Ostranauts News

Hey Folks!

We have a new devlog today! Plus an update (v0.14.3.14) is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly. This devlog covers the the last two months of updates including the pathfinding overhaul, ship AI, population fixes and more. You can watch here or on the Kitfox Youtube:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As for the patch, this is a hotfix to our "Across the System" update, which addresses a number of more general bugs and errors players have uncovered, ranging from ship teleportation and ignored collisions to null errors in the UI.

• Saves from v0.14.0.0 and later should work. Note that if you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.
  
• General Changes
  
• Ships should no longer teleport to strange places if the user is holding WASD keys while the NAV UI is loading.
  
• Ships without the captain on them now correctly detect collisions when player is flying them.
  
• Pathfinders should once again be able to cross from one ship to another when both origin and destination are outside the ship.
  
• The game should no longer refuse to drop a stackable item onto a container with both empty space and viable other stacks.
  
• The game should no longer throw errors when an item on the cursor is swapped for another item, and then that item is dropped onto a container containing compatible stacks.
  
• Crew members are now correctly removed from the player's company roster when they die on remote ships, avoiding null exception errors when using the hotkey to switch to other crew.
  
• HUD physiological stat bars no longer throw null exceptions if there is a problem with the person they represent.
  
• Using F5 or Autosave will no longer interrupt a save already in process, which could cause errors.
  
• A number of loose items which previously did not highlight with the highlight interactables hotkey should now correctly highlight.
  
• Fixes for several typos and redundant entries in the game data.
  

Two of the bigger fixes in this patch involve ship flight. In one case, the ship could be piloted while the NAV controls were loading, causing the ship to teleport across the System. And in another case, ships piloted by crew could ignore collisions as long as the captain wasn't around. Both of these should be patched now!

Another significant issue involved pathfinding across ships. If the crew was floating outside ship A, they would report that they could not reach the exterior of ship B. This turned out to be a logical error in detecting when a room is reachable from another room, and should also be fixed.

The next several errors were the result of missing items and crew. In some cases, swapping and dropping various items could lead to cases where an item was incorrectly placed or throws an error, often causing unusual behavior or soft locks. In other cases, crew would still remain in the player's company roster even if they died in a destroyed ship.

In all cases, the game would stumble over these missing or incorrect references, but should now be better guarded from them.

One player noticed that it was possible to F5 autosave while the game was already saving, which could cause errors. So we added some code to ensure user-triggered saves could safely interrupt a save in process, and to avoid autosaves from interrupting.

Lastly, we had a few typos in the game which caused incorrect highlighting or redundant data, so those were fixed.

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know how things are working for you in the new patch

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC

Hey Folks!

Update v0.14.3.13 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix to our "Across the System" update, which adds new license tiers, changes the pathfinder code, and addresses a number of other issues.

Saves from v0.14.0.0 and later should work. Note that if you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.

• Added 4 new tiers of OKLG salvage licenses, with longer durations.
  
• Licenses can no longer be sold back to most kiosks.
  

• New pathfinding algorithm to improve game performance.
  
• Characters should no longer clip through or get stuck on corners when walking.
  
• NPC transiting from station-to-station optimized for better performance.
  
• NPCs now record their docking events, PASS voyages, and other transit events in their message log.
  
• NPC pilots no longer trapped in a holding pattern due to invalid fuel reserve calculations.
  
• Characters can no longer install items through a wall if standing immediately on the other side.
  
• Characters can no longer install items without the loose version if getting the loose version required a spacesuit first, but the wall itself did not.
  
• Characters can now shimmy self out of unwalkable tiles if they are stuck inside wall/desk/etc.
  
• Characters should no longer stop at double airlock doors when ordered to leave the ship.
  
• Characters no longer get stuck walking in place if standing between closed airlocks.
  
• Characters should no longer go in and out of the ship over and over while working on walls with lots of corners.
  
• Characters will now correctly resume a task if they stopped to don a spacesuit and helmet first, instead of moving on to another task.
  

