The Isle - How to make a good dinosaur survival map 

Useful! Some of my buddies may make a dinosaur survival game soon as a Passion Project, so this'll be useful for me to help out in map design and etc.

I agree entirely, the devs seem to just add stuff as they go with no real idea what they're doing. They added a river splitting spiro in half because why? It seems to have been a problem with development as well. Even now they're adding more things, they should have just had a solid plan from the start.

It's so funny to me how well designed the parts of Spiro that the map developer overhauled are compared to the rest of the map. The southern portion of the map, which at this point has been pretty much entirely redone, feels like a generic but usable map. Meanwhile the northern half of the map feels like someone procedurally generated a bunch of trees on hilly terrain and then put an unseeable death-drop halfway through to spite people who can't find where they are in a featureless jungle.

I love how BoB gave server owners power to change the map. Some server owners have done incredible things. More realistic biomes, little den areas, etc. Also you don’t need to change map size if you add ai or available gore that meats the requirements. I play one server where it seems that ai gore (that fills saturation) spawns randomly out of every so many spawn gore types. I also despise when developers try and just remove hot spots. It’s irritating and pointless. Servers can make rules to help regulate that if they want. Also what was the name of that cool map making app?

I like some of the More open Sandy maps its something new a bit since every developer makes tropical or redwoods 🫤🫠

I look forward to the map releases and the reviews that'll come with them. Great video!

As a game design enthusiast, your channel is infinitely important to me. Thank you so much for all of your work critiquing and deconstructing these games! I would love to see a fully dedicated video of your take on the Gondwa map. A few of my problems with it is the horrendous navigation and lack of opportunities for ocean and land players to interact, but I’d like to listen to your feedback on it!

I'd really like to see you review The Isle's new map once it's released. Also will you be reviewing the new night vision once released?

One thing that worries me about the Isle's new map is that even if specific area's look great, and function as decent hot spots for players to flock towards, how well are we, the players, going to be able to navigate to and from these places? Unlike Thenyaw and V3, Spiro is near impossible to navigate without the assistance of a third party website since it doesn't have coherent landmarks and numerous death traps scattered along the map some intentional and some not. The devs have also shown us that when it comes to hotspots like Oasis instead of adding similar area's (that are also much more accessible to get to as a Deino) and better distribute herbivore food across the map they'd rather just nuke the area all together and leave the rest of the map practically unchanged. All of this makes me a little less excited about the new map cause Spiro at one point looked promising and we see how that turned out lol. And before anyone says it I am aware Oasis presented it's own problems with herbivore mega herds which is a big reason why it got nuked but as I mentioned earlier part of that is due to a much larger issue. All in all, I can only hope the Isle devs prove my doubts wrong and I would like to see you review the new map once it comes out

I would like to see the map reviews when they release

Awesome video! Keep it up. In my opinion, I’m excited to see what “Velada” or whatever we are gonna call it will be like.

Yes! Please do review them as they come out. I'm especially excited for Titania, as an old server I was in closed down a few months ago but will be coming back online when Titania drops to see if the new map brings in more players.

I definitely think you could discuss other games. You have very good points about dinosaur survival games that could be used to discuss other niche games.

Anyone know the map making program being used at 6:34 ?

Decreasing the map size is not the only solution. The much better solution in my opinion is to populate the map with a LOT MORE AI. That way you still have a nap that feels spacious and you can still encounter other Dinos.

Man I love your videos!

I think this video is really good, as an isle player I could imagine there being long fences that bisect the map with holes or gates along them, this would challenge players through those points, I think if in a separate video you showed us an example of how youd fix a map e.g. isla spiro that would be really interesting to see

Yeah map reviews would be pretty cool 👍

If not decreasing the map size they need to make some more activities available for players to do and possibly an inclusion of AI interactions. Fighting just players can be frustrating especially if it is an encounter out of nowhere. AI can function as buffer interactions to make PVP ones feel much more built up and earned.

I like huge maps as long as they do it right and increase the player count. The Hypixel server in minecraft has 80k player cap, you can't tell me this is not do-able because many multiplayer games have server caps of up to 1,000. The isle is the worst optimized game that has ever existed, and i say this with 100% confidence. Seriously there are miles of improvements needed to support a higher player cap on servers. Isla spiro is a good map and I wish they would expand it to cover the whole island of isla spiro with 1,000 players spread across the whole map.

Oh yeah Wonderdraft! I almost forgot it existed lol Need to get back into that, prepare a map for when Modtools or a map editor is released.

