‘ARK: Survival Evolved’ Xbox One Update To Give Resolution Boost This Week
It’s no secret that ARK: Survival Evolved for the Xbox One runs at a sub-HD resolution and still suffers from performance problems. Studio Wildcard has an update planned for the open-world dinosaur survival game this week that should make Xbox Game Preview Program title easier on the eyes.
An analysis of the ARK: Survival Evolved resolution on the Xbox One performed by Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry in January of this year revealed the game to be running at a sub-720p resolution. Specifically, the tech experts at the site pegged the resolution at around 1088×612 for the gameplay and the user interface. This tends to make it harder for players to spot certain animals in the game, such as the smaller bugs, and read the text in the UI.
Lead Designer and Co-Founder Jeremy Stieglitz announced early Monday morning Studio Wildcard will finally address this in the next update for the game.
“I’m happy to say this week’s Xbox update includes full 720p 3D rendering, & 1080p UI!” he declared via his Twitter account.
In other words, the game world and all the creatures will render at 1280×720 while the user interface will be at 1920×1080. This isn’t ideal in the current gaming world where everything is expected to be 1080p but is still a welcome step forward for a game that has suffered from both resolution and performance issues since launch as an early access game on the Xbox One.
Stieglitz has not shared what went on behind the scenes to bump up the resolution of ARK: Survival Evolved, but it was likely a load of optimizations done by the developers. Interestingly, the Xbox One patch notes posted by Studio Wildcard on the official website reveal an additional 10 percent framerate improvement to go along with the resolution increase.
Additionally, the Center map maker Ben Burkart recently confirmed some Xbox One specific optimizations were done to ARK: Survival Evolved’s most popular map. This is in addition to the optimizations that were performed in the PC patch 245, released at the end of July. Whether any optimizations have also been performed on the Island map is currently unknown.
The Xbox One 729 update for ARK: Survival Evolved is currently targeting a Thursday, September 1 release. Studio Wildcard has previously announced when it has sent patch updates to Microsoft for certification but has not done so for this release.
The 729 update contains all the content from the PC patch 245 and all of the resulting smaller patches. Surprisingly, Studio Wildcard says it will also include the content from PC patch 246. This will result in both platforms being at the same level content-wise with the exception of the new edge of the world content added to the Center. That is expected to hit the console in mid-September.
The big addition with the Xbox One 729 update is PrimitivePlus for ARK: Survival Evolved. Primitive Plus changes the ARK: Survival Evolved experience by completely removing the existing metal tier in the game and greatly expanding the number of items that can be harvested and crafted, such as Adobe-style buildings, floating bridges, honey from bees, fishing traps, and more.
PrimitivePlus also intentionally fosters a cooperative element between tribes by adding more than 40 different resources plus another 10 crops. This is too much for any one tribe to accomplish on their own so players can also build market stalls for trading with others.
Pillar spam is also addressed with this release. Players placing lone Pillars in ARK: Survival Evolved to prevent others from building will find they will be destroyed automatically after a period of time. This only affects Pillars with no other structure object snapped to them. Expect to find Thatch Ceilings and similar objects sitting on Pillars going forward.
Here is the content 245 update added for ARK: Survival Evolved on the PC that is coming to the Xbox One as part of the 739 release.
- Redwood Biome to Center with Boss arena
- New Official Total Conversion: Primitive+
- New Creature: Pelagornis! (guide)
- New Creature: Allosaurus! (guide)
- New Item: Fishing Rod + Fishing Mechanic! (guide)
- New Structure: Industrial Grinder
- New Structure: Spiral Staircase
- New Mechanic: Optional Hitmarkers for ranged attacks
- Building Attack/Destruction TribeLogs
- UI Option to colorize item name texts based on quality level
- Offline Raid Protection mode now disables PIN Locking, and Structures in Caves no longer get ORP
Meanwhile, here is what is coming in the 246 update that will be released to the Xbox One as part of the 739 update at the same time.
- The Gateway, Cross-ARK travel & Cross-Official-Server Transfer
- New Dino: Tapejara!
- New Dino: Archaeopteryx!
- New Structure: Large Ceiling Dino Doors
New servers will be made available for PrimitivePlus, as previously covered. Studio Wildcard is also teasing “something else very big,” but hasn’t given any hints. ARK: Survival Evolved was announced to be part of the Xbox Play Anywhere initiative to support cross-play between the console and Windows 10 PC, but there is nothing pointing to this being part of the “something big.”
[Image via Studio Wildcard]
