Week Eighty Five brings a new mission for the fishers and anglers amongst you. You’ve been tasked to go catch some endemic species to the oasis, so get your rods and go cast your line.
We’ve also got an update on Hypatia and our ongoing work into the new mission system and performance elements.
Finally, we’ve got a sneak peek at a future patch for crop plots, and would love your thoughts on our proposed changes.
Hop in and have a read.
New Mission: OASIS: Angler
This week's mission is for the fishers and anglers among you. You’re tasked with building a fishing hut and catching some species endemic to the oasis of the desert biomes of Styx. Your briefing is as follows:
// OPERATOR: SINOTAI
// BIOME: OASIS, Styx map
// BACKGROUND: A VIP is requesting to have a taste of what Styx has to offer.
// MISSION: Setup a fishing hut and use the provided equipment to catch and prepare fish for delivery.
// TERMS: Deployment locations will be provided as suitable launch locations arise.
Hypatia Update
Our next large content update after Galileo is Hypatia, which we are working on at the same time as regular weekly updates and our upcoming New Frontiers expansion.
Hypatia’s first major feature is Open World Missions, the ability to launch and complete missions from within an existing Open World without having to leave the planet and start a new prospect separately (However, you can still do this if you wish). This is the most popular request on the Icarus Feature Upvote page and integrates our two most popular game modes into one coherent experience.
This is a huge undertaking as we have well over 80 missions, many of which have been here since the launch of Icarus, which requires a lot of work to transition. We are making good progress, however, and are also taking this opportunity to tweak and improve many of the missions.
Alongside this work, we are actively looking into the performance of level streaming and object loading that is responsible for the vast majority of hitches players encounter when travelling the map. We are testing out some solutions internally at the moment, and while a fix may be a while off due to the sheer size of the task at hand, we are optimistic with some of these changes and feel we are on the right track.
Crop Plot Revamp
An upcoming project we have been working on is a crop plot revamp. The biggest changes we’re proposing are potentially removing the crop plot inventory entirely, and allowing in-world planting and harvesting with a sickle, without needing to open up any UI to access your fruits and vegetables.
If you have any suggestions or thoughts on this system, leave them in the comments below, and we’ll go through and have a read while we tinker with the system.
Changelog v1.3.7.113609
New Content
- Basic outline for new fishing mission
- Finishing off the Fishing Quest
- Adding Quest Tag to Styx Oasis lake so the fishing spot for the quest can be marked
- Adding prospect difficulty adjustments for number of fish required to catch
- Added Ren/Exotic rewards for completion of fishing mission
- Unlocking Fishing Mission
- Adjusting completion fishing broadcast so it is called after catching the fish and not when hooked on the line, relevant to new mission
- Adding Fishing Mission Images and Modifying Mission Name
- Removing feature lock from feather lures
Fixed
- Updated credits section
- Updated 'additional thanks' section under credits
- Drop ships now atomize overlapping foliage during descent
- Some more timing and logic tweaks on Smoke Grenade
- Improve Smoke Grenade visual effects (converted to Niagara)
- Smoke Grenades will now obstruct creature vision
- Increase Smoke Grenade throwing range
- Decrease Grenade throw charge time 1.5 to 1.25s
- Update Metal Oxite Dissolver to use new V2 mesh
- Hook up custom logic to rotate dials for each oxygen slot and fuel slot (large dial)
- Fixed incorrect Komodo mesh
- Reordered Hyenas above Alpha Hyena to grant credit for Hyena Trophy to Hyena bestiary entry
- Fixed Inverted Left Concrete Roof missing from radial selection menu
Future Content
- Added modifier states for all new weather types, linked to base testing events
- Resaving WeatherPools data table to resolve build error
- Added AXE_IronWood
- Added bestiary text for Arid Striker and Redback
- Setting up quest variables for Daisy to replicate
- Adjusted Dialogue locations for PRO_Story_1
- Adding new Icon for the 'UDA Communicator Upgrade'
