Ostranauts News

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.12.1.19 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which fixes a bug that caused the ship rating kiosk to misidentify rooms, among other things.

Saves from v0.12.0.0 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.

• Fixed a bug in the way the game loads filters, which could cause several hard-to-predict bugs.
  
• Fixed the ship rating kiosk deciding all new rooms were engineering rooms.
  

Today's patch is another small one, but with potentially bigger implications.

A few players reported that their new ship designs would frequently be mischaracterized by the ship rating kiosk as having new engineering rooms, despite adding toilets, nav stations, and other clearly non-engineering-room items.

After looking into one of the affected player save files, we found a bug in the way the game loads condition triggers (which are like a type of filter or test). In some cases where the trigger involved other triggers in a chain, the rest of the chain was ignored, and the trigger passed.

This caused things like the ship room spec to pass tests that should otherwise fail, and led to situations like too many rooms counting as engineering rooms.

It's hard to predict where else this might have broken things, as the code is used widely by the game. But there's a fair chance this solves some other bugs we've been unable to find so far.

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!

Ostranauts v0.12.1.18 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which fixes the broken fusion reactor introduced in the performance optimization patch.

Saves from v0.12.0.0 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.

• Fixed a bug that prevented the reactor from igniting, despite all systems being ready.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused reactor UI to show wrong status after shutting down due to lack of reactants.
  
• Fixed a bug that would show wrong reactant amounts if reactant canisters were added/removed before reactor switched on.
  
• Fixed incorrect audio on reactor fuel reg button.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the reactor to overcharge batteries.
  

The main focus for this hotfix was to restore lost functionality to the fusion reactor. Our recent performance optimization included a change to how powered items work, which interrupted the normal power-on sequence for the reactor. (It turns on slightly differently than most powered items, with an "on" battery mode before a second "on" ignition mode.)

While trying to fix that, we stumbled across a few other minor issues in the reactor that were quick to fix, so we threw those in there, as well. Collateral bug fixing, if you will!

Note that we have a more significant revisit to the reactor system planned in a future milestone (0.14 "Across the System"), since that will require fusion torch thrust. This patch is just a fix to hold us until then.

Also note that 0.13 "Lucky Number 13" milestone is coming up soon! No exact date yet, but likely in a few weeks. That milestone will include ship-to-ship comms, procedural plots, and some supernatural flavor. We're hard at work putting that together now!

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!

Ostranauts v0.12.1.16 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which primarily aims to improve performance, but also includes some bug fixes.

Saves from v0.12.0.0 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.

• Fixed a bug that caused ships to recalculate rooms too often, affecting performance.
  
• Changed the sensitivity of lighting/line-of-sight redraws to improve performance.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some UI canvases to unnecessarily check for user clicks when invisible, affecting performance.
  
• Changed the code for powered items to be more efficient, to improve performance.
  
• Changed the item damage update routine to be more efficient, improving performance.
  
• Changed the way the text near the cursor is updated, to improve performance.
  
• Changed line of sight code to use a cheaper physics raycast method to improve performance.
  
• Changed the way wounds access parent object info to improve performance.
  
• Fixed a null which could occur when opening the zones UI while inventory is open, then dragging selection around tiles produces a null.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused loose conduit near starting dorm to be unclickable due to inventory window intercepting clicks after an encounter screen interrupted it.
  
• Added code make the enter key submit the new save game name input field when pressed.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause AI to keep walking towards an NPC that has left the map.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause UI transitions to use scaled time instead of unscaled time.
  

As you can see, a major part of this update centers around performance improvements. We made a number of changes to the codebase to reduce unnecessary calculations, produce less memory garbage, and avoid updates on things the players wouldn't see.

The result should be a general improvement in framerate, and another slight reduction in the rate of lag spikes. The framerate improvement should help users who were starting to hit CPU limits on their machines (particularly in longer save games). And every improvement we make should space the lag spikes out further apart.

The rest of the changes were fixes to some bugs that were a bit harder to find.

One was a null exception that happened when trying to drag-select tiles with the zones and inventory windows open simultaneously. Another was a fix to clicks being ignored where the inventory UI should be if an encounter screen caused it to disappear. (Particularly noticeable when trying to install the first loose conduit after exiting the starting room.)

You'll also notice the fade-ins and other UI transitions now use real time instead of fast-forward/slo-mo. And we added support for the enter key in the save game text field, so you don't have to click "Submit" after typing the save's name.

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!

Ostranauts v0.12.1.15 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which includes some performance improvements, helmet and airlock fixes, and some other bug fixes.

Saves from v0.12.0.0 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.

• Fixed a bug that caused AI to put helmet on when considering a task in the void, even if they have no airlock permissions.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused AI to be gasping for an instant when donning a helmet.
  
• Changed AI to ignore helmets and airlock rules if player manually orders them outside.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause NPCs spawned in off-screen ships to have zero atmo in their helmets when that ship became on-screen.
  
