Dev-Com
Hello, world!
Today we are updating Penkura, with the second part of the merging process.
In this patch, we manage to fix all the major issues with the project, completely remastered nearly the entire UI in the game, a new Feedback system, and some great new features.
One of the main changes in this patch is the User Interface, nearly every single UI in the game was cleaned up, to make it as easy to read, and as sharp on the screen as possible while still keeping the overall world aesthetic.
The main UI that we focused on in this patch (besides dozens of changes to the player character view, inventory, item inspection, main menu, and RTS mode) was:
The MMC UI (a place where the player is able to create his items).
Ore Refinery
CCC
Bot Control part of the CCC
and lastly Growbed.
Because a lot of users used the Bug Report system to provide feedback anonymously, we also added a new window specifically for it, from now on players are able to send us emails directly from the game (of course fully anonymously).
Another part of the game we improved is the weapon system, more precisely our long-range weapons in preparation for the upcoming new weapons. We added physics-based weapon recoil (the more powerful shot the stronger the recoil), an accuracy system (which changes based on player movement), a bullet heat trail, and heat dispersion from the shot.
All those changes should provide that known UMPF to the weapons, making them feel a little bit better than before.
Another change to the game is the new Humidity system, from now on game is able to calculate the Humidity of the air, by gathering data from fog, clouds, sun, and many more. Humidity will affect all flowers, mushrooms, grow beds, and atmospheric evaporators.
The higher the humidity the faster plants will grow, while taking less resources from the growbed.
Atmospheric Evaporators will also provide more hydrogel the higher the air humidity and of course less when the humidity drops below the minimum amount.
Also from now on, fog will affect Solar Panels' effectiveness ( this feature most likely will require some fine-tuning to make sure that the game won't be too hard at the start of the player's journey).
In the title, we also mention TAA improvements, as some of you know, we are using our own custom TAA to remove ghosting and improve the sharpness of the image, the problem was that it was quite heavy and did consume a lot of GPU power. After a lot of work, we were able to iron out our Custom TAA and improve its performance by nearly 80%.
Before we continue with our patch notes, we want to thank Jrok for providing us with a few ideas related to the inventory system, from now on when the player selects an item category in the inventory, Store All button will change from "Everything" to that specific category. Example below.
From now on we will add nicknames of all the users whose ideas/feature requests were added to the game.
Now about the upcoming patches.
In 3 days we plan to release another patch, that will add a new structure to the game, Manufacture Platform, and with it Industrial M.M.C. We did plan to release it in this patch, but the new MMC will drastically affect balancing in the game, which we need to stabilize.
Next week we plan to release another patch that will add Armor Implants to the game. Implants will increase armor capabilities, and add new features.
After that, we plan to release another structure, the Research Station, and a new feature, research, and development. Allowing players to discover buildings, implants, items, and base improvements.
As you may imagine this will once again drastically affect game balancing, we want to use this moment to change the early game of Penkura.
We want to focus on the early part of our project, to drastically improve the pacing of the game, make it a little bit easier to learn, and make sure that players spend much less item idling.
And as always, for more information regarding the latest technical support, patches, and updates please join our Discord Community.
LINK ----> https://discord.gg/2ukYHQm
Till the next Dev-Com over and out.
Penkura Main Branch Adjustment Part 2
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⊞ Bugs/Errors ⊞
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◈ Text for inverting mouse X and Y axis was backward, X should be Y and Y should be X.
◈ Bio-Recycler didn't save its state (On/Off) properly.
◈ Highlight effect gave a big blue box on the left or right if the player gets too close to the object.
◈ Player with a keen eye found a location where he could look underneath the level if crouched (fixed).
◈ Screen with high-resolution 4k+ had problems rendering text in the correct position on the screen.
◈ Fixed footstep sound duplication error.
◈ Fix for the Night sky border line to appear from 0:00 till 0:18.
◈ Fixed Computer interaction in Epsilon Base.
◈ "Its all in the Crystals" mission duplicated its entry each time player loads the game.
◈ Save/Load system triggered clean-up feature if Windows Numerical Format was changed from Default to Custome.
◈ Warrior Metos, didn't correctly remove collision after death.
◈ C.A.T had a chance to permanently loop build sound if the player activates deconstruction while constructing.
◈ Magnetic Wind Turbines, spin extremely fast after being constructed for 10 seconds.
◈ One of the doors in the Archeological Base didn't properly save its state.
◈ On death, the body left by the player, had camera adjusting shaders on hands that led to visual error.
◈ CCC didn't properly delete buildings from the queue unless manually refresh.
◈ Rain was able to pass through very thin collisions.