- Timer for PRO_STORY_1 now starts AFTER the tomato is planted
- Adjusting V2PromNomadEvent8.7 to have a lower priority than V2PromNomadEvent7 so dialogue interruption does not occur
- Add BoundsMap texture mask for Prometheus visual map to only show north portion of map
- Added 50 second delay before starting objectives in PRO_Story_1 so dialogue can play to completion
- Adjusting dialogue for entering area's Alpha, Beta & Delta so the dialogue plays only once instead of each time you enter the area
- Updating PRO_STORY4 weather forecast, also preventing natural spawns of arctic area's during the phase where you are tracking down an Group 15 agent
- Fixed skinning for heavy obsidian chest armor male and female
- Hooked weather visual effects for all new weather types, tweaked modifier values
- Adding slug spot audio event and notif
- Updated visual map textures for Prometheus, reduced textures size, reset MipGenSettings and Changed texture group to UI
- Importing Desert Striker assets and setup character and carcass + bones assets and relavent DTs
- Adding cave specific river audio to play when in the cave river.Adding event and BP entry
- Add creature threat audio settings to swamp slug so that it triggers combat music correctly
- Adding direction eq and distance eq and reverb to slug movement layers
- Adjusted collision on SM_BLD_Wall_Solid_Stone so that picture frames should no longer clip into the wall
- Adding in slug carcass assets and Lava slug assets + carcass assets, updated character etc and Corpse characters
- Made Sulfur reaction effects more customizable to suit different scenarios
- Repositioned in-world actors
- Adding komodo variant mesh along with carcass state, updated character BP, Corpse BP and D_Meshable entries
- Added new Gas Flyer creature alongside first pass of behaviour set.
- BallisticData now supports Niagara trail particles.
- NPCs can now override GetSightPerceptionOrigin in Blueprint to specify an arbitrary location/rotation for sight traces to originate from.
- Improved Swamp Slug's slime trail material and spline generation
- Updating PRO_STORY4 body3 search area, as the body was outside the area
- Adding Caught Fishing Notifiers and FishingNotification Subsystem
- Added new weather events, tiers and modifiers. Still requires additional tweaking of exposure rates, and tierified visual effects
- New entries added to Bestiary Data for lore text entry
- Update swamp wind modifier to communicate that it makes creatures see you easier
- Update temperature modifiers of weather events to offset new weather modifiers
- Update many weather events visual communication, fixing many linked curves and values
- Scaled AcidFog damage to reasonable levels
- Resaved WeatherPools to resolve build issue, again
- Adding slug flinch audio, event and data table entry
- Adding grasslands track Icarus_25 to Music data
- Adding music asset for grasslands
- Adding slug attack vocals and adjustments to notifier timings
- Added Lava Slug variant setup to AI Setup and Item static for the corpse
- Added translatable entry for the mount following indicator
- Added lore text for remaining creatures in the bestiary
- Update ModifierCosmetic BP to support new approach for SulfurGas (missing from 113273)
- Optimized existing Sulfur effect
- Added Missing Source Files for adjustments to the Aura component manager and fishing functionlibrary
- Removed debug print from PerformAction_SpitAttack
- Adding Aura distance overrides on modifiers so the sulfur actor pools can spawn their effects and aura's dynamically and to the correct size
- NPCs using the 'Spit Attack' BTTask can now specify a delay in seconds when spawning multiple projectiles to spread out construction cost over time, default delay is a single frame
- Added roat carcass sk mesh, material and textures
- Added swamp bird bones skeletal mesh and textures. Updated Swamp bird corpse BP to include the new bone asset
- Added noise and additional blending to slug trail material. NPCTrailComponent can now be given a socket to use as origin when generating new spline points
- Added validation for new weather types, fixed some bugs found due to this
- Fixed ticking modifier scaling effectiveness which caused damage over time effects to do no damage (dev only)
- Adding slug death audio and small adjustments to embers storm based on new length and speed
- PRO_A_Stockpile: Updated to remove the return to dropship objective
