Hey Folks!
Before I get into the usual patch notes, I just want to apologize for the issues many of you experienced with the build. While we figured there would be some pain points revealed with launch, I think we significantly underestimated just how many there were.
Ultimately, it is my responsibility to ensure the launch version is as smooth and enjoyable as possible, and for many of you, that just didn't pan out. So please accept my apology for any frustrations you encountered. We'll be working diligently to address these issues as fast as we can!
With that in mind, update v1.0.0.9 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix to 1.0, which addresses a number of the more common bugs we're seeing reported since last week, plus some police and NPC brawling relief. More fixes are on the way, of course! But since many of these were ready to go, we wanted to get them out to you now, to unblock affected folks and let them get back into the game as we work further.
Saves from v1.0.0.0 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.
Note: 📢 indicates changes inspired by community feedback!
Players finishing a prison term now have their wounds treated, and are not knocked-out.
Players finishing an arrest/prison encounter are no longer immediately jumped, beaten, and arrested again afterwards.
Encounters that begin while player is unconscious now reach their endings more reliably.
Stations should now spawn fewer NPCs that immediately brawl due to faction differences. Particularly around OKLG.
Undocking from a station and starting a race should no longer delay spawning race waypoints.
Aero Race tracks should now spawn with orientations that better align to the parent station.
Long Way Down and Reactor achievements now trigger correctly.
Drawing cigarettes from boxes works correctly again.
MTRS station supply kiosk now has cigarettes in stock.
Using Arena Mode from the Ship Editor no longer locks players into that mode after exiting to Main Menu.
Having PowerViz enabled while loading a save, exiting to Main Menu, or exiting to Ship Editor no longer throws a null exception.
Ship COMMS UI no longer throws nulls if the user clicks a button corresponding to a ship which is no longer valid.
Repairing the tutorial derelict with conduits imported from other ships will no longer stall the tutorial.
Ship Editor no longer throws nulls when attempting to edit construction stages on an asteroid or imported ship.
Starting to connect an appliance to a sensor, opening the inventory, and then clicking non-inventory items will no longer throw nulls.
Tutorial no longer throws nulls if the player exits directly to the Ship Editor during certain steps.
Exiting the Zone UI now clears the zone tiles selected, avoiding potential nulls when clicking the button to add a zone.
Switching characters to a non-human object while the inventory paperdoll is visible no longer throws nulls.
Using the ship rotation hotkeys while the game is loading no longer throws nulls.
Players using the derelict ship override feature will no longer have the tutorial derelict replaced.
Several copyedits to the Ceres and REDACTED quest lines.
📢New last_stable branch for mod compatibility.
Since our launch last week, and with so many new folks playing the game, we certainly have our work cut out for us addressing reported issues. We'll be digging into these over the next while, and we want to thank you all for your help in reporting these, as well as your patience as we tackle them!
Starting with the top of the list above, we made a series of changes to the arrest encounter sequence, to ensure players that opt for the prison sentence get some of the benefits of that prison time. This includes healed wounds, waking up if knocked-out, and importantly, clearing any remaining officer goals to attack/arrest the player that were already in progress.
And speaking of attacks, we were seeing a lot of reports of NPC brawls everywhere players went. And this turned out to be due to civilian pilot spawns including a chance of both of two warring factions. We've adjusted these spawn chances to only ever involve one side, which should reduce the number of NPC brawls seen on stations. Note that any preexisting spawns will still potentially result in fights, as well as bounty criminals that end up docking at stations with hostiles.
We received a few reports of the reactor achievement not triggering, so we adjusted the criteria to make that work more reliably. And while testing the rest, we also noticed the Long Way Down needed adjusting, as well. Both should be working now.
The aero races should appear more reliably now that the racing buoys adjust to their parent station's orientation, as well as the parent station resuming the race initiation after a save/load cycle more reliably.
Some players noted that cigarettes could only be used when clicking them directly, and not when clicking the box, so this has been fixed. (And the MTRS kiosk has been fixed to sell cigarettes again. We apologize to all Martian smokers for the oversight!)
The next block of fixes is a lot of what we spent last week addressing. Namely, null references that could happen from various combinations of scenarios. Everything from opening or closing UIs in certain orders of combinations, to clicking unexpected inputs or switching characters at unexpected times. No doubt there will be more to find and fix, but hopefully this batch significantly drops the frequency of such issues for players.
Finally, one player discovered that importing a ship from a save to replace derelicts could also replace the tutorial derelict, so we now prevent that. And we edited a number of plot encounter screens for better clarity and flow.
We also opened up a new branch to help modders, and those who use mods. There is now a last_stable branch in the opt-in Steam branches, which contains the last public build of the game. In cases where a mod breaks due to changes in the codebase, this should hopefully give players the ability to continue play uninterrupted, and modders a chance to update their mods.
As mentioned above, we certainly have more work to do. We'll be aiming to fix bugs according to how often they occur, how serious they are, and how reliably we can reproduce them. And as we get more of those solved, we'll start filtering in more quality of life enhancements and suggestions from players.
As always, thank you for playing, and for your help in making Ostranauts more fun for all!
Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC