Community Crunch 379: ASA Cross-Platform Mod Preview

Let's hope it comes out on schedule!! I'm so hyped! 

Also I've never seen BEYplaysgames in the community crunch before? Amazing ark creator...best tips and tricks videos in my opinion!

48 minutes ago, FlorianWind9 said:

What I'm saying is that we've been asking for proper ASA comparison content for 2 1/2 months now and this is what they give us? It's nice, sure, but not only is it not an actual in-game screenshot but just a render, but it isn't even one that they themselves did. Can't they give us a cinematic screenshot of their redoing of, say, a stego in UE5 with maybe a forest in the background? To make me interested and excited for ASA? How difficult of a ask is that at this point in their development? How much of a "spoiler" would that be?

If you take a look at this crunch, there is not a single piece of it that is wc made; it's all the community's hard work. I enjoy seeing the community's hard work, but at this point in the development cycle I want to see what wc's work is.

What I'm saying is that a game development company should be building hype for the release of their "new" game; especially this close to supposed release. wc has built hype properly in the past for their new content, but this time they have practically done the opposite; and then done nothing to try and correct this marketing strategy they've been using. 

Just above your comment someone else posted an image of essentially the same picture but rendered in UE4 for comparison. Maybe it's my computer, but to me the 2 images look almost exactly the same quality. The one major difference, as you said, is the lighting in the UE5 picture makes it pop more.

I don't buy video games for the pretty graphics. I don't buy video games for slightly better lighting that makes the images look maybe 10 or 20 percent better. What I buy video games for is the game mechanics and what you can do in the game.

wc could give a sneak peak about how they've fixed the terrible way that vanilla structures in ASE snap together thus making building difficult and not as nice looking as it could be. (They fixed the building mechanics in Atlas for example and it's so much better).

They could give a sneak peak of if they've decided to add extra items in the game like new armors or weapons that aren't in ASE which might provide hype and excitement since that's something that ASE lacks. (They did this for ARK 2 and it's one of the major things people liked and got hyped about). 

But that's not the main problem. The main problem is that they as a company have done so many things lately that have built upon each other which has caused a sense of a lack of confidence. And then when we ask for reassurance, they give us nothing to reassure? The one positive I have been hoping to see in this is that they will finally leave ASE alone like they should have at the end of Extinction. Personally, I wish they would have decided to move onto ASA before adding the intro cinematics and Rhynio. If they gonna end support for ASE then it would have been nice if they had done so before ruining it just a little bit more.

Indeed, the lighting is really going to be the star of the show here and it's going to be a dramatic difference but as you said, visuals aren't everything. I do resonate greatly with the beginning of this reply. I'm trying to stay positive about the upcoming release but I cannot deny that it's completely crazy that they haven't been building proper hype until now.

As a ps4 player that was misled into thinking I could put my Dino’s onto single player, I think showing some kind of ASA gameplay soon is quite important if you want ps4 players to run out and buy a ps5 for this game. 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Noricha
spelling

Ich danke den modern für ihre Arbeit und das bezahle ich gerne,hoffe das sie auch mit asa das bekommen was sie verdienen 💓

Gg

Somebody please tell me I am wrong, they are going to sunset official, on the last day in September, but going to release ASA on Oct. 31. Hm... 

so, when is the final snapshot?

"content from ARK: Survival Ascended's Mod Program! Garuga123's magnificent creations will be accessible across all platforms, including consoles, for launch at the end of October 2023"

THIS is a tricky one right here guys, this is not actually stating that asa is releasing at the end of October, it states ASA's "mod program" i could be wrong but this could be a trick and actual asa is still coming sooner than we think... that image has strangely set the grid thingo and angle view to 10/10, 10th of October maybe? 

9 minutes ago, Huntdad5 said:

Somebody please tell me I am wrong, they are going to sunset official, on the last day in September, but going to release ASA on Oct. 31. Hm... 

Well,they have to release ASA before 23:59 of oct 31.

10 hours ago, Wildeheart said:

I made this an hour ago as a rough comparison to the community crunch image. The lighting and cloud differences are amazing. (screenshot on The Island UE4, 10am lighting, Max settings on a 4090.) I am hyped for ASA.

ps. I put a slightly better image, both angle and size, on the official Discord in #fanart-and-screenshots.