- Adjustments and improvements to the gas flyer
- Rasied terrain to prevent gaps between landscape and cliffs, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Adding gas flyer horn audio, shoot ballistic audio and BP logic to play explosive sound when corpse blows up
- Updated building damage tag effect for storms to not completely destroy buildings, instead leaving the building fully stripped like other storm damage
- Reduced AcidRain damage
- Added smoke effects to acid fog storms, to emphasise the increased fog
- Scaled player item damage of the toxic gasses storms
- Increased exposure for Prometheus lower tier storms
- Creature images added
- Creature images added
- Creature images added
- Creature images added
- Creature images added
- Creature images added
- Adding sounds to all new slug animations
- Added additional weather action validation and scaled temperature effects by weather tier
- Add Weapons Utility widget which shows damage output
- Flushed Grass on Blue & Yellow Quad, DLC Map
- Lots of adjustments and improvements to the gas flyer projectile sounds
- Daisy Death Dialogue no longer players when escort is complete in PRO_STORY_1
- Flushed Grass to fix grass patches, Green Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Fixing up bestiary & AI setup for the lava slug so it has different behaviours, stats, growth, loot tables from that of the swamp slug
- Added music timing hooks and validation to new weather events, minor fixes to timing for other weather events
- Fixing dialogue timing PromOffender5. Added 4 second start delay
- Add swamp minimap material for generating LODs/minimaps
- Added PIC_IronWood
- Removed damage from new weather events that have damage within the modifier
- Added debug CVar to disable shelter traces for performance testing
- Adding gas flyer audio events and data table entrys for the ballistics
- Reduced damage of Swamp Slug.
- Dampened Swamp Slug's Physics Asset. Swamp Slug's trail now lasts 40s
- Adding outstanding slug animations, eat, sleep and a few extra attacks
- Added randomised spawn scale to gas flyers
- When performing weather tagged damage, add a basic two trace shelter check for building pieces as these have no shelter component
- Added footstep particles to Lava Hunter.
- Lava Hunter now creates small patches of fire when walking during it's powered up state.
- UE4 PlayMontage function now gives reference to AnimNotify asset when triggered along with the usual Name.
- Added new AnimNotify which can be used to specify an override damage source location.
- Fixed missing 'CanFinish' node build validation error
- Added Macro cliffs to prevent lighting issues and fixed a hole in the roof of AC_MED_008, Blue Quad, Prometheus
- Adding dialogue fix for Prometheus Story 5 Event 9, Adjusting quest events to reflect dialogue timer reference
- Fix forprometheus mission 1 smpl3 dialogue, replaced phrase spoken incorrectly
- Adding decal showing AOE for orbital laser event
- Setting up Remaining 2.0.0 bestiary setup / images / etc
- Setting up Roat Skinned State and Corpse description
- Reworking elements of Story Mission 6 so it supports reloading, adding in new prebuilt structures as well as ajusting quest steps
- Added ITM_Sickle_IronWood
- Proof of concept pass of decal showing AOE for orbital laser event - currently not connected
- Added SK_ITM_Sledgehammer_IronWood
- Fixed Lava Flyers not damaging players on detonation
- Updated needler bones skeletal mesh with new model and added new textures
- Updates to the gas flyer. Adding floating movement audio and general tweaks and adjustments
- Adjustment to gas flyer shoot sound
- Additional attack slam for the slug.
- Not currently hooked up.
- Adjustments and improvements to gas flyer.
- Also lowered predator bird attack sounds and spacialiser slightly. was a bit intense before
- Fixing decal opacity for Orbital laser event
- Removing extra projectile resistance from Bloodclaw in fishing mission & fixing carcass text
- Added swamp roat bones sk mesh, material and textures
- Adding moew prebuilt structure jsons
- More work on Story Mission 6, now playable up to Group15 camp
- Fixed Scoria Brick missing skin in BuildingPieces Datatable
- Adding new prebuild structures for Story Mission 6
- Expanded floating foliage checker tool
- Exotics Checker tool expansion
- Added swamp bird carcass assets to project. Updated swamp bird corpse blueprint with these new assets