Happy New Year, Folks!
Ostranauts v0.14.2.8 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a feature update to our recently released "Across the System" update, adding more user interface improvements, and making REDACTED less annoying.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 and later should work. Note that if you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.
- Holding the Left Alt key will now highlight both nearby interactive objects and UI hotkeys.
- We added a tutorial step to highlight this new Left Alt feature.
- Loading a save game doesn't use hard drive temp folder anymore. It opens straight into memory.
- The REDACTED will now only cross over to a new ship via airlocks.
- The REDACTED will now either lie dormant or start disappearing after finishing certain branches of the REDACTED plot.
- The list of HULL items in the PDA's build menu now has generic wall, floor, and doors at the top.
- Humans no longer get floor bump maps applied to their bare legs/arms.
- PowerViz lines no longer get stuck on screen when switching ships in ShipEditor.
- Racks no longer block light/cast shadows.
- Stacks of items no longer disappear if something inside the stack changes damage state.
- Stack item counts update in the inventory correctly now.
- The version of flirting that is a reply no longer uses the same name as the opening flirtation move.
- The MegaTooltip received a visual overhaul to look more consistent with the HUD, and be easier to read.
- The MegaTooltip correctly shows human faces again.
- UI Tooltips were reduced in size a bit.
- Several items had their descriptions added or fixed.
- Deleting a save file on the Main Menu save list will no longer throw a null reference error.
We've added a new tutorial step early on in a new game to teach the user about our "highlight interactables" and "show UI hotkeys" features. Many players reported having an "ah ha!" moment when they discovered this undocumented feature. Now, holding the Left Alt key will highlight both of these things.
We also changed the way we load lave files to load them directly into memory, instead of uncompressing the zip files into a temp folder on the hard drive first. This might speed up load times for some users, but the main benefit here is fewer hard drive read/write operations, which was important to some SSD users.
Many users will also notice the HUD was further reworked, and the MegaTooltip now shares the same visual style as the rest of the HUD. We also adjusted the style of the condition capsules (a.k.a. tags) for items to be less intense, reserving the brighter capsule colors for more important conditions.
The REDACTED plot received some love, as well, and it should now be a little less aggressive when crossing from one ship to another. Plus, finishing the related plot in a few ways can curb its growth, and even decimate it.
We noticed some players being annoyed that the wall options in the PDA HULL build menu were after a long list of specific floor types, so we moved the generic floor and wall to the top for easier access. Note that if you aren't picky about which wall or floor to build (or only have loose versions of the ones you want), you can use these without choosing the specific wall model from the longer list.
Two minor, but possibly annoying visual issues were also finally resolved. The racks no longer block light/cast shadows, and humans no longer have those floor bump maps appearing on them when wearing certain outfits.
A few fixes for stacked items also mean fewer lost items, as we discovered and fixed a bug that deleted whole stacks if something in the stack changed state (like became damaged/destroyed).
And we reduced the size of the text in a few tooltips which seemed excessively large compared to the rest of the UI.
As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!
Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC