Ostranauts News

Happy Holidays, Folks!

As 2022 comes to a close, the Ostranauts team is getting ready for a much needed break. And we wish you and yours the best for the holidays.

Also, it's a time for us to look back over the year, and see how far we've come! Joshu put together this excellent retrospective to show what we've been up to:



Red lines represent roadmap milestones we released, like the Wear & Tear system, or new Inventory and Wounding system. These represent significant gameplay and/or content changes to the game, and take the longest to produce.

Orange lines are "feature" patches, which usually represent a significant new game system or feature added between major milestones. E.g. the 0.10.1.0 launch, which included 64-bit support, or 0.9.3.2, which added Autosave.

The yellow lines represent "hotfix" patches, which are typically bug fixes or smaller quality-of-life additions.

As you can see, it was a pretty busy year! 3 roadmap milestones, 6 feature patches, and 14 hotfix patches (15 including this week's). On average, about one update every other week!

Our ideal goal was more like a milestone each 2-3 months, but as you can see, the 0.10 milestone took a lot longer. It turns out that fundamentally changing the inventory system was pretty tricky! It changed a lot of adjacent systems, and also required a fairly significant batch of content to use those new features.

But apart from that, we actually managed a pretty good rhythm of roadmap milestones. If you include the 0.7 milestone launched in December 2021, they're otherwise coming about once per 3 months, which isn't far from what we expected.

With hard work, and some luck, hopefully 2023 is even better. We wish you and yours a healthy and prosperous new year!

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.10.1.2 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix to our recently released "Taking Inventory" update that fixes several bugs and issues reported by players.

Saves from v0.10.0.0 and later should work. 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 AI-hauled items to become missing or stuck/inaccessible in the world.
  
• Fixed a bug where going through airlock causes void atmo effect
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause void/exterior areas to accumulate gases from pumps invisibly, and make their mass/temperature increase.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause newly created rooms in a void to suddenly start with atmo in them.
  
• Fixed a bug causing the Objective window to suggest using the Gig Nexus to define skills
  
• Fixed bug causing Port Authority to spawn naked
  
• Fixed NPC Scavs so if they start with an EVA suit, it has battery/bottle/filter.
  
• Removed Build menu options for non-existent 04 bins (1x1, 3x1, and 1x1Floor)
  
• Fixed sinks on Pequod ship showing wrong UI.
  
• Fixed storage bins changing color to white when (un)installed.
  

Several gas/atmo fixes are included in this patch, addressing issues with void rooms getting gases that they shouldn't, and new rooms starting with gas they shouldn't. It also fixes a blip of "void" status when crossing over ship airlocks.

There's also a fix for items getting lost or stuck when AI attempts to move them via a hauling job. Plus better loadouts for AIs, particularly those that had EVA suits, which should help them survive longer.

And finally, a handful of fixes to the storage bins, to prevent unavailable options from appearing in the PDA, and changing styles when the item updated in-world.

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 v0.10.1.1 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix to our recently released "Taking Inventory" update that fixes several bugs and issues reported by players.

Saves from v0.10.0.0 and later should work. 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 where captain dies when you save while controlling a crew member on a different map.
  
• Fixed a bug that would consume a whole stack when installing from hands/drag slot.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented stack count from being visible in slotted items.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented stacks from being slotted in some cases.
  
• Fixed a bug that failed to drop an entire stack from a slot via context menu.
  
• Fixed a null exception when dropping a stack from a slot onto a partial stack in the grid.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause ghost items if a stack was added to a partial stack in a slot without enough room.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused ghost inventory item in grid if it was placed into a stack with no remainder.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused ghost items if context-dropping an item from a hand slot.
  
• Added a loading progress indicator to Ship Editor when using Crewsim button.
  
• Fixed a bug where Barter Zones tried to load CO with missing save data.
  
• Fixed a bug in Trader UI where using Toggle All on liquid container makes sale fail, but then adds 1 water to the container
  
• Fixed a bug in kiosks showing incorrect prices in "Other Items" player isn't holding.
  
• Changed tote bags and backpacks so they can no longer fit toolboxes inside them.
  
• Fixed a bug where buying back a barter zone item can turn it invisible.
  
• Fixed a bug where bought items were sometimes not showing up in zones.
  
