Hi, adepts of unconventional chemistry!
As you all know, this week we are deep in the fight with the issues connected to saves and scientist missions. The matter is complicated and we may have still some work to do to eliminate all possible sources of the problem. However, we want to provide you with valid solutions to make your experience run smoothly, so today we are introducing an improvement to the saving system. It should lower the possibility and frequency of issues with saves.
Please be informed that the improved save system will also not work retroactively - saves that were already corrupted due to the issue will remain corrupted.
After testing this solution, we trust that it will protect your game saves in a significant manner. However, we cannot guarantee that it will eliminate all of the issues upon implementation. We will be still working on perfecting the new system. We have also modified the type of data saves provide us with, so with new systems saves will carry even more information crucial to reproducing the issues and finding their source.
Due to this, we kindly ask you to contact us if you experience any further issues and send us your saves via Steam, Discord, or to [email protected]. Please send the whole contents of the C:\Users\ USER NAME \AppData\Local\CreatureLab\Saved\SaveGames folder.
Besides the save issues, we are fixing the bug in today's patch with two mission popups appearing at once and causing map freeze and some other possible soft locks. We also amend the issue that causes a reset of save names when overwriting.
Additionally, we have introduced changes that may lower the possibility of map freezes - but as this bug is particularly hard to reproduce, we cannot guarantee that it resolves all instances of it. We managed to reproduce this bug only once in the testing environment, so we're working on limited data. The community feedback will allow us to estimate how our solution is helpful in practice.
Patch 6 for Creature Lab - saving system improvements
We also want to send special thanks to all the people whose feedback is helping us to combat the most persistent issues in the game. Especially those community members that send us their DxDiag files, save files, and other data that help us directly in locating and reproducing the issues. Big kudos!
The patch introduces the following changes:
- implemented a new system to lower the occurrence of save-related issues
- fixed a bug with simultaneous mission popups causing map freeze
- fixed an issue with resetting save names when overwriting
- implemented a possible solution to lower the frequency of map freeze bug
- resolved issues with mutagen compatibility when nourishing the mutants on Insane difficulty
- fixed the issue with opening the pause menu when loading the game
- fixed the issue with the space key interacting with a locked button improperly in certain situations
- disabled the district selection arrows when the nearby region is not active
- added fixed padding to Mixturopedia, so that entry panels should not move when hovering the mouse above them
- locked the possibility of having the "obtain equipment" mission available when all three upgrades for Automated Alembic were already collected - please note this will work only for new saves created after the patch
In addition, we made Steam Trading Cards available for you in this update. From now on you can earn cards by progressing the game - and if you're already deep into Creature Lab, you will receive cards according to your progress without a need of playing any part of the game again. If you think you should have a card and you don't see it added to your collection, please contact Steam support -as cards are their area of expertise. With Steam Trading Cards, we of course added profile backgrounds, badges, and emotes for you to earn.
Check out some of the cards below:
For the map freeze issue, we are still seeking videos of the issue happening, so if you have such a video or would be able to make one, we would be grateful if you sent it our way at [email protected], on the Steam forum, or via our Discord. We also would be grateful for DxDiag.txt files to check if the configurations have a part in generating the issue.
As usual, we invite you to use our dedicated bug reporting thread in our Steam discussions:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1309990/discussions/0/3809529789908529375/
And remember that you can ask us directly about anything via Discord:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1309990/Creature_Lab/