Community Handoff

Accounts & Progression

Clients sign in with Discord once and their Embers, Field Rank, streaks, and Field Journal follow them to any device. Anyone who played as a guest first has their progress carried over automatically the first time they sign in. Every client has an Account page showing balance, rank progress, streak, and Field Journal completion, and can now rename themselves from there at any time.

Games of Chance — Ember Roll, Ashfall, Blackjack, Fossil Reels

All four run on shared rounds that start on their own — clients place a bet before the timer runs out, rather than each person triggering their own private spin. Ember Roll and Blackjack show everyone's current bets for the round in progress. Every outcome is generated and locked in on our servers before a client ever sees it. Embers won or lost here carry no monetary value and can't be purchased, traded, or redeemed.

Field Station Activities

Dig Site is a repeatable wagered excavation — choose a wager and how many cave-ins are hidden, then clear sediment blocks and bank anytime. Specimen ID, Migration Trail, and Sizing Up are once-a-day skill challenges; Sizing Up now escalates in difficulty as a streak grows. Specimen Crates work toward a 148-card species archive and can now also land on Ember prizes, with larger amounts considerably rarer.

Community & Social

Global Chat is toggleable from any page. Staff carry a role tag next to their name, and clients with notable achievements get a small icon next to theirs. Clicking any name opens that person's public profile — Field Rank, best streak, Journal progress, and earned achievements. A Friends and Ignore panel is also available, toggleable the same way as chat. Chat now blocks profanity and links automatically — a rejected message also flags the account for review, so repeat attempts surface in Manage Players. A standing in-world identity, The Taphonomist, answers /rules and /faq directly in chat with canned, server-controlled responses.

Admin Panel

A full, scrollable roster of every registered client sits alongside the search box in Manage Players — useful since search can miss names typed in stylized characters. Selecting a client shows their balance, lifetime Embers, streak, and Journal progress, with tools to adjust Embers (with a reason logged), rename the client, and flag or clear their account standing. Global Chat is moderatable from the panel, admins can post pinned announcements, and admin access itself now has two tiers: Full Admin and a lighter Moderator tier (chat moderation and account flagging only).

Recent Additions

• Patreon connect is now fully live — clients can link their Patreon account from Account, and patron ranks (including the Discord Server Booster tag) assign automatically on subscription rather than needing a manual grant.
• Global Chat now automatically blocks profanity and links, flagging repeat offenders for review, and hosts The Taphonomist — an in-world identity that answers /rules and /faq in chat.
• Friends search now correctly finds clients using stylized Unicode display names (e.g. bold/italic character sets), not just plain text.
• Fixed a bug where the site's navigation menu and buttons rendered transparent/overlapping on mobile Safari.
• Fixed an Ashfall bug where a round could get permanently stuck showing "INFINITY×" if it went unpolled for an extended stretch — the live multiplier is now capped so this can't recur, and the previously-stuck round was force-resolved.
• Ashfall and Ember Roll's auto-start cadence was lengthened (8s betting / 4s result → 12s betting / 6s result) to give players more breathing room between rounds, matching Blackjack's existing pace.
• Clients can rename themselves from the Account page at any time.
• Admins can rename any client directly from Manage Players.
• A client rank/badge system — staff titles, patron tiers, and community tags (Carnivore/Herbivore, PVP/PVE, region flags, and more), each with its own icon and color, assignable to any client from Manage Players.
• Profile picture uploads, replacing the initials-and-color circle in chat and on profile cards.
• Fossil Reels' matched-pair payout was reduced — it was the most generous game on the site by a wide margin; matched trios are now the only real win.

In Progress

The Discord Server Booster sync's server-side code has been updated to read boost status, but still needs a manual redeploy of the sync-discord-rewards function on our end before it takes effect — everything else on this page is already live.

Predator AI, Animation & Effects — Verified, Live in the August 13 Build

Fixed the Velociraptor/Utahraptor shared search-and-recovery logic so a predator that loses its target resumes normal behavior instead of getting stuck circling the last known position. Utahraptor death poses no longer stretch out grotesquely — leg IK now shuts off the instant death begins. Spawned blood effects now recycle instead of piling up forever (capped at 12 per creature), fixing the frame-rate drop during long fights or feeding sessions. A crash in the adaptive music system has also been fixed. Separately, Velociraptor, Utahraptor, Parasaurolophus, and Triceratops all received an animation-system overhaul — corrected pelvis/spine rigging, foot and spine IK that now ignores water, foliage, and other creatures, and fades out while swimming. All of the above compiled cleanly, passed in-editor testing, and is live in today's build.

Deinosuchus — Foundation Only, Placeholder Art

Deinosuchus now exists in the project as a playable stand-in built on a temporary crocodile model (39 total assets, including animation, materials, and bite/hit/death montages), organized so the final Deinosuchus model can be swapped in later without rebuilding the creature from scratch. If Deinosuchus comes up publicly, make clear this is a temporary placeholder standing in for gameplay purposes — please don't share footage or screenshots of it as representative of the finished creature.

Water Systems — Backend Fixed, Final QA Pending

Corrected lake and river water-height and depth calculations (a wave offset that was being double-counted, underwater fog that used a fixed depth instead of reading the actual terrain, and more). Lake generation is now on-demand instead of auto-regenerating on every edit, and reopening a map no longer rewrites data it doesn't need to. This is in today's build, but still needs one more focused visual pass on deep water plus a close/reopen check before it's described as fully resolved — please hold off on "the lake is fixed" messaging until that pass is done.

Swimming, Death Screen & Feeding — NOT Yet Live

A larger batch of work has been written but has not been rebuilt or verified yet — please don't describe any of it as live until we confirm it in a future update. It covers: full swim controls (ascend/dive/steer, a steadier neutral-buoyancy hold, riverbed latching, a stamina-costed water boost/lunge, and a temporary enhanced water-sense), breathing checks tied to each species' actual head/nostril position instead of the camera, randomized death-screen hints instead of one repeated line, a fix for a species-selection respawn bug, and feeding performance/visual cleanup (including snout blood smear during feeding). Note also: drowning currently shows as "Environmental" on the death screen, not a dedicated "Drowning" label.