Dear Stormworkers,
Last weeks new Space DLC and major update released! The player creations and adventures across space are incredible - from new rockets, satellites and space stations to lunar bases and rovers.
The space race is real, with many players clearly building for hundreds of hours before the new launch, in preparation to be the best prepared. Congratulations to the many players with incredible new creations on the workshop! It is really inspiring.
This week we have an additional hot fix that addresses many important issues. Please see patch notes below for a full list of fixes. These changes include some very important fixes concerning cargo missions, weight of fluids, and vanishing vehicles. We are still working on a bunch of fluid and steam issues where we are improving the system to behave more like the old version and will get these improvements released soon.
As previously discussed, there were issues in the first day or so of the update. The main issue was that there was a change to gravity that effected many existing ships. We fixed this issue within a day, but we accept that it was very concerning to many players who felt like the hundreds of hours they had invested in building these creations was at risk of being lost.
We worked very hard to get the issues resolved as quickly as possible, with a fix live within 18 hours. However, it wasn't great that players had to deal with these concerns for any amount of time.
Let's discuss how we can stop the same problem in the future:
Unit Tests
We are planning a new "unit test" system in Stormworks. Unit testing is a common technique in software to write computer programs that verify if some code produces the expected output. In Stormworks, we plan to add new "data logging" components that we can add to vehicles to record a number or on/off value. Then, when our build server creates a new release, it can run Stormworks, spawn the "unit test vehicles", and record the outputs of all these logged values, and compare them to the previous release.
This will allow us to test most vehicle behavior. Any value in the logic system can be checked. For example, we can test buoyancy by logging the height of each corner of a ship with an altitude sensor. We can also be notified as soon as something changes.
Release Checklist
Simply having a written procedure of things to check before releasing a final build will ensure that we can check at least a few common ways that players play Stormworks. With the Space update, for the last few weeks before release, all our testing was focused on stuff between the launch pad and the moon. It is so easy to lose track of the bigger context when you are looking at a specific update, but having a written procedure to follow makes it much harder to be distracted.
The kind of stuff for the checklist will probably be testing some of the most popular workshop vehicles, testing the tutorial, playing a mission in multiplayer, etc.
Steam Beta Branch
Many players have suggested player testing with a beta branch on Steam, and we will consider it. However, when we have tried this before, there was an issue where many players played 'experimental branch' because they didn't want to wait for the release date. This created huge friction with the community, because some didn't want us to actually experiment and make changes based on player feedback, while they are trying to build something with the experimental components. Which public branch players decide to use is beyond our control, but we are looking at ways in which we can get this to work better.
Limitations
Stormworks is over 100Mb of code, and contains over 600 components. There is at least 200 million ways to place 2 components next to each other. It is not possible to test everything every 2 weeks. The above can certainly avoid a lot of problems in the future, but what else do you think we should do?
Community
As with many other sandbox games, Stormworks is highly dependent on user generated content. On the Steam Workshop, our players has close to the number of creations as the huge communities of more popular sandbox games. This also incudes player-to-player help and communication that we often see on our Discord server, forums, Steam guides, public wikis, and especially video tutorials and any other videos and streams on YouTube, Twitch and Discord.
We are endlessly grateful for all these players who keeps supporting the game and other players.
Much love <3,
The Stormworks Developers
v1.9.5
Fix - Solid rocket booster fuel amount slider now works for small nozzles
Fix - Cargo missions script fixed to function correctly
Fix - Mission vehicles sometimes teleported incorrectly which was causing other vehicles to vanish
Fix - Restored old equation for weight of fluid in a compartment
Fix - Split getVehicleData function loaded vehicle data to getVehicleComponents