• Fixed a bug causing items to disappear/reappear after multiple purchases from multiple vendors on multiple maps before coming back to the player ship.
  

Several of the bugs fixed in this patch involve captain and crew being on different maps. One bug caused the captain to die instantly and/or ship to decompress if the game was saved while controlling crew. Others caused items in zones to appear or disappear after various purchasing and selling actions.

Another batch of bug fixes involved items in stacks. Everything from the basics, like slotting items in stacks failing, to edge cases, like dropping a full stack from a slot into a partial stack on the floor throwing errors, were fixed. Plus, stacked items in hand slots will no longer all disappear when one is used to build something.

Finally, a range of changes fixed sundry bugs and other issues. The ship editor now shows a loading bar when testing a ship via CrewSim. Toggle All no longer causes weird liquid duplication bugs. Toolboxes cannot nest inside backpacks and totes anymore. And other such fixes.

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 v0.10.1.0 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a feature update to our recently released "Taking Inventory" update, and adds the ability to run Ostranauts as a 64bit app, as well as a fix for barefoot issues.

Saves from v0.10.0.0 should work. If you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.

• Added 64bit support.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused barefoot status to stack when changing skin color.
  
• Added code to zero out IsBarefoot on all humans in save games from 0.10.0.11.
  

The biggest difference here is the new 64bit version of Ostranauts. Previously, Ostranauts was strictly a 32bit app. And while that was fine in most cases, we were starting to get some growing pains as game saves grew larger and more complex. Several of our players were frequently running into out of memory crashes, and similar failures.

Adding 64bit support means the game can now utilize more memory if it needs to. And in practice, this means fewer crashes for many players. It may also slightly improve performance (either at runtime or while loading), but the main benefit is fewer memory crashes.

32bit OS users will still have the 32bit version of the app, and we will continue building both versions as we go. (You can tell which version you have by the final two numbers if your in-game build ID, which will be in parentheses.)

The other fix included is for the barefoot penalty bug we introduced last week. Players were walking very slowly if they had changed skin color in the mirror UI several times, and this was down to a status effect stacking when it shouldn't have been.

This update fixes that issue from happening again, and also corrects save files that might have it.

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 v0.10.0.11 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix to our recently released "Taking Inventory" update that fixes several bugs and issues reported by players.

Saves from v0.10.0.0 and later should work. If you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.

• Fixed a Nullref bug when sending an item to a barter zone with categories set to null
  
• Changed zone sorting to be clearer (1 category > multi categories > no categories)
  
• Fixed a bug causing item to show old stack number when buying to barter zone
  
• Fixed several problematic situations when trying to send bought items to zones that are still loading
  
• Fixed a bug that caused AIs to lose their conversational skills/memory when their ship is unloaded from the scene (a.k.a. Brain Damage).
  
• Fixed a bug that caused AI to continue trying to eat even if they were stuffed.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause off-screen ship to try to save while it hasn't finished loading
  
• Fixed error when transiting before off-screen ship has finished loading
  
• Changed AI food/drink seeking pledges to fire less often, so they don't stand around trying the same thing over and over.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused under-floor bins to not correctly update room airtightness.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused vendors to show more of an item than they actually had.
  
• Added Restore interaction to the 2x104 and 2x2C04 bins.
  
• Fixed misleading log grammar when improper footwear condition ends.
  
• Added 5% move penalty to IsBarefoot, and caused barefoot to show in the inventory conditions list (with Well-groomed).
  
• Change several temporary conditions' log language from "than most" to "than usual" (and changed some missed "is" to "feels")
  
• Fixed a bug that cause King Incognito hacking fail to bestow "IsImprisoned", since no prison effects should occur.
  

This round of changes includes several fixes to the zone system, particularly with barter zones, and timing issues that could cause errors when off-screen ships were loaded/saved.

It also finally fixes the cause of "brain damage" bugs on NPCs, which was making them repeat conversation options incessantly. Note that this fix does not cure NPCs already afflicted, but just prevents new NPCs from getting the condition.

(Also note that most NPCs already had this issue before "Brain Damage" started appearing on their character sheets. The last update just started adding this label to them so we could track who had the issue, and narrow down where it came from.)

Lastly, there were a range of fixes applied to containers and log message grammar. Underfloor bins, in particular, had a problem that prevented them from sealing the floor, which is now fixed. And barefoot conditions now apply a minor movement speed penalty.

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