New License Tiers, Pathfinder and Performance Improvements, and Other Fixes
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.
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
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