• Switching regions no longer causes a population increase.
  
• Docking with the player's owned residence no longer causes a region change.
  
• Whodunnit cases can now be closed on any officer or corpse, even if case file is missing.
  
• Whodunnit rewards have been adjusted to be more favorable, and several related plot bugs have been fixed.
  
• Game will no longer hard-lock when attempting to toggle a switch that was repositioned with a rounding error.
  
• Game will no longer soft-lock when line of sight checks hit a null object.
  
• Players should no longer be teleported inside the Sun when patrol and pirate ships undock.
  
• Players should no longer be stolen from their ship by patrol officers and pirates when they undock.
  
• All items on stations are no longer owned by the first NPC spawned there.
  
• Docking with an NPC ship will no longer endlessly duplicate that ship in place.
  
• Players can once again dock with newly-purchased derelicts, even if an NPC scav ship docked with it in the interim.
  
• Torch course plot no longer gets stuck active with endless null errors.
  
• NAV stations will no longer change VREL/VCRS if the user presses movement inputs while paused.
  
• Ship's NAV logs have more collision and docking info in them now.
  
• NAV scroll speed is now consistent regardless of game speed.
  
• NAV note will no longer obscure power reserve info in cases with long ship names.
  
• Trespassing crimes on Venus are now correctly cleared when paying the fine.
  
• Paying fines now requires the money up-front, or else time must be served.
  
• Players accused of stealing ships in Venus space will no longer have their arrest warrants issued in OKLG jurisdiction.
  
• Clicking Quick Action Buttons no longer click-through to select paper doll items.
  
• Paperdoll drag slot item no longer obscures left hand slot item.
  
• Right-clicking an objective no longer opens the PDA to the social page for the clicked name.
  
• Chairs can no longer be installed with dismount point facing into walls/fixtures.
  
• Loading a save file will no longer leave Lorem ispum text in the log.
  
• Game music will no longer begin playing before the player leaves the starting dorm area.
  
• Officers on patrol ships shouldn't spawn inside walls anymore.
  
• The LootSpawner UI in Ship Editor now has filtering for Loot dropdown, and a warning if spawner overlaps a wall.
  
• Some empty tracking conds that were previously visible in the MegaTooltip are now correctly hidden.
  
• Reactor ignition will now correctly shut down core pump automatically.
  
• Tooltip task fail messages should now update more cleanly.
  

One thing to be one the lookout for in this patch is the new Salvage License tier system:


The OKLG Licensees Only kiosk now sells 4 new license tiers. The red, blue, silver, and black licenses offer extended salvage permit durations of 72h, 7-day, 30-day, and 300-day, respectively. The prices for these new tiers represents a large up-front cost, but the reduced hassle and cost-per-hour may make it more attractive to professional salvagers.

On the other hand, vendors are no longer accepting used cards for partial refunds. Sorry!

We've also made several significant changes to improve performance. A lot of the more recent complaints from players center around poor performance. And pathfinding can be a significant contributor to that problem (especially in large maps and/or with large groups of people).

To help address this, we've completely changed the underlying code of the pathfinder to use a more efficient system. The old system was the tried-and-true A* (or A-star) search, which checks tile-by-tile in all directions to see which next tile is closer. This system works well in a lot of situations, but can sometimes be wasteful in large open areas.

For example, this is what an A* search looks like going from the green to the red tile, with a (dark) wall in the middle:


Gray and purple squares are the ones the algorithm searched, with arrows showing viable directions from each. The blue arrows are the final choice of shortest path. As you can see, this searched a lot of tiles, including tiles that were redundant same-cost paths.

Our new pathfinding code uses a system called Jump Point Search, and an equivalent search result looks like this:


Again, purple and gray squares are tiles we had to process, and arrows represent possible directions we can go from each. Blue is, again, the final chosen path.

The difference here is that we are checking in diagonal directions and, at any given tile, we are "jumping" down whole rows and columns of tiles until we find one that lets us go further than the last tile. And from that new "further" tile, we restart the search.