I mean the difference is astounding, the difference in detail on the front shoulder alone gives me goosebumps. From this picture to the image they showed above is incredible. The ridges, the bumps, the folding of the skin and the gorgeous eyes, you can see on the photo they showed off

10 hours ago, Thalana said:

Oh stfu. Anyone who has modded on the UE4 Ark devkit knows that the representation in the devkit is using in-game models, textures and lighting. I've taken plenty of screenshots in the devkit for in-game raffles and it's the same? Even if it is just a modded creature, it's still utilizing UE5 ASA assets? Are you saying that the whole devkit image is a generated concept and not real? What makes this Deinotherium really pop is the improved UE5 lighting which should be common across ASA on release and guess what? It'll probably look even better in-game on ultra settings @ 4k.

It's unnecessary droning at this point to fuel your own confirmation bias' as you've all whined about ASA for months, typing long-winded assuming posts. Will ASA have countless bugs and lots of missing features? Yep, but the lazy reskin argument... I'm excited to see you all eat your own words when ASA ends up looking cutting-edge on UE5.

Agreed, I hope the creatures in ASA will look just as good as this Deinotherium that was showed off. I also hope that they give some of the old creatures that haven’t seen any changes since they released ASE. And from what I saw in this community post with Ark Additions mod being shown, there is high possibility to see amazing work on ASA. And I am sure it will be better than most imagined. (Plus Raasclark said he might have just found out how the Water Physics for ASA will look and shows a bit of that in his video!! From the looks of that. I am excited!!!)

Edited September 17, 2023 by OverRannus

16 hours ago, DarkCarapace92 said:

also does anyone know  how many comments i need before i can react to things

 

You need 6 comments

Ascended looks pretty

20 hours ago, FlorianWind9 said:

Look at the picture again. Not only is it not an actual screenshot of ASA, but it isn't even work done by a wildcard employee. It's a mod user's generated image of their modded creature.

If wc was learning then their crunch would be not simple and actually give us some worthwhile information. We've had a solid date for ASA release ever since we learned of sg contract with nitrado. Unlike previous releases, this time sg will pay a high price if they don't release ASA by October 31st. No-one who knows this information expects them to release ASA any earlier and this new revelation of "at the end of October" only cements this. According to their own words, I wouldn't expect to see a gameplay trailer till an hour or so before its released.

This is not in any way a screenshot from the game. It's a mod user's generated image of their personal modded creature using the devkit. It doesn't even have any background imagery. 

Unfortunately, nowhere on the image do we have a concrete evidence that it is indeed an image from UE5. Personally, to me it doesn't look any better than current Ark on maximum graphics. 

 

Yes. They have broken their own rhythm now by not showing the Shasta dossier this week. So you can see in this crunch what wc/sg does. When they can't get their own material ready on time, and when the Ark community pleads for ASA reveal content, but they can't even get any of their own ASA reveal content to show, then they just steal the hard work of Ark's community members and says; "Look. We're awesome. Just see how cool this thing is that we didn't even have any part of making, but it has ARK pasted on it so if this is cool then it means we're cool." 50 Percent or more of each crunch has just been videos, screenshots, and artwork done by the community for a long time now. Ark's community members and the work they've done, mainly the modders, have been the driving force of keeping the game alive for a long time now. wc/sg takes partial credit for it and says they're doing something, when in reality they do nothing at all.

Why are you so pessimistic, it's good to have some positivity one in a while

9 hours ago, DutyDarth said:

Let's hope it comes out on schedule!! I'm so hyped! 

Too late, it was already delayed. On scedule would have been we were playin it already.
On scedule would have been playing ARK 2 now.
 

5 hours ago, darkradeon said:

so, when is the final snapshot?

As said last week, they INTEND to do it in the last week.
Note the word "intend" and the lack of an exact day, if they don't do it at all we can't say they broke a promisse.

6 hours ago, SlayerBray said:

"content from ARK: Survival Ascended's Mod Program! Garuga123's magnificent creations will be accessible across all platforms, including consoles, for launch at the end of October 2023"

THIS is a tricky one right here guys, this is not actually stating that asa is releasing at the end of October, it states ASA's "mod program" i could be wrong but this could be a trick and actual asa is still coming sooner than we think... that image has strangely set the grid thingo and angle view to 10/10, 10th of October maybe? 

If this turned out to be true, then it would be far better for their launch than the currently assumed date. Cause a whole month in-between is too much from a marketing standpoint. Also, if this turns out to be true then I will give massive props to wildcard for coming up with this easter egg; as currently it seems way to intelligent a thing for them to have come up with.

2 hours ago, thebluejayraptor said:

Why are you so pessimistic, it's good to have some positivity one in a while

I've already tried being positive with wildcard.

