Adam runs a gaming site called Gamescroller, focusing on indie games and providing livestreams, reviews, and showcases. This document discusses an upcoming indie game, Dinosystem, which is a survival simulation set in a dinosaur-inhabited ecosystem, offering complex gameplay mechanics and character progression. While the game is currently in early access and faces performance issues, it shows potential for engaging gameplay in a unique setting.

2. Hello fellow gamers, my name is Adam and I run a gaming site called
Gamescroller. I create regular livestreams, reviews, previews, unboxings and
indie game showcases for YOU my fellow gamers. I try to help out indie
developers where I can and so a lot of my content is based around indie gaming,
this particular post is about an Indie game called DinoSystem where you must
survive a harsh wilderness of Dinosaurs!
I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that Gamescroller is a part of
the EotP Gaming Network, a young network of like-minded gamers who want to
stream and create content for all gamers and create a vast community where we
are all united as one glorious gamer base.
So sit back and enjoy as we jump into prehistoric world of DinoSystem!
What’s this all about?

3. What is it?
Game title: DinoSystem
Developer/Publisher: CapriByte Studios/Black Shell Media
Platforms: PC (Steam), MAC & Linux (may be ported to mobile at a later date).
Genre: Dinosaur survival/simulation.
Price: £5.59 on steam (price correct at time of editing)
Expected release date: Early-mid 2016.
Developer Description: "DinoSystem is a 2D, top-down ecosystem and survival
simulation that allows players to either manage the ecology of a randomly
generated island (inhabited by dinosaurs), or survive in it as a human, dealing
with realistic survival mechanics, and with a deep character progression system
that tracks how your character's body adapts over time."

4. Game features – world features
• Ecology simulation: the game simulates a Cretaceous ecosystem populated
mainly by dinosaurs, animals and plants that don't "spawn"; they are born,
then grow, reproduce and die.
• DinoSystem uses a complex seasonal model that calculates day and night
length, relative position of the sun, and influences the weather. The season
transition is gradual; there is no sudden change between two seasons.
• There is a realistic weather model that takes into account variables like time
of day, humidity, temperature, and pressure; generating weather conditions
like rain, snow, wind, sand/snowstorms, thunderstorms and fog.
• Thunder can trigger huge wildfires, burning down entire forests.
• A realistic water cycle: rain creates puddles that can either evaporate or grow
into ponds and lakes. Evaporation takes into account air humidity,
temperature and sun exposure.

5. Game features – world features
• The terrain changes according to factors like presence of water, weather,
vegetation, and location. Any area can become fertile or arid. New forests or
grasslands may form or disappear over time.
• Fire (from torches, campfires and wildfires) consume available fuel, which
then release heat and light. Fire is influenced by air humidity and wind. Your
body and all objects near a fire are heated up. Fire can spread to nearby
vegetation and trigger a wildfire, if ambient conditions are favourable.
• Animals AI allows them to survive in their world and adapt; they'll reproduce,
care for their young, look for protection or compete for food and mating.
• Each new island is randomized at the start of the game, based on
parameters set by the player.
• Everything from dead animals to branches, decompose based on factors like
temperature, humidity, and location. There is no "timer" after which an item or
a carcass disappears.

6. Game features – survival features
• Deep, complex and rewarding character progression system: metabolism,
body muscles and fat change according to your lifestyle, and even your
character's sprite changes in appearance to reflect this.
• Get fat to survive winter, get slim to be lighter and swifter, or get muscular to
be stronger in combat and more capable of hard work, but make sure you eat
enough protein.
• Needs like thirst and hunger are not just bars that drop at a constant rate:
everything from performing actions to metabolism and body weight influence
the rate at which you burn calories, consume water or get tired. For example,
high temperature or intense activity make you sweat, requiring you to drink
more water.
• Dozens of skills, both mental and physical, rise as you perform a particular
action, but they can also decay if you don't use them for a long time (only in
"hard" difficulty).

7. Game features – survival features
• Crafting system allowing you to create items and weapons, advancing in
technology at each step. NOTE: few items are craftable in the current Early
Access build; expect many more to be added throughout the development!
• Foods with different nutrition values: meat is valuable because of proteins,
but make sure you cook it before consuming.
There are more features to be implemented and as such you will notice that
DinoSystem is in early access so will be subject to a lot of changes as it
progresses.

