Ostranauts News

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.12.1.8 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 is aimed at helping reduce save file size in longer-term games.

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 code to prune expired items and people from game memory and save files on save game.
  
• Added code to skip loading COs from save file if no ships list them as on board.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused deleted people to re-manifest themselves when one of their friends moves to a new ship or station.
  
• Changed NPC transit flow to always prefer going from higher population districts to lower.
  

The most important change here is a fix to the way games are saved, which should overall reduce the size of save games as they get older. We had a bug which caused save files to retain data on deleted objects, so as the game progressed, the save file would grow to unusable size.

This build addresses that bug, and should tame that file size from here on when loading and saving a game.

This fix also addresses the issue players ran into when attempting to use the NPC pruning and station respawning tools described here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1022980/discussions/2/3803904095528444525/


Because the deleted items were retained in the save data, the prune only emptied the visible NPCs (which helped framerate in-game), but could potentially cause the save to stop loading due to memory limits.

If anyone was unable to load their save after using the Prune NPCs or Respawn Ship debug tools in 0.12.1.7, you should try that process again in 0.12.1.8. Loading a pre-debug-pruned save should work, and re-saving it should drop the save file size. And if you wish, re-running the Prune NPCs or Respawn Ship should similarly drop save file size more.

Finally, we added some more shaping code to the NPC transit system, so they would prefer to go to lower population areas. This should help the OKLG districts stay a bit more balanced with NPC counts.

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 v0.12.1.7 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 is primarily aimed at adding a few debug tools to help folks with save games bloated by NPCs from earlier bugs.

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 debug tools to prune NPCs from the Star System.
  
• Added option to Respawn Ship debug tool also wipe NPCs and respawn.
  

First of all, I apologize for the rough couple of patches we've had this past week. There were at least 3-4 bugs introduced that made save games either too crowded with NPCs to use, or even unloadable at times. And ironically, all of these were the result of us trying to make things smoother, but not anticipating side effects in other areas of the game.

Yesterday's patch, 0.12.1.6, seems to be mostly stable again, and folks can get back into their save games. We still have bugs to fix, and I'd like to see if I can get that performance/stutter issue improved. But at least people can get back to playing as they did before.

That is, unless you have one of those save games with NPC overpopulations.

Some saves became overwhelmed with police ships spinning around, NPC ships littering the area, and/or K-Leg stations filled to the brim with dozens of NPCs each. And all of this balloons load/save times and craters performance.

This patch adds a few extra debug tools those users can try to help prune their saves back to manageable. No other fixes or features are in this patch.

And since these tools might become useful again to others, we created a pinned post on the Steam forums here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1022980/discussions/2/3803904095528444525/


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 v0.12.1.6 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 save-related issues, as well as NPC spawning and other issues.

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 saves to fail loading if the character had a single-word name, and was created before v0.12.1.5.
  
• Removed support for loading save games created in 2022 and earlier.
  
• Fixed a bug in the load game UI that would show the temporary zip extraction folder as a clickable option, which causes crashes when clicked.
  
• Fixed a bug that could allow the game to continue spawning more than the maximum number of NPC scavenger ships in a region.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause extra living and dead NPCs to spawn on NPC scavenger ships and other non-derelicts.
  
• Changed ship broker price markup/discount to always be the same percentage, instead of changing each restock event.
  
• Fixed a bug that generated lots of log spam about images when loading characters.
  

The biggest deal here is the save file bug fixes.

It looks like our earlier fix for single-name characters caused it. Before the fix, the save game loader would find missing relationship info, and just skip it.

But now that single-name folks are starting to have save data, it actually tries to load their data, and stumbles when it comes across relationship info saved before the fix. Crashing before it finishes saving.

And to compound things, when it crashes on load like this, it leaves a copy of the save game in the Ostranauts folder, where it temporarily unzipped the save.

That temp unzip save shows up in the list of save games you can load, and players attempting to load it get a crash.

So this patch fixes that relationship loading issue, for one thing, and also hides that temporary folder so players don't accidentally try to load a bogus save file.

This also requires cutting off support for really old save formats, from before 2023, which we *think* should be safe now :)

We also finally found the cause of huge NPC ship spawn amounts. Or at least one of the causes.

It appears the code to repopulate space with NPC ships could get into a situation where the number of planned ships to spawn increased faster than it could spawn them, resulting in a runaway population of NPC scavenger ships.

We added some validation fixes to this code to prevent that from happening again.

Note, however, that this won't *delete* all the spawned ships. Just stops them from spawning if there are too many (> 16) around OKLG. If you want to prune a save file that has this problem, try making a copy of it first (just in case), and inside the zip file, you can try deleting a bunch of ships starting with "O-" (which are usually scavenger NPC ships).

