Experimental Build 0.4.292 - Build Notes

Explore Lutari, Moonshrooms, Moon Mantis, Infinity Terrain, and lots of Stability fixes

While half our team focused this week on data stability and multiplayer, the other half worked on adding a new moon, creature, and lots of polish and bug fixes. We also added dedicated quality assurance testers to our team, which has allowed us to really stress test the game and has already proven to be worth the cost ten times over.

Lutari

The second moon of Theseus Prime is Lutari. Lutari is positioned very close to the Theseus Prime ring system, giving a beautiful look at the “hot Jupiter’s” rings. Similar in appearance to our own moon, this world features reduced gravity, strange “Moonshrooms” and is rich in rare minerals.

Infinity Terrain

We also added back in our “infinity terrain” system and improved it greatly. Added first to Lutari, the infinity terrain will generate in all directions at huge distances, completely removing any end of the world. We optimized the system from previous versions and improved the visuals to allow for parallax mapping and detailed shader system, the same shader system on the primary terrain area, which gives a nice cohesive look.

All the other locations will be getting the Infinity Terrain in future releases.

Moon Mantis

The first discovered Lutarian is the Moon Mantis, which appears to be some sort of predator that roams the surface.

The Moon Mantis takes advantage of our new IK Creature Animation system which allows math driven IK for traversal and feet planting while using expressive key framed animations in the attack sequences. We’ve had a lot of players ask for this, which has also been on our roadmap, and now it’s here. Other creatures will be receiving this animation treatment as we go.

Moonshroom

Not completely desolate, there seems to be a strange iridescent shrub called a Moonshroom on the moon’s surface.

Changes to Slipping

The controversial and much debated foot sliding mechanic has been tweaked in this version. When attempting to jump at the highest peak incline the slip now has a very small chance of causing a suit breach. The sliding duration has been drastically reduced to allow for quicker interaction after sliding.

User Interface Transitions

Something we’ve always wanted to add in and finally had a chance. We started with some nifty zoom transitions when going from menu to menu.

Lots of fixes and improvements

Huge focus on furthering the data stability since our change to the cloud file system. Countless bugs were fixed this week around these features. We also fixed party member ownership, building, and other control issues.

Change List

Here's list of what we hit this week, we kind of went a little crazy:

• Added - New multiplayer buffer system

• Added - mode title to Main Menu

• Added - Quick Level Test spawn points to World

• Added - configured Lutari LevelDesign scene with CreatureZones

• Added - Lutari to Proteus2 LowOrbit

• Added - AStar and configured loading settings for Lutari | Added GraphCache file

• Added - Lutari WorldArt lighting pass

• Added - Lutari sections file

• Added - Highlighter to crab and rock pickups

• Added - Creature enum for pick ups

• Added - color coding for Cover during storms

• Added - Set atmosphere, stars, planet and weather settings for Lutari.

• Added - thin atmosphere to lower audio levels

• Added - Configured Lutari plants for collection

• Added - logic to request the master client save every 30 seconds while a player is attempting to join, to account for any unexpected loss in photon calls

• Added - null check to weathermanager's photonview setting in awake

• Added - Moonshroom item, configured to work with lutari plant prefabs

• Adding - Transition system

• Added - transitions to in game menus

• Added - Crystal shader

• Added - Lutari mineral variants

• Added - lots of minerals to Lutari

• Added - planets reference to Lutari_Persistent

• Added - PlanetTrigger to Lutari planet in Proteus2_Persistent

• Added - failsafe to not run the dynamic wave spawner if no enemies are specified

• Added - finished automated backup, syncing of backup, and loading of backup-ed file in the instance of corrupted file either overall or in the instance of erroneously erased data

• Added - Infinity Terrain to Lutari

• Added - RTP to InInfinity Terrain

• Added - More polish on Lutari materials, terrain, and rock materials

• Added - Spaceship will now wait for the world save to finish before it spins up it's interplanetary drive to full speed

• Fixed - Parasyte body will no longer fall beneath the world and be inaccessible

• Fixed - item pickup collision settings that caused them to fall through the floor very frequently when dropped

• Fixed - shadow distance options

• Fixed - room names being inconsistent

• Fixed - owned structures and vehicles not populating

• Changed - Optimized Spaceship Landing Gear

• Fixed - Player jumping over small bluffs in the terrain

• Fixed - Bloom options

• Fixed - Network instantiated player prefabs are now properly removed from the world when their owning player leaves

