Icarus Week 153 Update | Flamethrower, Double XP & Performance

FREE WEEKEND & DOUBLE XP NOW ON

For this weekend the base game of Icarus is available to play for free! All with a Double XP event for everyone. The Double XP Event will run until Monday NZ Time. We have also included a special bundle for this weekend so if people are enjoying the game you can get the game and its expansions with a big discount.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/46753/Icarus_Free_Weekend_Bundle/

Welcome to Week 153.

This update comes a little early this week as its timed with a free weekend, a Double XP event and a reddit AMA.

This we are adding a brand new weapon type - a flamethrower. The first in a series of new weapons that will be introduced prior to some new creatures and bosses.

We provide a breakdown of some building optimizations and speak about Frozen wood veins we decided to add based on player feedback.

We currently have a reddit AMA for Icarus live where, Dean Hall - CEO, Jake Dodunski - Project Lead, Adam & Josh - Designers and other members of the team will be answering questions. You can find it here: /r/SurvivalGaming Icarus AMA

Also a quick preview into next weeks patch with the introduction of Cows, Calves and milk.

Notable Improvements

• Adding Scoria, Clay and Obsidian Resource Packs purchasable in the Orbital Workshop
• Players can now collect the notes in the Null Sector Missions as items and keep them to read them when they would like
• Reduced Sandworm & Landsharks weakness to fire damage (21x → 2x)
• Adding water as a requirement to craft a fire extinguisher, it now crafts full of water

This Week: Building Occlusion Optimizations

Investigations have been underway for a little while now into why large prospects really don’t hold up well, performance wise. We found that some settings were being applied to building meshes that actually prevented some engine-level optimizations (“Occlusion Culling”). In most games, when you put your camera up against a wall/rock/whatever, the objects you can’t see behind that object get occlusion culled. This happens for pretty much every object in Icarus, except it wasn’t happening for Buildables. So while your base may have been on the other side of that mountain, it was still being rendered if you looked in that direction.

Early on in the project we implemented a method for preventing weather effects appearing when standing inside buildings. While this works perfectly fine, the method implemented relies on a setting which also prevents occlusion culling on the building mesh itself, and as we discovered recently during early testing (thanks testers!), also prevents us from applying distance culling optimizations too. After rejigging the way in which we handle weather culling on the building meshes, we’re now able to ensure the building meshes are now both Occlusion and Distance culled, giving you the best possible performance!

In addition to the Buildable optimizations, we have also applied some more aggressive distance culling values to Deployables and Spline networks. The draw distance for Buildings, Deployables and Splines is now based on your “View Distance Quality” setting in the options menu.

In our test scenario, these changes resulted in a nearly 2x performance increase. We completely expect this result to vary based on a nearly infinite number of factors, but in general, players with large, heavy-hitting prospects should see a tangible performance increase.

We welcome your feedback on this change, let us know how your performance has changed (and what hardware you’re on and some details about prospect object numbers!), has the shorter draw distance negatively (or positively) impacted on your gameplay? Are certain buildings now leaking weather effects? Please let us know!

This Week: The Flamethrower

This week we are introducing the first of our new weapon types in preparation for some new creatures and bosses that are on the way.

Flamethrowers shoot a jet of flame and will deal continuous damage to anything within the area. Any flammable objects in the world also have a chance of catching on fire, further adding to the destructive power of this weapon!

The Flamethrower is crafted on the Machining Bench and is required to be filled up with biofuel to use. As the weapon’s recipe also takes biofuel, it comes with a full tank to start with. A handy gauge will keep you updated on how much fuel is remaining.

This Week: Free Weekend & Double XP Event

This weekend to coincide with the Free Weekend we have decided to introduce a double XP Event, this event will run through until Monday NZ Time. We hope you all enjoy it!
Also, for the duration of the free weekend you can get all the expansions and main content packs for the ultimate ICARUS experience at a great discount! Check out the Free Weekend Bundle above.

This Week: Frozen Wood Veins

Listening to feedback due to the lack of wood in the Null Sector we decided to add a very limited number of frozen wood nodes that can be drilled into with the Ice Borer. This allows wood, without having to trek all the way back out, which is an extremely long journey. We have only added a few so be on the lookout while in the Ice Sheets.

Frozen Wood Veins will provide Frozen Wood when drilled. This Frozen wood then needs to be heated up in a furnace, campfire or any of the heat based benches or devices, this then converts the frozen wood into wood.

Next Week: Cows & Milk

Next week we are introducing a new animal and resource. This is the cow. You will purchase a frozen calf in the orbital workshop and then raise them up into a cow. Cows then need to be fed and watered to produce milk. With that new milk resources comes a range of new recipes.

This is the first step we have towards animal breeding, in future you can expect Bulls, Chicks, Roosters and Lambs, we are ironing out the breeding mechanics at the moment and we will release it when we are happy.

Your support makes these updates possible.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/46753/Icarus_Free_Weekend_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

Changelog v2.2.28.129531

New Content

Fixed

Future Content