Hey Galactic Survivalists!
We originally started Alpha 5.3 with the aim of only fixing some remaining issues in order to have a stable and polished game during the longer development phase for the upcoming major Alpha 6.0 update.
However, we could not resist the temptation and added a few more goodies for you to play around with. One of the highlights: we added the first iteration of an improved turret targeting mechanism. You can now choose sub-targets like thrusters, turrets, mounted weapons or generators!
When taking a tour of the 5.3 features, we strongly recommend visiting Aitis (complete overhaul) as well as Masperon, Masperon Moon, Aestus and Skillon for having a look at the new and refined deco!
Find all the additions, tweaks and bugfixes listed below!
Thanks to all testers of the Experimental version over the last week and all the valuable feedback given! :) The Experimental thread had more than 17’000 views and more than 300 comments. That is awesome!
As always: have a lot of fun and thanks a lot in advance for helping us track down remaining bugs!
Please report 5.3 bugs and issues right here: http://empyriononline.com/threads/bug-reports-alpha-5-3-x.9500
Cheers,
Empyrion Dev Team
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Changelog: Alpha 5.3 (Build 857)
Improved Turret Targeting:
- First implementation of a more fine-grained turret targeting: you can decide for each turret which target it attacks among these devices: Core, Turrets, Mounted Weapons, Thrusters, Generators.
New Terrain and Decorations on Aitis:
- Complete overhaul of lava planet Aitis
Other Decoration Improvements on Planets:
- Added more alien deco plants to Masperon (planet + moon)
- Added dark rocks to Masperon (planet + moon)
- Added biome sound to Masperon planet
- Tweaked Masperon Moon: reduced ground fog intensity + tweaked colors on some plants / tree to better match environment
- Tweaked deco on lava planet Aestus
- Tweaked barren planet Skillon: grass matches better terrain color, tweaked material of stones
- Several other tweaks to deco plants and trees
- Added big flower to Akua
Visuals:
- Updated models of thrusters (regular, enclosed, slant, small)
- Added tracer shots to NPC Zirax and Turret Robot
- New placement axis shader (to sort properly with bounding box and blocks being placed)
- Tweaked sun flare on Aestus
- Updated resource icons: instead of blue outline we now integrated a white glow -> please let us know what you think
- Tweaked grey version NPC alien assassin (added emissive)
- Reduced amount of under water particles
- Tweaked flares on rocket projectiles
Additions:
- Added several new railing blocks
- Added red version of NPC alien assassin
Changes:
- Optimization for reflection on player helmet: we reduced the render distance for the helmet reflection to 20m => this optimization can have a huge effect in multiplayer when several players are close by (before this situation could lead to significant frame drops)
- De-activated empty weapon sound on turrets to avoid annoyance when turret always tries to reload
- For performance reasons: Temporarily de-activated flies sound on worm plant
- PDA actions of type "NearPoi" (= go to / find a POI) can now have temporary waypoints ("Destinations") to guide the player. Implemented for missions "Find Abandoned Mine on Akua" and "Find Abandoned Factory on Omicron"
- Added infinite stock of base attack drones on all playfields
- Added 85 Unlock Points to Tech Tree (because they were missing to unlock everything)
- Updated some loading screenshots + updated text
- Added new loading screenshots
Gameplay Tweaks:
- Placing a new core now sets structure to Private instead of Public
- Weapons that ignore atmo parameter now show correct "Eff. Range" (e.g. Drill, Multitool, etc)
- More weapons ignore atmo parameter for range calculation: e.g. Chainsaw, Harvester Module
- Tweaked NPC spawning on Masperon planet, Omicron, Aitis, Oscutune to add more diversity
- Slightly increased spawn rate of certain NPCs
- Slightly increased drop rate of Crushed Stone
- Added max limit of 8 to player sentry gun
- Crushed Stone can now be found on Aestus and Aitis
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed: Problem that HV hover engines temporarily lost effect when being hit (e.g by alien turrets)
- Fixed: Problem that Harvest Module did not always function correctly - especially in 3rd person view
- Fixed: Problem that Antigrief zone could be exploited to block ore deposits
- Fixed: Problem that terrain textures were not always correctly set (eg forest texture did not always correspond to where forest was)
- Fixed: Problem that explosions were rendered sometimes inside cockpit
- Fixed: Reflections going white/causing lighting issues in certain situations
- Fixed: Problem that turrets did not use ammo as long as player stayed in cockpit (MP only)
- Fixed: Problem that Color/Texture tool beam hit player's face if firing at a target out of range
- Fixed: Problem that private structures of same faction members shot each other
- Fixed: XP gain exploit/glitch: Placing a terrain placeable, picking it up and placing again gives endless XP
- Fixed: Problem that active Vessels moved out of position when pointing at them and holding O (SP only)
- Fixed: Problem of endless loop in constructor if (a) sub-crafting has a problem and (b) inventory is full
- Fixed: Blueprint bug, adapted Blueprint modding error reporting
- Fixed: Problem with green head on red alien shot + adapted transparency
- Fixed: Problem with Cockpit FOV when changing FOV outside of Cockpit
- Fixed: Problem with strange glass artifacts in some cockpits
- Fixed: Time/biome info was not hidden when Player Drone active
- Possible fix when container is open and player gets disconnected from server
- Fixed: Several terrain layer problems on Aestus and Aitis
- Fixed localization issues with non-breaking space characters
- Fixed file sharing violations when copying or deleting save games in Resume Game window
- Fixed: Problem that using Drill T2 gave an exception in playfield server log
- Fixed: Wrong caption on loading screen: instead of Survival Constructor now O2 Generator