As you can see, this results in far fewer tiles processed to reach the same goal.

That said, there are going to be situations where A* comes out ahead, notably more cramped/broken the spaces are, or where tiles have variable traversal costs. But since most of our trouble comes from large, open areas with equal per-tile costs, this appears to be a net performance improvement in most situations.

Of course, you all will be the final judge of that!

As part of this pathfinding change, we also addressed some other path and AI-related issues we found. AIs were getting stuck on corners, or dismounting into walls. Some AIs would get trapped inside double airlocks, or refuse to cross them after opening them. AIs were reaching through walls to interact with things, or inefficiently switching between inside and outside the ship to work on walls when they hit a corner.

Separately from this, we also found and fixed a few more situations where AIs would use extra cpu when transiting between stations, or region-changes would spawn too many NPCs. And some fixes for cases where docking/undocking would cause players to get booted out of the region or into the Sun.

Several fixes addressed bugs in fines, crimes, and arrests, and we added a way to close Whodunnit cases when the player lacks the case file or specific corpse.

A number of cases that could cause hard and soft locks due to nulls, duplicates, or coordinate errors were also found and fixed. Plus a number of other fixes and improvements!

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know how things are working for you in the new patch

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC

Hey Folks!

Update v0.14.3.8 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix update to our "Across the System" update, including some improvements to AI food and water use, ship orbit plotting, and other fixes.

Saves from v0.14.0.0 and later should work. Note that if you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.

• Ships now orbit more accurately when in freefall (i.e. while not maneuvering).
  
• NAV station now plots current orbit (if applicable) when not maneuvering.
  
• Moon orbital tracks are visible once again.
  
• Minor performance optimization to the NAV station by ignoring hidden, helper celestial objects.
  
• Improved AI eating and drinking to behave more appropriately to their needs and personalities.
  
• Added the ability to drink blood and chunky blood.
  
• The Load button on the in-game Escape menu now works.
  
• Changed AI to prioritize family and meaning needs lower, so they are more in line with other social needs.
  
• Changed clothing to use higher-resolution artwork in the MegaTooltip.
  
• PASS shuttles will now attempt to ferry people from overpopulated stations to underpopulated stations.
  
• Several causes of excessive NPC spawns have been fixed, including NPC haulers that had impossible destinations.
  
• NPC ships will no longer prevent the player from using super FFWD after being ordered to 'come here.'
  
• Trying to use the trade UI with no ship docked no longer causes errors.
  
• Trade UI no longer allows delivery to barter zones if no valid zones exist.
  
• Torch ships no longer drift apart while towing and both torch drives active.
  
• Plots no longer begin with the player's crew as a protagonist.
  
• Crew no longer spawn outside the unmarked gas tanker ship.
  
• LA Residential map now has a working down transit station.
  
• Fixed several typos game text.
  

One of the main areas of improvement in this patch is to the way ships orbit celestial bodies. The path the ship follows now more closely matches that of satellites and moons, so it should be easier to hold position relative to those now.

The NAV station now also plots this orbital track as a gray ellipse, to show more long-term projection info. And we fixed the missing orbital tracks for moons, as well.

AI eating and drinking also got a lot of attention in this build. Their consumption should now be more appropriate to their needs and personalities, and should prioritize use of drinks like water for survival, vs. alcohol for more social or pain needs. (We also noticed that blood was the only liquid one couldn't drink, so we "fixed" that.)

We also looked into some player-provided saves that were experiencing performance issues, and discovered a number of them had overpopulation issues. This turned out to be partially due to NPCs choosing impossible destinations, resulting in some stations gaining NPCs but never losing them.

We've added a few more population shaping rules to the game, enforcing max pops where applicable. PASS ships will now ferry excess population to underpopulated stations. And extreme cases of overpopulation will run the "prune" operation on NPCs that can be safely removed.

The escape menu's Load button is now working! So it is now possible to load a save directly from in-game, instead of quitting to the main menu first.

