Step into an atmospheric open world teeming with life, and hunt a wide variety of unique animal species from majestic sika deer, elusive mexican bobcats, and massive bison, down to the countless birds and critters of the wilderness.Įach reserve is meticulously crafted to be as convincing as possible, letting you explore different regions of the world and traverse its rich biomes. Explore 100 square miles (256 square kilometers) across four distinctive reserves, hunt over 30 animal species, and enlist the aid of a trustworthy scenthound to track blood clues from injured prey. This puts the environments at the forefront and we love seeing the screenshots people have taken.Dive into the ultimate hunting experience in theHunter: Call of the Wild 2022 Edition! This bundle contains all the exciting content from the base game, the two most recent reserves (“Rancho del Arroyo” and “Te Awaroa National Park”), and the Bloodhound tracking dog. "The team has worked hard to get the frequency of finding animal tracks just right, so the investment pays off when you track one for a while. "This makes us really happy, because immersion is one the core pillars of our open world," says Philipp Strecker, product owner.
With a good pair of headphones you can really get swept up in the atmosphere of the reserves, and it’s possible, I think, to enjoy the game without firing a single bullet from your rifle. When I play The Hunter, I often find myself completely ignoring the hunting aspect of the game and just enjoying existing in the world, taking screenshots with the in-game camera.
Sometimes we get the result we want with procedural content, but if there’s a problem we solve it with good old-fashioned manual labour." Snap happy However, we have adjusted several spots where animal and player interactions were not ideal. All the rules leading up to the procedural results we get have been carefully designed. We have hundreds of thousands of them in each reserve, and we use rules to generate them in an efficient way.
Imagine placing all those trees by hand! Same goes for the ‘need zones’ of the animals. “It’s one of the reasons we can create these massive worlds with just a couple of people. "There are certainly a lot of procedural aspects in our game," says Peppe Pihl. First, Peppe creates a terrain and from there I use a tool to procedurally distribute materials across it." “But for the most part the landscapes are procedurally generated, because the maps are so big. "A few locations are hand-crafted, usually buildings and other man-made structures," says Kevin Darnis. As an example, all the birds in Parque Fernando are native to that region."Īs for the sheer scale of these 16 x 16km maps, the small team at Avalanche relies partly on procedural generation.
"We also research the fauna of each reserve to represent it in a believable way.
"A tree right next to you will sound different from one 300 metres away," he says. Wennlund explains that, for tree sounds, the engine takes into account if the wind is blowing, the altitude, and its distance from the player. In addition the sounds need to feel like they’re coming from a place in the world, from the context they are in.” To get those files to play back in a believable way, we need them to ebb and flow like sounds do in nature in real life. We then need to edit those recordings to capture the essence of the place. “We always need to start with good source recordings of natural sounds. "For the sound design, a lot of hard work and careful consideration goes into the process, coupled with the strength of the Apex engine for creating open worlds," says Mattias Wennlund, sound designer.