Future of animals in Unturned

[THEMAX94120]

If there is one thing in Unturned that feels very underwhelming, it is animals, which have very limited functionalities and behaviours and of which there are only 6 in total.

The game could gain from having an animal overhaul in the future, and in my opinion, it should be considered in the future to :

A. Add animals which can be “tamed” or “claimed” and ridden (horses and camels), as an alternative to motorised vehicles. (Imo, with the vehicle overhaul, this could be a very welcomed addition.)

B. Improve existing behaviours (hostile animals running away past a certain hp threshold, ability to farm cows and pigs, “bandits” animals actually attacking from distance, etc…) and add new animals with new behaviours (crows and rats destroying crops, snakes bite poisoning the player), etc…

C. Add support for flying and aquatic animals, which could allow to make the sky and aquatic nodes more alive as they currently feel very barren, uninteresting so.

D. Eventually, in a further time, add support for animals that can be tamed and then tasked with an action wheel (like for emote and face features) to execute some actions, useful for dogs for example, as well as support for animal husbandry and so on…

This post´s assumption is not that such updates would be easy to implement but it is just my personal opinion about how I think animals could have deserved more attention to make Unturned actually more interesting and bring a more diverse gameplay, even though it may seem right now like a minor addition.

Do you have a rough idea of what you would want animals to be in the future ? Of new functionalities you could add and some you could not due to unity limits ? @SDGNelson

Even though you have done an impressive job lately with Unturned, especially with your work on vehicles, I was slightly disappointed that animals had not really been mentioned in the survey and I’d hope to know what are the plans with those. Especially because a few of those features combined (for example, flying animals & distance attacks allowing to make drones ala UII) could prove interesting for map makers and modders alike.

Thanks in advance

[anon76902110]

I think giving animals better navigation would be a good first start - if possible, letting them use pre-existing navmeshes for path finding, when present, so they get stuck less would be nice.

[Jdance_Media]

The good first start would be to put animal pathfinding on a separate thread. The whole Buak animal problem revolved around animal simulation blocking the main thread from doing anything actually important.

[Stoam_Cardy]

These were things that changed the game so much, they would have had to have been baked into a different experience i.e UII.

The same goes for zombie behaviors and AI and human NPC’s and factions.

[anon76902110]

That’s certainly true, but a stopgap measure to make animals cause less lag and have more functional pathfinding would be extremely simple compared to roaming human NPCs.

[THEMAX94120]

That is for sure something I am aware of, this post was mostly an inquiry about the extent to which Nelson could implement such functionalities without having to rewrite the game entirely, because as it stands, animals is one the features that could provide the most interesting options if updated properly.

[anon76902110]

I don’t think anything as detailed as taming would likely be added, but more functional navigation and optimization would be a nice thing I could see being added.