◈ CCC didn't properly add buildings to the construction queue on load.
◈ Mouse cursor was able to leave the game window in fullscreen mode.
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⊞ Improvements / changes / additions ⊞
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◈ Added Automatic Zoom system to all 3d User Interfaces, which will take FOV, player screen ratio, and screen resolution to make sure that the entire 3d User Interface is visible.
◈ Changed some of the items' production placement.
◈ Visually updated 3d User Interface to make it cleaner and easier to use.
- CCC
- MMC
- Ore Refinery
- Growbed
- P.D.S
◈ Improved Mouse Handling.
◈ Player is now able to move the Materialization Queue slot to the bottom of the list by dragging it below the last queue slot.
◈ Rewritten collision system for rain effect, tripling precision without any performance cost.
◈ Incress rain effect size and power by 40%.
◈ Improved player Flashlight (cone width, range, and strength).
◈ Power system will now not allow buildings to hoard energy for later use, buildings are now ON or OFF.
◈ Power indicators will now show energy stability rather than the percentage of charge.
◈ Upaded Main Menu UI.
◈ Fog now affects Solar Panels' effectiveness.
◈ Added humidity indicator in RTS UI.
◈ Atmospheric Vaporators are now affected by the amount of humidity in the air.
◈ Updated Inventory Storage Widget.
◈ Minor visual improvement to M.M.C
◈ Updated Details Window UI, and added new item information.
- Items will now have information on where they can be created.
- Accuracy of the ranged weapons.
◈ Drasticly improved camera return animation after using 3d UI (computers, CCC, MMC) return animation is now smooth without any hitches even after changing player position to place hands on the computer keyboard.
◈ Texture settings in Options>Video, changed to Shaders.
◈ Added Reset Settings to the Main Menu.
◈ Visually improved Gemini Base.
◈ Improved normal map shader and main material shader lowering their GPU requirement.
◈ Improved Save files data cleanup (lowering their file size).
◈ Optimized power calculation on all bases (minor performance boost).
◈ Optimized 3d assets to lower the RAM requirement.
◈ Minor improvement to player viser, (fixed scaling on ultra-wide screens)
◈ While the sort function is activated in Storage/Inventory, those specific items will be transferred when using Store All/ Take All buttons. (Feature request by Player Jrok)
◈ Store All / Take All buttons will now be affected by the sort function and change their name to indicate what items will be moved.
◈ Incress visibility range of Ore Cluster by 25%.
◈ Improved Anti-Aliasing (performance boost).
◈ Added Feedback system to Menu.
◈ Added bullet trail.
◈ Improved Command Center Collision at the Base of the Building.
◈ Minor visual improvement to Command Center Window.
◈ Changed some of the lore/text/information around the game, shortening them, while still providing the same context.
◈ Added full support for ultra-wide screens and 4k+ screens.
◈ Added On/Off button to Ore Refinery UI.
◈ Improved weapon handling. (smooth out animations, improved sway, trigger times between shots).
◈ Range Weapons will now have different types of accuracy.
◈ P.G.E interface will now showcase range in meters rather than centimeters.
◈ Incress P.G.E detection range by 5 meters.
◈ P.G.E data screen will now change distance color to red indicating that Ore Cluster is too far from extraction range, and will print the message "Out of Range."
◈ Added visual effect to digging out ore using P.G.E.
◈ Added 3 sound effects to P.G.E.
◈ Improved RTS user interface.
- Buildings buttons are now 20% smaller.
- Energy and Hydrogel Windows are now easier to manage (cleaner and none click through)
- Better presentation of item requirements.
◈ Added additional sound effects to on death trigger.
◈ Improved wind effect on all trees.
◈ Incress the range of wind change by the weather.
◈ Added 5 different sound effects to digging out Ore from Ore Cluster.
◈ Added a bit more Metoses (drones) at the start of the game.
◈ Deactivated spawner near the Communication Station is now activated and set to the lowest difficulty setting.
◈ Added additional tutorial triggers.
◈ Balance Changes:
- Crystalized Construction Component now takes 14 seconds to be materialized rather than 20.
- Crystlized Construction Component now requires 1 Metal Bar ( was 2 ) and 8 Noble Metal Bars ( was 3 ) to be made.
- Refined Polan Crystal requires now takes 10 seconds to be materialized rather than 20.
- Refined Xavoc Crystal requires now takes 12 seconds to be materialized rather than 20.
- Basic Electronic Repository now takes 1 Liquid Construction Component ( was 1 Solid Construction Component ) and 6 Noble Metal Bar.
- All melee weapons have a 50% range increase.