I think they really need to look at real environments and see how diverse they are, with all the unique features that you could interact with. But just a thought, it'd be cool if there was a survival game that purely was played as smaller animals. Small dinosaurs, mammals, other reptiles etc. You could have it similar to these games, with different species/playstyles, but with AI creatures being a more constant threat, be they carnivores or defensive herbivores. Imagine a game where you play as a Mononykus in the Nemegt Formation, avoid Tarbosaurus and Alioramus, trying not get kicked by aggressive Galis whilst stealing their eggs, or skewered by an angry Theri lol. Im picturing something like Ancestors: The Human Kind Odyssey with dinosaurs. Playing as a smaller animal would also likely make a map feel more interesting and offer more. So I think this would be a cool idea for a game, I'm hoping Historia plays like this.

When it comes to ARK's ice shit at least they actually had one of the characters (Helena) comment on how it really should not be there briefly

I'd love to see you reviewing pot's Gondwa.

I love it

I like Isla Spiro. I'm excited for Isle V2 to be integrated into it

The new isle map looks promising but shit can u like message the devs 🤣 your video was very well put together and has some amazing points that they really need to see

great but only problem is ark has actually thematic and story reasons the ice and forest biomes are so close

Whoa what what game is that ocean scene in at 1:48? :O

I know nothing about computer games, but couldn't there be NPC herds added to a game to help not only carnivores but also give life to the biomes?

09:03 Uhhhhmm.... But Arks Bioms dont need to make sense ._ . Like they are arks, not normal worlds Uhhm yeeah :P

The reason I liked playing the old isle is that I can live in a hole and prey comes to me and I never have to interact with another person. I will seek out new ways to make a hole and not interact with anyone else. No matter what they do I will be in a hole away from others.

Imma be honest, I think pots gobdwana is gonna suck.

I LOVE rival shores, and I encounter tons of players. Unless a drought is happening...

Finally someone is saying what I have been thinking for years. Thank you lol

My man speaking the truth

I think bob’s maps are actually quite small for what they are. But they lack detail and variety

8:52 sheesh why you calling out ark like that

Beasts of bermuda has some of the best maps ever and thenyaw island was REALLY good

ong fr

Isle V3 is a joke, this map has the only 2 hot spots which is twins and port.. Huge ass map that has literally nothing to offer. First time i played i wandered to aviary with a high hope that ill meet a lot of players there.. Nope, not a single soul. You go twins to interact with others - toxic rexes rip you apart. You visit port for fun? A pack of utahs rip you apart. Legacy is a joke. Now go play evrima

:D

the isle is the neatest game of the 3 big dino games but its lack of verity and updates is dragging it down and i think it may die before it is realized

I can not wait for the premiere of Gondwa, Panjura is probably the worst map I have ever seen, there are passages everywhere, you still have to come back because the developers at a length of 500 meters made ONE pass from one site to another and the rest is blocked with some stones.

v3 is too fucking big

100 dinosaur in a isle is not a lot. The map cant really be to big. That ll depend of max player in thr map. They should to imporve the serve and upgrate the max capacity at 300. ATLEAST. How many animal and a isle in reall? Not 100 for sure. If we want to see a lot livlfe they have 2 solution. Verry small isle or improve server and upgrate the capacity player

I hate the normal The Isle maps. They are big but super boring. There were nice custom maps in the past as mods were still a thing. I am sure some old school players remember the Terra Vitae map.

Gondwa turned out a disappointment (at least for me) nearly 80% of the map is un-usable due to the water issue and the props/thick woods

Bad take incoming: I really don't like the evrima map. The jungles are impossible to navigate and all the cliffs are hidden in bushes so you end up kratos diving to your death or getting lost. Also half of the map is devoid of any food sources.

Don’t bully ark man it’s doing it’s best

You gotta have some attention span problems to think that any of these maps are too big. 100 players is more than enough for a map the size of Spiro from The Isle, the real issue is neither the map size nor the player count, but the fact that a lot of parts of the map aren't visited that often because there simply aren't too many reasons to, so the devs need to give people incentives to move all around the map rather than staying in one or two locations. You're saying that they should decrease the map size but they actually did that back when update 2 came out. They made the playable area smaller and guess what the result was, absolute fucking chaos, you couldn't walk around for 5 minutes without a player interaction, couldn't sit down after a fight and reflect on what just happened without 3 more players showing up, couldn't stay out in the open field for 10 seconds without being spotted by 10 separate people, all because the map was so small and all the players were clustered together. While that might sound fun to someone with adhd, to everyone else it is exhausting and tiring. Too many people go into the game with the completely wrong mindset, thinking they're gonna spawn in, walk around for half an hour and have like 10 different interactions and sick battles when it's simply not meant to be that way. Sometimes you're gonna keep bumping into players like you're a dinosaur magnet, other times you're gonna walk around for an hour and barely see anyone and it's fine, that's how sandbox games are supposed to work, not every experience is supposed to be the same as the last.

Garbonzo