Just be careful not to delete any ships starting with "OKLG," and your own ship's ID. And once you load that save, the NPC ship count should go down without any errors.

We also found a bug that caused NPC scavenger ships to spawn pirates, dead bodies, and other NPCs, which while hilarious, was probably also unloading those NPCs onto OKLG when that NPC ship docked.

This caused not only OKLG's extreme NPC count problems, but also players being ganked by pirates, and seeing lots of dead bodies on stations.

Again, this patch won't trim those NPCs out of OKLG. But at least they'll stop spawning (and future games should be cleaner).

The last two fixes address ship broker mark-up/discount amounts changing over time, and trimmed some extra log spam that might help with performance.

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 v0.12.1.5 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 issues with corrupted saves, loitering scavenger ships, NPC populations on stations, and more.

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 could cause save games to be missing people or items on some ships.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to remain docked longer than they should, longer for each other scavenger ship out there.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused all NPCs to gather over time on whichever OKLG stations player is not on.
  
• Added code to make NPC ship colors darker if nobody is on board.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed AI to work on a task without tools if their hands were full and that tool existed somewhere on the map.
  

The biggest fix here addresses a source of possible save corruption. It was possible for the game to exit to the main menu before the save finished, clobbering some data for ships in the System. Typically, this would happen when using Save & Exit before Autosave or Save was used in a game, and would impact recently visited stations and ships.

This patch now correctly waits for save to finish before switching to the main menu.

We also found one cause of NPC scavenger ships remaining docked for too long. This turned out to be an issue with their AI timers being updated too infrequently. Now, NPCs should undock more often, and especially so if your save file had a lot of NPC ships.

We still haven't found the source of the bug that spawns too many NPC ships. However, to help us find the cause, you'll now notice some NPC ships are a darker amber color on the nav station map. These ships are missing a pilot, and hopefully that will help us figure out if the extra NPC ships are due to missing pilots, or something else.

Another bug fix involves the NPC transit system. Due to a missing cleanup step, any NPC that used transit to exit the currently loaded station would always immediately leave that station any time they reappeared.

This would often result in all NPCs gathering on the other two OKLG districts where the player wasn't. This fix should now balance that traffic better.

Finally, there was a bug that caused AIs with no inventory room to be able to perform work tasks without holding the required tool, as long as that tool was somewhere on the map. Those AIs will now correctly fail to start the task, and their logs will contain a reason why (for players examining crew).

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 v0.12.1.4 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 with how police spawn and behave, NPC scavenger docking, NPC relationships to players, and more.

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.
General Changes
Fixed a bug that caused police ships to spawn and do nothing.
Fixed a bug that could cause police to board and/or interrogate players while on OKLG station.
Fixed a bug that could cause NPC scavenger ships to dock with player ship purchased from a broker.
Fixed a bug that caused characters without last names to be unable to form relationships with others.
Fixed a bug that caused biological parents to see their children as their biological parent.
Fixed a bug that caused derelict prices to drop if player visited them before purchasing them.
Added code to reduce log spam about missing interaction.
Fixed a bug that caused NPCs spawned on distant stations to appear outside station if player docked.
Changed the wall type of generic space station from generic wall to Van Hummel wall.

One of the more serious bugs this patch fixes involves police spawns. A bug was causing the police ships to spawn outside of OKLG as usual, but their pilots would remain on OKLG. This caused both stray police ships piling-up outside OKLG, as well as officers intent on questioning the player on the station.

This fix stops that from happening further, but existing spawns will still remain in old saves, since it was potentially risky to try and hack them out.

A separate issue was also allowing NPC scavenger ships to dock with derelicts the player purchased, and this has been fixed. Like above, this won't correct old issues in a save, but will prevent it from happening in future games (and derelicts purchased after this patch).

Players who have an NPC ship stuck docked to one of their current ships should try using the ferry service (PDA Home screen P.A.S.S. button) to ferry over to their ship, and undock that way.

Players who had a character with only one name were running into issues with forming relationships with others in-game (e.g. hiring crew), and this bug has been fixed. As above, it won't correct save files that have the problem already, but any new relationships formed should work.

Also, while I was in there, I finally found and fixed the bug that caused biological mothers to see the player as their biological mother. (And father.) And since testing this frequently brought me to distant stations that had a few bugs, I fixed those, as well.

Finally, there was a bug/exploit that allowed players to drop a derelict price by visiting and/or stealing from the derelict before buying it. That loophole should now be plugged!

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