ARK: Survival Evolved has a major update with a needed UI refresh

the overall layout of the UI seems a bit better but the design is meh... I haven't had to much of the graphical glitches anymore. the textures and lighting seems to be much closer to the windows version from my more recent test plays.
btw, there's beta options now in the game properties. there is a newrenderer option which i've been using, which gives me a bit of a fps boost. nothing huge, mainly a more stable 60+ fps, but it does seem to have a bit better lighting and texture quality than the "stable" version of the game. also it still uses the older UI which is nice as well.

I played Ark yesterday on my 5 years old budget Windows PC and it worked and looked better than on my Steam Machine with GeForce 970.

Quoting: neowiz73the overall layout of the UI seems a bit better but the design is meh... I haven't had to much of the graphical glitches anymore. the textures and lighting seems to be much closer to the windows version from my more recent test plays.
as well.

The design is half done and not consistent, the main menu, server browser and options screen are still in the old style. So it clearly is unfinished. Next to that, on the center, it rains with a clear sky, and thunder sounds without the lightning, so that is still broken too.

-edit-
Undocumented changes
Swim Speed per point in Oxygen reduced by 80%. This affects both dinos and survivors.

Well that does it, underwater play was already hard on Linux with the glitches, now it has been made impossible to survive.

-edit 2-
Stamina drop of the birds is nuts, they are useless now. Next to that, the flying sound of the Ptera sounds like shacking bags of water, AWFUL! Will never get used to that!


Last edited by CyberRat on 2 April 2017 at 9:13 am UTC

-Stereo is more broken than it was before, most of the new sounds only come up from the right only no matter the direction of your character
-Shift split doesnt work into other inventories, works only in your own
-Craft all option doesn't show how many you can craft in advance.
-Inventories that were like 3 slots before are now full slot amount but stuff can still go into 3 slots only, hard to spot which slots are active on said inventory
-Fps seems a bit lower with the new UI/update
-Dino names and other floating texts are way too sharp now, specially at night, makes them annoying imo
-Glitches are still same, nothing fixed (just you will see them less because you cant fly fast anymore due to nerf)
-Esc Menu seems really plain now, Tribe Manager was removed from it.
-Hotbar is way too big and takes too much screen space (UI scaling anyone?)
-Sound sliders still doesn't do anything, everything just changes master volume.

probably a lot more things which i forgot.

Quoting: CyberRatThe design is half done and not consistent, the main menu, server browser and options screen are still in the old style. So it clearly is unfinished. Next to that, on the center, it rains with a clear sky, and thunder sounds without the lightning, so that is still broken too.

it was a couple of months ago, maybe December time frame that at least for me, the clouds (for the most part) are there in a more volumetric way but they don't have special effects.
the rain and high quality ground textures are now working, except I feel that there may be some special cloud effects missing, but it does have better shadows in the middle of the nighttime when it is supposed to get darker it actually does, at least in my experience with the game so far. I can even go in caves without the crazy water effect issues now, although it's bright as daylight, which it should be very dark.
The storms I've seen on the Scorched Earth map actually seemed to work, with lightning working. although the shaders are off a bit, it does get darker and has wind effects.
the downside right now is after about 2 to 4 hours of playtime I will end up getting the shader artifacts associated to the rain and water effects, it happens randomly, turning it into the odd black and multi-colored artifacts. there are still issues with waterfall effects, inside caves.

I'm not claiming this game to be perfect by any stretch, it still has a number of bugs across all platforms. but I have noticed that it has gotten better in past 3 to 4 months, for at least some of us, I highly doubt I'm the only one. it's obvious to me that Mac and Linux are not much of a priority, nor did I expect it to be. I just hope they keep fixing the Linux client to make it more playable. all we can do is keep reporting the bugs and hopefully they get fixed.

if not then chalk it up to a lesson learned.


Last edited by neowiz73 on 2 April 2017 at 1:16 pm UTC

Bought the game on sale and returned it. Ran better a year ago during a free weekend.

Valve needs to limit how long a game can be in early access.

Quoting: SlickMcRunFastValve needs to limit how long a game can be in early access.

An interesting idea. Based on ARK, the early access model seems to be pretty much for the convenience not to continuously develop the linux and mac versions which they already have in the wild. Every time someone from Studio Wildcard actually responds to anything linux/mac related, is when they remind that the title is still in early access.
How long will it be in EA? Probably for a good 5 years more by the looks of how the things are going.

1 year limit on the EA program through Steam should be a pretty good motive to get things done.
On the other hand, it could push the developers to release a half-baked title with much of the content missing which could arrive at a later date via DLC - now that I don't like to see. But that's all pure speculation.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: GuestI think the more we request an ARk fix for linux maybe we will get one! Or am I just crazy hopeful because I love this game?!

Unfortunately, overly hopeful. I bought this game the day it was released for linux and sunk about 1000 hours into it. I ran my own server for about a year and a half. I've participated in every AMA on reddit since launch, I've emailed them, tweeted to them, posted on their forums, etc.

Since release, they have not released ONE SINGLE BUG FIX specific to linux users. Not even one- and that isn't an exaggeration.

Studio Wildcard does not give a fraction of a fuck about linux. Hate to break it to ya. All they care about is Windows and Xbox

Why should they at this stage? We have already paid and Wildcard probably doesn't target any more Linux customers. Ark surfed the early wave of Linux gaming, we were buying whatever was released.

That said, if you sunk 1000 hours into the game, it has to be better than good enough - even on Linux :)

The one & only time I actually got it to anywhere near playable I was killed instantly by a Raptor, then I respawned in the same spot & the evil little bugger was waiting for me & killed me again & again & again. Since then I haven't been able to play it for more than a few seconds at a time without the entire system grinding to a halt while it waits for Ark to finish loading or doing whatever the heck it does when it's just sitting there frozen.

Just lost my first raft to the Leedsichthys. I liked rafts for not having weight limitation so I could put as many things as I had storages for there, but with this new whale, I don't see myself doing it again.