*Note - These changes are only on the Experimental Branch. To access the Experimental Branch, be sure to select it in your Steam Library. If this app does not appear, please check if this app is hidden in your Library. Experimental Branch changes upgrade to the primary branch monthly.
Big additions have gone in this week, along with lots of polish - always working hard to strike that fine line between adding content and hitting those final touches to proven systems. We also went ahead and hammered out some errors reported through our channels from last week's Experimental Build. Special thanks to all those who worked with us to seek and destroy those pesky bugs! And now, onto the additions:
Zer
Zer has been remastered and added back into the project this week. Using the planet tech we've matured while working on Proteus 2, Zer is back and better than ever. It's a hot planet, has it's own ecosystem, is tidally locked to the star, and now has underground areas to explore. It's still a bit rough on this Experimental Branch, but it was important to get this up at this stage for further integration and polish.
More Underground Areas To Explore
Lutari and Aziel now have underground areas and more foliage has been detected. More creatures have also been added to both planets as well.
Spaceship Polish
The Corsair (Spaceship) has had a significant amount of polish added: you can now access the interior of the ship. The Corsair now sports a functional ramp, cockpit area, and proper interior collision. All physics has been fixed up so entering and exiting the Corsair no longer has those weird pops/stutters when taking off or entering.
New Mineral Art
Many new models have been added to give further variety to the Mineral Nodes. These models are more accurate to the real world and each mineral now has a more unique appearance.
Deep Terrain Drill Added
Deep Terrain Drill has been added which allows you to unearth minerals from deep underground, eliminating mineral scarcity issues while mining directly from the surface. This fills out the mid game further, as when the minerals found on the surface are all used up the Deep Terrain Drill can pull additional resources from all over the planet to gain you further riches for your crafting needs.
Known Issues
Space Station Travel is ROUGH. We've been finding some strange occurrences in our testing, but want to get it in your hands for sake of consistency and transparency as to where we are in early access development.
Also, our testing has found the new space travel iteration a bit confusing, which is good feedback. Again, space travel with the Corsair, though vastly improved from a technical level, is still very rough. For instance, when arriving at the destination planet the low LOD will disappear, and the high LOD will appear below you. When this occurs you've essentially arrived, we just haven't lined up the LODs just yet. It's tricky math to get this, and we know what we need to do, just couldn't quite get this polish in this week.
Change List
Added - Navigation Module allows Space Station and passengers to travel between Zer and Proteus 2
Added - Zer Planet
Added - Deep Terrain Drill
Added - Dungeons to Aziel Lutari and Zer
Added - Lutari and Aziel Dungeon Room Prefabs
Added - Minerals to all Dungeons
Added - Updated Aziel and Lutari Maps with more rocks, foliage, geysers, and Base Objects
Added - Creatures to Proteus 2: Aracheetle, Wingedling, Squitozoid
Added - Added creatures to Zer
Added - Functionality to enter and pilot spaceship
Added - Spaceship ramp functionality
Added - interactObject feature to allow any interaction with any design object
Added - Completely reworked aerial creature functionality and updated creatures as necessary
Added - Warp debug command now supports warping between moons and planets
Added - Wreckage variant of drill that spawns when the Deep Terrain Drill is destroyed
Added - Deep Terrain Drill icon
Added - New custom models to many of the minerals
Added - Updated Items for minerals
Added - Updated item icons for structures and mineral items
Added - Updated plant prefabs with proper name
Added - Space Station now has red lights throughout that display when it is preparing for travel
Changed - Reduced atmosphere density while in spaceship
Changed - Assault Rifle's recipe swapped Zircaloy for a Diamond
Changed - Creatures can now damage structures and vehicles
Changed - Any limb that has already been harvested on a creature will route damage properly
Changed - Queued up another Mineral persistence reset for version 0.5.0
Changed - Navigation Module now requires Engine Module within 500m to build
Changed - Updated Health Indicator prefab
Changed - Introduced public off-screen health indicator size multiplier, reduced size across the board
Changed - Updated all creature prefabs to utilize the new prefab
Changed - Sped up Space Station travel calculations
Fixed - Terrain activating when leaving deep space
Fixed - Spaceship physics when entering and exiting vehicle
Fixed - Updated Creatures data for missing/incorrect information.
Fixed - Duplicate rover mesh issue
Fixed - Improved spaceship load to be more stable and less crash prone
Fixed - Improved stability of multiplayer load with multiple joining clients
Fixed - Player should no longer get infinitely stuck under Aziel or any other planet
Fixed - Player spawn point is once again properly set after exiting a Spaceship
Fixed - Turrets should now mind their aim better
Fixed - Descriptions in the Laboratory now properly update
Fixed - Inventory contents are now properly refunded when dismantled, including all attached furniture
Fixed - Entering atmosphere from low orbit will now properly clamp the spaceship's position
Fixed - Dungeon generation on Aziel
It was an important step to get all this content in, which was ambitious inside of one week so many of these systems are a bit rough. But hey! That's what the Experimental Branch is for!!! Please shoot us your feedback if you have a chance to check this out. In the meantime, we're heads down getting all this polished up for our next push. Whenever possible, feel free to ping us on our Official Discord Server.
"I always drink coffee while watching radar. You know that! Everyone knows that!!!"
-Brian