• Fixed - issue causing the new buffer system to allow data desync in the buildable system due to save IDs getting desynced

• Fixed - issue causing the new buffer system to save empty data entries into the persistence system, unnecessarily bloating the save files

• Fixed - viewIDs not properly getting sent to remote clients for Droids

• Fixed - Disabled despawning of Creatures temporarily as the system gets redesigned due to it causing severe FPS drops on clients due to creatures not being destroyed on every client

• Fixed - issue preventing players from joining a master client that is inside of a vehicle

• Fixed - Texture sizes for RTP

• Fixed - corrupted file handling for non-data critical save files

• Fixed - FileStreams remaining open due to mid-stream errors

• Fixed - instances where autosave would attempt to run before the initial load has finished, causing corrupted/incomplete data

• Fixed - Spaceship is now removed when a client leaves low orbit to enter space

• Fixed - some errors ran into through testing multiplayer

• Fixed - to Crab Pickup materials

• Fixed - ghosting on selection circle sprites

• Fixed - jittery camera on Mech and MechCrab

• Fixed - UI on Hovercraft and GAV

• Fixed -Particle system on Hovercraft

• Fixed - Player now properly spawns when remote client enters planet

• Fixed - small instabilities and errors in multiplayer

• Fixed -issue where save IDs were not properly counting the highest ID, causing building to be problematic

• Fixed - general errors during loading

• Fixed - persistent data duplication issue

• Fixed - divide by zero error when starting fresh in a multiplayer universe

• Fixed - some null refs in item pickup

• Fixed - creature logic being ran on remote clients when unintended

• Fixed - Crab Mech multiplayer sync issue

• Fixed - 3rd person Camera Collision from jittering

• Fixed - ownership discrepancies for party members

• Fixed - bug causing remote clients destroy to not clean up the item locally

• Fixed - issue with buildable object manager duplicating and not properly maintaining one single instance at any given time

• Fixed - Player's location is now saved when they spawn so if they respawn they are not stuck inside the pod or at 0,0,0 world space

• Fixed - 3rd Person camera for Mech

• Fixed - Mech sounds

• Fixed - hovercraft engine material

• Fixed - Hovercraft exhaust materials

• Fixed - all camera distances for all vehicles

• Fixed - all headlights for all vehicles

• Fixed - an issue where the BuildableObjectManager would keep references to the previous planet's buildables in memory and respawn them on a new planet

• Fixed - infinite loop in saving on failure to save

• Fixed - backup file sync path

• Fixed - gravity when planet travelling to low gravity worlds

• Fixed - bugs within BuildableObjectManager

• Changed - Increased ambient and sky illumination at night

• Changed - Spaceship exhaust materials less bright

• Changed - Harvesting berries now provides science

• Changed - Looting creature bodies now provides science

• Changed - Harvesting broken droids now provides extra engineering XP

• Changed - Set server debug text to be wider

• Changed - Gave important scene PhotonVIews their own fixed IDs

• Changed - Made lingering smoke on meteor darker to make it easier to find

• Changed - Updated Crab mesh pick ups and other optimized meshes

• Changed - Improved Pick Up HUD

• Changed - Improved always up HUD

• Changed - Adjusted atmosphere settings on Proteus 2

• Changed - Adjusted LOD distances for some crab and skeliopod items

• Changed - Increased resolution of displacement maps on Proteus 2 terrain

• Changed - Set all Lutari textures to 2K

• Changed - Set camera rendering to Forward to fix RTP black terrain issue

• Changed - Sped up bullets on GAV and MechaCrab

• Changed - Crab Antenna Icon

• Changed - Lowered timeout to 180 seconds from 360

• Changed - Reworked shader for Diamonds

• Changed - Disabled BuildableObjectManager's passive syncing, fixing duplication issue

• Changed - Zeroed out Lutari for proper placement

• Changed - Player breath is now off when in a vehicle

• Changed - Switched out BuildableObjectManager's list handling with a dictionary so they can share the same persistent object IDs and not become desynced with async loading

• Changed - Adjustments to incline sliding. Made sliding less time and only gives damage at a low chance percentage

• Changed - Trimmed jump landing animation to make it quicker and more responsive

• Removed - the need for Draw Distance limits

• Removed - dummy missions from Mission Transmission