8. Game screenshots

9. Game screenshots

10. Game screenshots

11. Game screenshots

12. Thoughts
Upon looking at the screenshots for DinoSystem and reading what it's
about, you would be forgiven for thinking it's the love-child of the first
GTA and Ark: Survival Evolved with the GTA birds-eye view and 2D
assets along with all the survival and depth of ARK. This looked rather
interesting to me so I gave Black Shell Media a poke and asked them
very nicely if they would like me to support the game and do some
articles on it, they indulged me with a key for free which was rather
nice of them! Take DinoSystem in its current early access form with a
massive lorry load of salt, the menus are very basic and it currently
doesn't look all that fancy.

13. Thoughts

14. Thoughts
• The menu screen does what it needs to but should we need to play a game
of spot the settings/options menu? Yep keep looking... You're right, there isn't
one! But there is, it just appears later once you've created your world.
• As you can see in the image above we have all the usual suspects that a
menu screen normally has: new game, load saved as well as "full screen"
on/off and menu music on/off (I recommend off as the music is rather
repetitive). We also have a rather nice news window to the side letting us
know what the latest version update has done to our client.

15. Thoughts
I was slightly frustrated at not being able to setup my game first; I then turned to
starting a new game which led me to the menu screen:

16. Thoughts
The world generation screen allows you to alter the game mode (there are
currently two modes being a literal "god" mode and survival), season, island size
and initial fertility (affects plant growth). We can also change how many
mountains we have and if we would like to watch the map generate (I
recommend you don’t as it makes the game load slower).

17. Thoughts
After hitting start we get taken to the generation screen. If you opted to have map
gen turned on then you will be treated to watching your island come to life before
your very eyes... very... very slowly. If you didn't then good job, your game will
now load twice as fast! This screen also gives you little tips which are always
nice to have.
So the gen screen hits its end goal, here you would expect to head straight into
the game... But no, you're not done yet!

18. System requirements
So just a quickie, here is DinoSystems' system requirements directly from the
Steam page:
OS: Windows XP/7/8 (32/64)
Processor: Dual Core 2.0 GHz (or better)
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: 512MB graphics w/ DX 9.0c
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Hard Drive: 250 MB available space
Additional Notes: Performance may be poor with integrated graphics!
And here are my current specs:
OS: Windows 10 64bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Core Q8200 @ 2.33 GHz
Memory: 4GB
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD6570 2 GB
DirectX: 10
Hard Drive: I used more than 250MB trust me

19. Frames per second
With that now being brought to light, I have no idea as to why DinoSystem runs
at a horrific 15FPS when set to high. It's literally unplayable and that's coming
from me! I can usually tolerate a low framerate because, let's be honest, I hardly
have the USS Enterprise under my desk but still! Just to get a solid frame rate I
had to turn the graphics down to low. This is what that does:

20. Frames per second
The highest setting provides a nice crisp edge on most things as well as pretty
lighting and shadows. If you take a look at the top right, you'll notice the 15FPS
that Steam was informing me of.
Above is the game on lowest settings. The edges are not as sharp and all around
the game itself doesn't look as pretty but it runs at a much smoother 60FPS. The
funny thing is that it doesn’t seem to have made much difference.

21. Frames per second
The next odd thing is how much power this game draws from the PC to run. I
wondered what was going on so I took to the almighty power known as task
manager to see if I had anything running that was sapping my CPU/RAM, here's
what I found:
If you take a look at the Task Manager on the left, you will indeed see not one
version of DinoSystem running but three! That shouldn't be a thing should it? It
might just explain why I'm getting such framerate issues, I shouldn't be though as
I easily cleared the recommended spec.

22. Playing the game
Issues and ranting aside, I did eventually get to play DinoSystem. It
isn't an easy starter at present, there is a tutorial but I think it's a bit
long winded and best kept as a pause guide (which it kind of has at the
moment but it's nowhere near complete). I managed to master the
basics and eventually I conquered all and created fire...a vast, out of
control fire!

23. Playing the games
“It’s lonely playing rock, rock, rock by yourself…”

24. Playing the games
“I did it! Uhh! I mean, ugg, ugg!”

25. Playing the games
“Hmm, if only I could figure out how to make a fire pit so I could control this…”

26. Playing the games
“Fire! Fire! It burns!”

27. Playing the games
“Yep, I definetely f***ed up… 1000% fire is not good. I must make a note of that!”

28. Final thoughts
So I am still on the fence about DinoSystem. I can see the potential of
it as it's got a huge, no massive amount of depth to it. It's insane trying
to keep up with all the stats as well as keeping safe from carnivorous
dinosaurs. It just needs a bit of performance tweaking and we might
just have a game worth its salt. But having said that, it's definitely a
game I'm going to revisit.

29. So what now?
Have we caught your interest yet? To read the full article all
you have to do is head on over to our website or click the link
below!
DinoSystem Preview