Patch 0.4.382 - Polish, Polish, Polish

Since Tuesday we’ve been focused on improving the interactions in the game, notably the combat, weapons/tools, and item interactions, along with numerous bug fixes. We’ve also been starting on a sound design pass, cleaning up many of the sounds with higher quality audio.

Shout out to the Feedback Form

We are seeing great results from the in game feedback form. The feedback you are posting goes directly to our live web page where our community manager records each issue into our internal database. This allows us the dev team to organize and prioritize bugs and feedback quickly, allowing us to improve the experience for you. Yet another way we are working on improving our connection from developer to player.

Speaking of feedback, be sure to either include a screenshot or a comment (having both are great!) as this really helps identify what your feedback refers to. On a side note, we’ve been getting so much feedback we actually crashed the server this week. However, we were able to migrate to a new cloud server with quadruple the horsepower while retaining all the feedback data in a matter of an hour. Just another day at the office!

A Note On Resources

You may have noticed that resources are finite (meaning they don’t respawn). This is a feature we added to the save game system to solve for exploits in the gameplay, such as exiting to the main menu, coming back, and mining all the minerals again. Going in and out of a menu or a mine to get resources is not good design, obviously, and we have plans for that.

In the coming weeks we will be doing a balance pass in the game, putting minerals and economy through some much needed adjustments. Gameplay options will also be receiving mineral spawning, including finite (which we never had working before), to the custom options so that you can tune the gameplay to your taste.

Multiplayer Allies

We’re phasing out the Party feature and instead introduced Allies. To share your base assets, simply just run up to your friend you press F to add as an Ally. Your assets will be available to your allies offline and persist between play sessions. Allies will lead the way to a more full feature set in the works - Colonies.

Combat Improvements

We added another layer of polish on the creature AI, this time focusing on hit reactions and knock backs. We’ve also added noises and sounds to the creatures, bringing them more to life.

Multi Tool and Chisel

These tools received a much needed reticle pass, showing you what is interactable. In the case of the Multi Tool you will see how much health an item has as you dismantle. The Chisel now has a reticle showing where it will apply damage.

Improved Night Rendering

Using our realtime global illumination the night time is now rendered with more bounce light, allowing you to see and traverse at night. It can still be spooky, especially if you hear something behind you (spatial audio fixed! Woohoo!).

Change List

• Added - Ally system, an ally can access all your items, even when you are offline

• Added - melee stance to melee weapons

• Added - sound fadeout system to fire

• Added - messages for the remote user when they are added and removed as Allies

• Added - hit stun and knockback systems to creatures

• Added - hit reactions on all creatures with available animations

• Added - hit behaviors on all creatures.

• Added - prefab testing scene

• Added - more loading and saving stability fixes

• Added - redicle to Chisel

• Added - redicle to MultiTool

• Added - sound to Space Debris Chest

• Added-  sounds and FX to Forge

• Added - Info Display to selected Inventory Icon

• Added - Highlighter filtering to bias towards pick ups and selected objects

• Added - Survival Sound Library

• Added - new cross hair textures

• Added - Redicle System to Multi Tool

• Added - Eat and Drink sound Emotes

• Added - weight stat to CreatureSpecies

• Fixed - double spawning crashsites

• Fixed - issue where initiating a save while a save was active would corrupt save data, usually the main culprit for data loss when entering the mines

• Fixed - issue where inviting or uninviting a user to a private server would not save the invites list after pressing the Update button

• Fixed - spaceship getting stuck returning to planet from low orbit

• Fixed - Excrement collector now properly persists its time remaining

• Fixed - activateable objects such as the shield and flood light now store their state when saving and loading

• Fixed  furnace's water collector's storage is now persistent when saving and loading

• Fixed - issue where the player would sometimes lose their crashsite persistence

• Fixed - missing collider on ground of rover in beta mine

• Fixed - interactibles being marked as busy in singleplayer

• Fixed - droids giving proficiencies for nature objects they gather

• Fixed - the player now respawns with a repaired suit instead of the broken suit persisting

• Fixed - dust storms should no longer damage the player in space

• Fixed - Seek task from indefinitely retreating from player

• Fixed - Made Inflatable Dome pick up able again

• Fixed - crafting icon amount text

• Fixed - Outdoor sounds are now muted when in a structure

• Fixed - Player stuck in structures after jumping

• Fixed - spatial sound on worm

• Fixed - spatial sound on meteor

• Fixed - commander in Beta Mine

• Fixed - all weapon shadows

• Fixed - light in Inflatable Dome

• Fixed - Trigger in Inflatable Dome

• Fixed - Ramp in Inflatable Dome

• Fixed - interaction on environment objects

• Fixed - Crafting Table crafted icons not appearing

• Fixed - 3rd person melee hit detection

• Fixed - bug causing enemies to stop spawning until the world was reloaded after a certain number had spawned

• Fixed - commander mission reading as Alpha mine instead of Beta mine

• Changed - hearing range of monsters in the mine by half to better allow stealth gameplay

• Changed - Brightened Proteus night sky

• Changed - Updated Highlighter System

• Changed - Updated Crash site and Proteus items to use this layer

• Changed - Polished fire and FX in crash site

• Changed - Made Chisel swing loopable in third person

• Changed - Chisel animation improvement

• Changed - First Person hit detection of Chisel at 2 meters instead of 4

• Changed - Moved pick up prompt to side of screen

• Changed - Increased size of all inventory icons

• Changed - UI polish on Player GUI

• Changed - Improved sway on starting weapons and tools

• Changed - hover particle

• Changed - Increased flashlight brightness

• Changed - Widened flashlight radius

• Changed - Reduced sound of player breath by half

• Changed - Capped snow and sand coverage on player at 10%

• Changed - Sound pass on all environment sounds on Proteus 2

• Changed - Sound Mixer for better volume control in first and third person modes

• Changed - Upressed textures on crude melee weapons

• Changed - Optimized Repair Table

• Changed - Optimized Workbench

• Changed - Rebalanced all player weapons to each have their strengths and weaknesses

• Changed - Updated sounds on health items

• Changed - Sound polish on Crash Site

• Changed - Pursue and Seek tasks to properly interrupt when a creature is hit

• Changed - ragdoll kill force on all creatures.

• Changed - base health values for all creatures

• Removed -customize structure for now until new features are in

• Removed - aluminum from Steel recipe

• Removed - Party system (replaced by Ally system, fixing many of the issues the party system had)

• Removed - Temporarily disabled missions past Follow the Commander while the story and mission system gets rebuilt
  
  

We hope you enjoy this latest version and polish pass. We have lots more to do to polish further, but we like the gains we’re seeing to the feel since improving these interactions. Half of our team will continue on polish and move into balancing, while the other half is focused on implementing new content from the roadmap.