Ostranauts Hotfix Patch (0.14.0.13) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.14.0.13 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix patch to our recently released "Across the System" update, which addresses several gameplay, plot, and save issues, adds some new music and dead crew handling, and other fixes.
These changes should be compatible with older 0.14 saves. Though if that save has already had errors (e.g. like dead NPCs), some of those errors may continue until a new game is started.
Some of the bigger fixes in this patch address overinflated save files. In one case, anyone visiting certain Venus stations would trigger a save file where every individual object on the station was a member of the police force, causing a huge company roster in the save file. In some cases, this file had a company so large the game couldn't finish reading it.
The fix will prevent that from happening in the future, though existing saves may be out of luck. If your save file still loads, you're probably okay. But if it failed to load due to size, you might have to load an earlier save (before visiting Venus stations), or hand-edit the save file to remove those entries, since we don't have a reliable way to automatically clean that data yet.
The other change to save files adjusts how the cargo market saves their inventories, and is now compact. This is a smaller optimization, but will improve all save files going forward.
We also fixed a number of null exceptions and other errors that could cause the game to get stuck during play, or save files not to finish loading, and other issues. If your save file got stuck for one of these reasons, they should now load normally.
A number of fixes involve crew death, where until now, they remained in your company, drawing a salary, and you could then fire the dead body and get your death pay back. (But if you lost the body, you were out of luck.)
Now, crew is officially cleaned-up in your company roster, and appropriate ledger entries are kept vs. removed. And, unfortunately for capitalism, you cannot fire the dead body anymore to avoid paying out death pay :)
As part of this, we also added code to cue sad music when your crew dies or quits in anger. As well as comforting music (sometimes) when you dock at a home station.
Through some helpful bug reports and reproduction clues, we were finally able to figure out why some tasks caused the AI to just stand there after each install. Often for 30s or more, despite having work settings and tasks lined-up.
This turned out to be a special case which only came up when the install process took exactly one cycle, and essentially left the AI thinking there was still more to be done, despite the job being finished. This patch includes a fix, and you should now see your AIs rapidly go through short-duration installs and other tasks.
The plot system also received some attention, fixing the bug that could cause the person contacting you to choose themselves as a target. While this was sometimes funny, it kind of ruined the immersion. NPCs should now appropriately ask you for help with *other* NPCs when they contact you.
And related to this, we found and fixed a bug in the whodunnit plot that caused NPCs to refuse to give out clues. Unhelpful! They should now more freely give clues to the murder when applicable.
The Super Fast Forward feature was being blocked in some cases by a ship that had the player targeted, even though that ship was unable to approach the player. This patch catches that case, so players can once again FFWD.
And related to this, sometimes NPC ships were teleporting in front of the player after using FFWD, which is also now fixed. This happened due to an NPC the player agreed to refuel being left behind, but persistently just kept teleporting to be near the player.
While fixing the above, we also fixed a number of bugs we found in the whole NPC refueling exchange. So this should be operating more smoothly now.
There were a few issues with the ledger UI either showing the transfers under the wrong heading, or missing late fees on certain FFWD events. These should now be fixed.
And there were a range of other fixes, ranging from missing actions on things to audio glitches or graphical problems, which should all also be fixed now.
As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. We plan to focus on fixes, quality of life, and general build hardening for the short term, before we begin work on the next milestone.
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
Ostranauts v0.14.0.13 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix patch to our recently released "Across the System" update, which addresses several gameplay, plot, and save issues, adds some new music and dead crew handling, and other fixes.
These changes should be compatible with older 0.14 saves. Though if that save has already had errors (e.g. like dead NPCs), some of those errors may continue until a new game is started.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the game to create extremely large save files after visiting certain Venus stations.
- Changed the way cargo market data is saved to result in smaller save files.
- Fixed a bug that caused save files to fail loading if a progress bar couldn't find its target.
- Fixed a bug that could cause AI to pause for a long time after installing short-duration installs, repairs, etc.
- Fixed a bug that made FFWD unusable due to a ship closing on player and never arriving.
- Fixed a null exception that could occur if spamming the Esc key between Game Over and Main Menu.
- Added code to prevent plots from using the same person as both client and target party.
- Fixed a bug that prevented NPCs from sharing clues in whodunnit plots.
- Fixed a bug that prevented handling of company roster, salary, and death pay when crew died.
- Fixed a bug that allowed players to fire dead crew.
- Added code to play sad music when player crew dies or quits unhappily.
- Added code to alert player via message log when crew dies on current map.
- Added occasional docking music when player's ship receives docking clearance from a station.
- Changed AI reply obligation code to allow one reply to satisfy every subject it was a valid reply for, and not just the first one found.
