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Ostranauts News

Ostranauts Feature Patch (0.9.4.0) Is Live!

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.9.4.0 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a feature update to our recently released "Wear and Tear" update, which changes the career kiosk a bit, and adds a new exit button to social combat.

Saves from v0.9.0.0 should work. If you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.

  • Changed career kiosk to auto-choose shipbreaker career on first use, since no other choices are available yet.
  • Changed career kiosk page header to show captain's name, age, and funds at all times.
  • Added a dedicated "Force Exit" button to social combat UI, in case player is stuck.


The two big changes here are to the career kiosk and social combat UIs.

The career kiosk previously asked the player to choose a career track first, but only ever offered one option: Shipbreaker. That option is now auto-selected for convenience, and we'll add the choice back later when other careers become available.

The career kiosk also now shows the captain's name, age, and funds at the top of the main text area, so it's easier to keep track of progress.

In the social combat UI, there is now a dedicated "Force Exit" button players can use in case there is a problem during conversation. Under normal circumstances, it should be possible to exit all conversations organically (via social moves in the list of conversation options), or by walking away by clicking the floor somewhere.

But if something prevents conversation options from appearing, or some other problem is preventing the player from exiting/walking away, this button will hard exit the scene. Such a hard exit may have problems of its own, depending on the conversation. But hopefully it gets players back into the action without having to close the game.

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

Ostranauts Feature Patch (0.9.3.2) Is Live!

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.9.3.2 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a feature update to our recently released "Wear and Tear" update, which adds autosave! Plus a fix for buying salvage licenses.

Saves from v0.9.0.0 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 autosave every 15 minutes.
  • Added a feature to the continue screen that lets the user load normally (last manual save) or use a dropdown to load autosaves or older saves.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the player from purchasing salvage licenses because their captain didn't feel like succeeding.


The big change here is, of course, autosave!

The game will now autosave approximately every 15 minutes, and backup up to 2 autosaves in the same slot where your usual save files go. This way, if you forget to save progress for a while, and something happens, you should have both your last manual save and some recent saves to choose from.

The main menu's Continue screen also now has a new dropdown at the bottom of each save slot. It lists all manual and autosaves in the folder, in reverse chronological order. This will let you choose which specific save you want to load. Clicking the main slot button above continues to work as before, loading the latest manual save found.

Finally, there is also a fix for the salvage license kiosk. Some players were seeing a log message that they lacked funds when attempting to purchase, despite having enough.

It turns out there was a missing flag on this transaction that let the captain's AI choose what outcome it wanted. And some masochistic AIs preferred to fail. I guess to feel something? I dunno. Anyway, they purchase correctly 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

Ostranauts Feature Patch (0.9.2.1) Is Live!

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.9.2.1 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a feature update to our recently released "Wear and Tear" update, which significantly changes police behavior, among a few other features and fixes.

Saves from v0.9.0.0 should work. If you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.

  • Changed police to only start bothering player after first time they illegally dock with derelict.
  • Changed police ships to bother player less often.
  • Changed non-bribe police shakedown gambits to sucking up to them and steering towards a minor infraction.
  • Changed police shakedown to require warnings before conversation ends with a loss.
  • Added ability to stall one time when finding out legitimate fine in police shakedown.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause players to get stuck endlessly in police shakedown.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause multiple police ships to target same ship before first one arrives at target.
  • Added new bug reporting button to game's escape menu (near bottom).
  • Added new bug reporting command 'bugform' to debug console.
  • Fixed a bug that caused saving game to fail if an object being saved had a null transform.
  • Changed police shakedown so mugging will not take licenses, toolboxes, or EVA suits.
  • Changed some police shakedown choice titles to have more concise wording.
  • Added more social moves to police shakedown so player could slow pace down and scout police mood.
  • Added code to make cops angry if player tries to undock before police talk to them.
  • Added code to delay police from immediately redocking with player after player undocks from them.
  • Fixed a bug that caused police crew to spawn with orange EVA suits.
  • Fixed a bug that would cause crates to respawn loot inside when locked via UI.


The big change here is to how the police operate, both as pilots and interrogators. They'll now leave players alone until they start docking with derelicts, and even then, their frequency should be more like once per shift, instead of several times an hour.

Also, the police conversation has a number of new features in it to reduce sudden failure states, giving players more time to feel them out and control the flow of the conversation. That, and the "mugging" outcome should no longer rob the player of critical items like their EVA suit, toolbox full of tools, or permits.

We also have a new Bug Report button on the game's escape menu, which will take you to a bug submission form. It can also be accessed via the debug console in the top left.

Finally, there were also a few fixes, including one which prevented save games from finishing writing to disk, and another which randomly replaced crate items when locked via the UI.

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

A New Album from Ostranauts's Composer: Trismegistus - Part 2

Hey Folks!

If you're a fan of the music in NEO Scavenger, Ostranauts, or Underrail, I have some good news for you!

Invisible Acropolis (a.k.a. Josh Culler, and the composer of all three above OSTs) has a new album out, entitled Trismegistus - Part 2. In his words:

"Its inspired by vintage fantasy and sci-fi movie soundtracks, and you can even download it for free if you want!"

You can find the album on Bandcamp here:
https://invisible-acropolis.bandcamp.com/album/trismegistus-part-2

Head on over and give it a listen. And if you enjoy it, spread the word! Let's all help there be more Invisible Acropolis music in the world :)

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC

Ostranauts Hotfix Patch (0.9.1.8) Is Live!

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.9.1.8 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix for our recently released "Wear and Tear" update, and primarily fixes an out of memory error some players experienced when saving games with a lot of data in them.

Saves from v0.9.0.0 should work. If you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.

  • Fixed a bug that caused out of memory errors when saving very advanced games with lots of data in them.
  • Fixed a bug that caused career kiosk sidebar to show a blank career entry when clicking OK to confirm a selection.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed the emotional clobber event to happen when player is sleeping.


The big change here is the out of memory error fix. It appears that as save games got larger, the game was inefficiently using memory to store the save file before writing, and it could run out of memory before it finished, leaving broken or missing saves.

This fix changes the way save files are generated to use less memory when writing.

The other two fixes are fairly minor, addressing a blank entry that would appear in the career kiosk sidebar, and the occasional plot event firing during sleep, when it shouldn't.

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