Tried being positive when they made Gen 1 and 2 part of ASE instead of making it it's own separate Ark 2 as they should have been. Tried being positive when they failed to add simple items, modes, and creatures to the game that I really wanted to be a thing when they said they would but then didn't for no real reason. Tried being positive when they decided to make ASA pay to get for people who already own ASE when they originally said it would be a free upgrade for ASE owners. Tried being positive when after 2 years of supposed development on Ark 2 they still have nothing to show us except 2 cinematic trailers and a few item concepts. Tried being positive when they added the extremely cheesy intro cinematics for the story maps that completely took away the atmosphere of mystery surrounding the arks and their stories. Tried being positive when they released the animated series season 1 trailer at the beginning of this year and then suddenly went silent on it until just recently when they said "Sorry. Sometime in 2024".

Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out so good so far. So, now time to try being pessimistic and see if that works?🤷‍♂️

16 hours ago, sarah1171 said:

I'm happy to keep playing ASE on single player and my own Nitrado server, which I have done since I've owned the game. Official has always been a cesspool of toxicity and cheaters, no thank you.

True. True. Although, one thing that I loved about the real original state of the game was that official servers weren't all cesspools of toxicity and cheaters. This only became the norm across the board after they implemented server transfers. In my opinion, the point when the game began to die. Before server transfers, you had to start a new character from 0 on every server you wanted to play and you only had the resources that you were able to build up on that server. This meant that if a large enough group of dedicated players decided to band together, then they could effectively take down toxic and cheaty players and keep the server policed in a state of "relative" peace. If you'd like to read some about this then maybe check out the "fanfiction" I've been posting on the creative forums detailing my own personal game experiences of that early time. 😉 Concerning the aspect of "good" and "civilized" individuals found even on a pvp server, you should especially take a look at chapter 14; which I plan to post at the end of this coming week. Probably either Friday or Saturday. Sigh, OG Official The Island Server 39 was a wonderful place to play Ark pvp before the server transfers caused it to collapse. 

You are the best, ARK ascended will be a success

3 hours ago, FlorianWind9 said:

If this turned out to be true, then it would be far better for their launch than the currently assumed date. Cause a whole month in-between is too much from a marketing standpoint. Also, if this turns out to be true then I will give massive props to wildcard for coming up with this easter egg; as currently it seems way to intelligent a thing for them to have come up with.

I've already tried being positive with wildcard.

Tried being positive when they made Gen 1 and 2 part of ASE instead of making it it's own separate Ark 2 as they should have been. Tried being positive when they failed to add simple items, modes, and creatures to the game that I really wanted to be a thing when they said they would but then didn't for no real reason. Tried being positive when they decided to make ASA pay to get for people who already own ASE when they originally said it would be a free upgrade for ASE owners. Tried being positive when after 2 years of supposed development on Ark 2 they still have nothing to show us except 2 cinematic trailers and a few item concepts. Tried being positive when they added the extremely cheesy intro cinematics for the story maps that completely took away the atmosphere of mystery surrounding the arks and their stories. Tried being positive when they released the animated series season 1 trailer at the beginning of this year and then suddenly went silent on it until just recently when they said "Sorry. Sometime in 2024".

Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out so good so far. So, now time to try being pessimistic and see if that works?🤷‍♂️

I don't think that's gonna work but you do you, plus you're not the most annoying person I've had to deal with online today.

finally, an ingame screenshot^^

54 minutes ago, Moehre3 said:

finally, an ingame screenshot^^

-Sigh...-

No, it's not. It is a screenshot of a modder from his work in a devkit.

with UE5 the polygons (better, triangles) are still there. Nanite it's a fancy expensive software (aka totally running in shader stage) programmable tessellation (similar techniques already have been tested and used in the past) which best feature is an easier to control tessellation factor and patches at runtime (ei: controlling to not choke the gpu on vertex which actually is easy to happen with traditional tessellation pipeline) and total removal of the need of multiple LOD levels (still can be loaded and used for "weak" gpus). A more fine grain control will be needed at runtime for such models to not get too many triangles, removing most of the job from "artists". Yes, if nanite is ALWAYS used, some vertex data can be spared on assets, that's probably a minor optimisation.

It would be nice instead if artists understand that a HUGE model cannot have the same texture resolution of a super tiny model, but this is a problem affecting 99% of videogames.

Edited September 17, 2023 by darkradeon

this company is a joke. literally every single game in existence has already had trailers and gameplay videos months before release. its literally about to come out and they release some dumb photo of something to do with the mods? how pathetic really.

Warum so ein Ärger über gametrailer ihr kennt doch das Spiel seit 2015

There was no save data for the Asia server in August. Will save data be properly provided when the server is stopped?