- Fixed a bug that could prevent NPC ships from requesting Hauler/Refueling help.
- Fixed a bug that caused NPC ships to deny docking clearance to player after requesting player's help.
- Fixed a bug in the amount of RCS fuel NPC ships requested that caused it to request the wrong units, and therefore, amount.
- Fixed a bug that caused NPC ships to not undock after fuel transfer was complete.
- Added missing Dismantle action for Bunk (Bed01Off and Loose).
- Fixed a bug that could cause the player to teleport to a strange position when canceling and/or restarting a canceled action.
- Fixed a bug that could cause an NPC ship to suddenly appear in the player's path after a Super Fast-Forward.
- Fixed a bug that caused helmet don and removal audio to ignore volume sliders.
- Fixed a bug that failed to accrue late fees if super FFWD jumped a large enough span of time.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the ledger to show debts as credits in some cases, like the medical kiosk or visa kiosk.
- Fixed the work speed from Refreshed/Napped conditions (was add a penalty instead of removing it).
- Changed the way cargo market data is initialized to produce more organic random supplies at the beginning of a game.
- Fixed a bug that caused the ship broker drone cam feed to be broken.
- Fixed a bug that caused sleeping or dead characters to appear standing/dragging after loading a save.
- Fixed a typo in the Fuel Regulator description.
- Fixed a typo in admire actions.
- Fixed a bug that left NPC's footprints behind when they died.
- Fixed missing Treadmill (Off) portrait.
- Fixed wrong Battery S/XS Loose portraits.
- Fixed a NavStation bug that could cause the MFD panel to blink between mainmenu and error rapidly.
- Fixed a bug that caused the cargo pod UI to have a misaligned icon.
- Fixed a bug that caused ship room snapshots to be broken.
Some of the bigger fixes in this patch address overinflated save files. In one case, anyone visiting certain Venus stations would trigger a save file where every individual object on the station was a member of the police force, causing a huge company roster in the save file. In some cases, this file had a company so large the game couldn't finish reading it.
The fix will prevent that from happening in the future, though existing saves may be out of luck. If your save file still loads, you're probably okay. But if it failed to load due to size, you might have to load an earlier save (before visiting Venus stations), or hand-edit the save file to remove those entries, since we don't have a reliable way to automatically clean that data yet.
The other change to save files adjusts how the cargo market saves their inventories, and is now compact. This is a smaller optimization, but will improve all save files going forward.
We also fixed a number of null exceptions and other errors that could cause the game to get stuck during play, or save files not to finish loading, and other issues. If your save file got stuck for one of these reasons, they should now load normally.
A number of fixes involve crew death, where until now, they remained in your company, drawing a salary, and you could then fire the dead body and get your death pay back. (But if you lost the body, you were out of luck.)
Now, crew is officially cleaned-up in your company roster, and appropriate ledger entries are kept vs. removed. And, unfortunately for capitalism, you cannot fire the dead body anymore to avoid paying out death pay :)
As part of this, we also added code to cue sad music when your crew dies or quits in anger. As well as comforting music (sometimes) when you dock at a home station.
Through some helpful bug reports and reproduction clues, we were finally able to figure out why some tasks caused the AI to just stand there after each install. Often for 30s or more, despite having work settings and tasks lined-up.
This turned out to be a special case which only came up when the install process took exactly one cycle, and essentially left the AI thinking there was still more to be done, despite the job being finished. This patch includes a fix, and you should now see your AIs rapidly go through short-duration installs and other tasks.
The plot system also received some attention, fixing the bug that could cause the person contacting you to choose themselves as a target. While this was sometimes funny, it kind of ruined the immersion. NPCs should now appropriately ask you for help with *other* NPCs when they contact you.
And related to this, we found and fixed a bug in the whodunnit plot that caused NPCs to refuse to give out clues. Unhelpful! They should now more freely give clues to the murder when applicable.
The Super Fast Forward feature was being blocked in some cases by a ship that had the player targeted, even though that ship was unable to approach the player. This patch catches that case, so players can once again FFWD.
And related to this, sometimes NPC ships were teleporting in front of the player after using FFWD, which is also now fixed. This happened due to an NPC the player agreed to refuel being left behind, but persistently just kept teleporting to be near the player.
While fixing the above, we also fixed a number of bugs we found in the whole NPC refueling exchange. So this should be operating more smoothly now.
There were a few issues with the ledger UI either showing the transfers under the wrong heading, or missing late fees on certain FFWD events. These should now be fixed.
And there were a range of other fixes, ranging from missing actions on things to audio glitches or graphical problems, which should all also be fixed now.
As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. We plan to focus on fixes, quality of life, and general build hardening for the short term, before we begin work on the next milestone.
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
