Hi everyone,
the new Escape the Pacific version 'Alpha 20' is now available.
For this small update before summer we were mainly focusing on improving gameplay and fixing some common issues. It is now possible to cut the bushes, corals have gotten some fixes and the build modules were optimized.
The most noticeable issue that was fixed is the "missing reef" issue sometimes occurring after a new game was started. Another issue which was solved is when the player saved/reloaded the game on some far remote island sometimes causing the player falling through floor/to underground.
We began with optimizations on the game startup sequence and its first visible result is that the clouds' reflection in the water are updated much sooner, just after the game is loaded and not some seconds afterwards. We will continue to work on these startup issues some more time.
We managed to complete the first stage of optimization of all of the building modules and blueprints. The results are promising: With some huge buildings (~700 build modules) the FPS increased up to ~40%.
Probably the most interesting new feature in this update is the possibility to cut bushes to clear up some space when the player needs to. Use an Axe and hit the bushes' stems close above the ground to make it disappear. Later this bush cutting functionality will be expanded a little more.
Changelog:
New feature:
01. Added: Possibility to cut bushes to free up some space
Fixes:
01. Fixed: Clouds' reflection in the water are correctly done just after the game is loaded
02. Fixed: Corrected coral/reef initialization to avoid sometimes not showing them up after game load
03. Fixed: Correct player position acquiring to avoid the situation when corals/reefs are shown in wrong positions
04. Fixed: Player not falling through floor/to underground when being on some far remote islands after save/load
05. Changed: Removed unnecessary components and functionality from the build modules
06. Changed: Optimized build module initialization and data usage
That is all what we planned to release in this small update. During the summer we plan to continue on solving the issues with higher priority - we will add less new content and instead we plan to fix as much issues as we can. The issues will be fixed in order based on community requests and on their severity.
Thank you for your patience and for your constructive feedbacks helping us to get rid of the issues as fast as is possible.
Please be aware that during early access phase game code could change as much as affecting gameplay when loading/saving savegames from earlier versions. To always be on the safe side make sure to start a new game with each update. Thank you!
G4GTeam.
If you have any further questions do not hesitate to ask us. We will try to answer your questions in detail.