Several bugs were fixed involving the trade UI and barter zones, as well as ships towing other ships, and plots initiating on NPCs instead of the player.

Plus, a few other fixes and new sprite art.

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC

Hey Folks!

Update v0.14.3.6 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix update to our "Across the System" update, including some improvements to performance, ship AI, and other fixes.

Saves from v0.14.0.0 and later should work. Note that if you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.

• Some more performance optimizations are included in this build.
  
• The game will now warn the user more clearly if the save folder/drive is running low on space.
  
• The Options UI now shows Saves and Settings folders separately.
  
• The Options UI will no longer show duplicate Core mods.
  
• Reselecting an object should no longer duplicate it after an install or repair was finished.
  
• Hauler AI pilots should now fly at more reasonable top speeds that take their cargo into account.
  
• AI pilots should be better at evading collisions if you get in their way.
  
• Super fast ship designs should be less likely to go ballistic when AI is avoiding a collision.
  
• Maneuvering a ship that is being towed should no longer have "sticky" controls.
  
• Hauler spawning should be more tightly controlled now, resulting in fewer wasteful Haulers.
  
• Orange gas canisters will no longer change volume and explode when uninstalled.
  
• Players standing over loose canisters should no longer heat the canister gas up.
  
• Player-controlled crew can now also use airlocks without permission if they are suffocating.
  
• Crew can no longer haul items across the ship after they have been installed.
  
• Police Vector Mk III, Light Tug, and Ostrich ship designs had some improvements made.
  
• Backpacks now have nicer sprite art in the MegaTooltip.
  

This patch includes another batch of performance optimizations, targeting more places where the game did unnecessary calculations or generated excess memory garbage. Test players have said there were noticeable changes, so hopefully this patch has things running a bit smoother for you!

We had a couple players report a strange "Error 112" when attempting to save their game, and we were able to trace this to a hard drive out-of-space error. The game now handles this exception in order to tell the user what happened more clearly, plus it will warn the user on the save game page if the save drive is nearly full.

As part of this change, we also added a separate line in the Options UI to show Saves folder vs. Settings folder, and fixed the bug that showed two Core mods.

We managed to find and fix what was causing items to duplicate when right-clicking them after certain install and/or repair processes. This turned out to be a null exception when attempting to display the item's info in the MegaTooltip, causing it to try again and duplicate the item in the process.

AI ships had a few more improvements made, making them better at avoiding collisions and flying at reasonable speeds. Haulers should spawn more sparingly now, to avoid overcrowding. And the controls should be less "sticky" when towing ships.

We fixed a couple gas canister issues players reported. One was a mismatch in orange canister volume between installed and loose versions, causing them to explode suddenly when uninstalled. The other was a Heater code error, causing the human's body heat to pump into canisters in the same tile.

Crew AI also had a couple fixes. AI was previously acting on haul orders even after the item was installed, causing them to move to new install points. And there was an issue whereby the player-controlled crew couldn't open an airlock while suffocating without airlock permissions, even though automatically-controlled AI could.

Plus, a few other fixes and new sprite art.

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC

Hey Spacers,

Dan is back with another devlog, this time showing off the recent changes to character creation, AI fixes and visual upgrades to the game. You can watch the video here or on the Kitfox Youtube:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In the video you can see the hairstyles and beards from Terry’s MopTops mod, which has now been fully integrated into the game. Ships also no longer behaving badly and no longer fly at incredible speeds. Dan also talks about updates to the tutorial and other UI and visual upgrades. Next up, the hardening phase continues as the team focuses on these quality of life updates before Fire in the Hold.

Thank you everyone for such a positive response to the first devlog, we really enjoy making these! We’re really interesting in hearing more about what you’d like us to show off in future videos! If you wanna meet your fellow spacers and chat about these updates and all things Ostranauts, check out the Blue Bottle Discord or the Kitfox Games Discord.

See you in the next one!

-Alexandra