• Added code to prevent multiple AIs from doing costly decision-making and pathfinding in the same frame. Instead, they will spread their cost over time.
  
• Added pathfinding optimization to pre-check origin and destination pressures against airlock permissions, to cut short any invalid attempts.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused accessing the fridge to use a point too far away, sometimes causing strange pathfinding/airlock issues.
  
• Changed AI to only tell player they will find a suit if they add the pledge to do it.
  
• Fixed the food carts on K-Leg to use correct art for each cart.
  
• Fixed a bug that added extra O2 to charged EVA helmets every time they were put on.
  
• Changed several sections of code to use cached values, for better performance.
  
• Added RoomA and RoomB to all door objects in game, for consistency.
  
• Changed debug overlay to show more user-friendly names for rooms.
  

A number of the changes in this patch involve AIs, helmets, and airlock rules. There were some inconsistencies in the way those rules were applied, which could result in AIs not wearing helmets when they should (and wearing them when they shouldn't), as well as AIs going and/or not going through airlocks when they should.

Overall, the AI behavior surrounding airlocks and helmets should be more consistent now. Namely, if the player manually orders a task outside the ship, the AI will just do it, regardless of helmet status and airlock permissions. And if the AI self-assigns a task from the PDA orders (or otherwise), it will decide about helmets and honor the airlock permissions.

We also fixed a few issues that contributed to NPCs walking around OKLG with voided helmets, causing them to die. Hopefully, you should only see NPCs with voided helmets now when encountering them on a derelict.

This patch also includes a few more performance improvements, aimed at reducing the laggy framerate and framerate spikes.

One big change is to spread out costly AI pathfinding and decision-making processes so they don't all pile-up in the same frame. Instead, after one AI uses those code paths, any others that want it must wait 0.1s and try again. So if 10 AIs are all deciding what they should do next, it'll take a minimum of 1.0s for them all to get a turn. Framerate might still slow a bit if that happened, but at least it won't be a single paused frame.

A second optimization we added was to pre-check paths against airlock rules, so we can skip any potentially-expensive pathfinding calculations on paths doomed from the start. Not all paths will benefit from this, but in large, crowded places like OKLG, we found this could reduce the time spent pathfinding significantly.

We also realized the food carts in OKLG have their art swapped! So we fixed that.

And finally, there were a handful of smaller, less notable optimization and AI fixes. As mentioned before, performance tuning is mostly slow, incremental improvements. Rarely do we find a silver bullet to fix it all at once. So we'll be continuing to work towards better performance in 0.12 builds alongside our work in developing 0.13 features and content.

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!

Ostranauts v0.12.1.13 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which fixes several issues, including item spawns, pathfinding, and trade. Plus it includes some minor performance improvements.

Saves from v0.12.0.0 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 some performance improvements to reduce the frequency of lag spikes.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause ship gas to suddenly go missing after buying an item and having it delivered to that ship's barter zone while it was not on-screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause scrap and other items to spawn on player's ship when docking.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause AI to fail in finding a path to an item or task if started from certain sides of that target.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused pathfinders to think they could reach spare parts when checking a task, but then fail to reach them when doing tasks.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused selected crew to do haul tasks even when AI Auto mode was disabled.
  
• Changed WearSuit pledge to allow player to use it, so player would don suit when on AI Auto doing tasks.
  
• Fixed a bug that could block clicks on the trade UI's barter zone toggle.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause NPCs to disappear if using a ferry to reach a derelict with an NPC ship docked to it.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause NPCs to t-pose if the user panned the camera over to them while paused.
  
• Fixed the heater on OKLG that wasn't working.
  
• Fixed missing floor tiles in the Light Tug ship design, which caused gas leaks.
  
• Changed the megatooltip (MTT) to show multiple unknown conditions in batches instead of individually.
  

One of our current priorities is to find the cause of the lag spikes some players experience, and to fix them. And this patch represents a first step towards that.

Most of the performance optimizations in this patch involve reducing the amount of garbage the game generates each frame. Basically, wasteful code leaves a mess in memory that the garbage collector has to clean-up periodically, and this is a big contributor to the lag spikes we see in-game.

In practice, it's only a minor improvement. But the process of performance optimization is like that, and will involve several minor improvements adding-up as we get back on track. We appreciate your patience as we sort this out!

We also found what was causing some player ships to suddenly lose gas after trading and then returning to their ship. It turns out that if the remote ship had a barter zone touching its edge, and a trade remotely placed an item there, it padded the ship out a bit, and caused errors when recalculating rooms. This case should hopefully be fixed now.

We also managed to figure out what was causing that mystery scrap and junk to spawn on some player ships. It basically came down to loot spawner code having the wrong settings, which allowed spawning on nearby ships as well as the current one.

We found several pathfinding issues that we were able to fix, particularly with respect to AI Auto/Manual modes. And the player's AI should now be able to put their helmet on automatically if a task takes them through the airlock.

Plus fixes for several other issues, including the broken heater on OKLG. Finally!

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