A special note to our pre-release testers: Thanks for all your feedback and bug reports! We really appreciate all your help.
