As promised last week, the first Jupiter build has been uploaded to an unstable beta branch.
It's been quite a while since the last named update, partly due to spending more time doing post-launch Icarus patches, but mostly due to my goal of introducing an ending to the game's story. Late in the process I found myself caught in the trap of "the players have waited so long for this build, they won't be happy unless I do X". But this eventually becomes a self-perpetuating cycle as X inevitably takes longer than I originally thought, and I feel compelled to add Y and Z. I finally reached a point of deciding that it's better to get some feedback on the new stuff and defer some known items.
Consider this a warning that this build might be a rougher build than previous opt-ins. There aren't any known game breaking bugs, but some content isn't quite as done as I would like, there have been untested balance changes, and some of the late areas may have performance issues. Some players have already started playing since I posted about it on Tuesday, but as most of the changes are in the late game, no player has made it that far and I still don't have a sense as to whether there are any serious bugs.
So very brave commanders who want to venture forth into the Jupiter build, have at it. Once I get feedback from players who make it all the way through, I'll give some guidance in the weekly update on how rough it actually is. (Opt-in instructions here).
Non-spoiler list of changes:
- Prologue transition
- End game credit screen
- New mid-game story, faction
- Two new void mini-quests, encounters
- New late game story, mission
- New end game story, missions
- Two late game "easter eggs"
- Fix for missing void encounters
- New weapon variants
- Refactor fixed weapons, control schemes
- Anomaly soundscapes
- 18 new anomalies
- Numerous new actor dialogues
- New modules
- New techs
- New enemies, abilities
- Damage type logic, refactor resistance
- Refactored Station operations logic
- New techs highlighted
- Additional analytics
- Hints/fixes for several stuck scenarios
- Engine turbo sound fades out
- Numerous balance changes
- Numerous new VFX
- Minor changes to dialogue behavior
- Improved mission authoring tool
- Improved testing tools
- Changed autosave timing
- Fix for vsync not being saved
- Fix for secondary weapon not being saved
- Several performance optimizations
- Various QoL changes
- Numerous bug fixes
Build 16006 patch:
- Fix for new analytics telemetry potentially logging player name, which would make the analytics non-anonymous
- Added canvas scaler for prologue text
- Fix beams not targeting fighter drones after object re-pooling
Until next week!
- Kevin