Ostranauts News

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

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

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

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.9.1.7 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, and includes some more significant additions, quality of life enhancements, 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.

• Added ability to EVA outside your ship in a 1 tile border.
  
• Changed damaged/missing floor tiles to be walkable via EVA.
  
• Changed AI to have improved prioritization for restoring things based on damage vs. distance.
  
• Changed pathfinding to be a little more generous, and might reach places it couldn't before.
  
• Changed damaged floor tiles to be walkable via EVA, and not block item installation.
  
• Changed AI to avoid spacing itself to do tasks in manual mode unless player explicitly tells them to.
  
• Added a new special item or two.
  
• Added a new objective to alert new players that the CASH button is there.
  
• Added code to change task icons to red if they cannot be completed.
  
• Added ability to cancel a task via right-clicking context menu.
  
• Added better indicators for power in/out and use points when placing objects.
  
• Added more damaged item types, and ability to repair more things.
  
• Added ability to carefully dismantle most objects for parts.
  
• Added ETA info on target to nav screen.
  
• Added dismantle action to PDA orders menu.
  
• Changed task tooltips on main screen to show same info that PDA task UI showed.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause 'black hole' ground tiles that eat items on inventory screen.
  
• Fixed gas escaping when broken wall or open door placed against wall.
  
• Fixed battery charge so it is capped at 100%.
  
• Added text input to debug console. More commands to come later.
  
• Added code to animate social combat objective onto screen so it is more noticeable.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed toolboxes to fit inside themselves.
  
• Added code to eject user from reactor UI when it is destroyed.
  
• Fixed null bugs when batteries attached to reactor UI are destroyed.
  
• Fixed missing audio on reactor Fuel Reg button.
  
• Fixed a bug that showed incorrect fusion reactant rates on reactor UI.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused player ship to be considered a station if it used Quick Dock drop down on UNLOCKDEBUG overlay.
  
• Fixed bugs that caused inventory and damage tooltip objectives to complete prematurely.
  
• Fixed wrong image for motherboard component when slotted in hands.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause NPCs on non-loaded ships to suffocate if something triggered their updates to run several cycles.
  
• Changed objectives to be on left.
  
• Fixed a bug in trade UI that caused manual typed number amounts to be ignored.
  
• Fixed a bug that showed mood stats in career sidebar summary.
  
• Fixed a null reference in GUIOrbitDraw that would occur if certain ship components were destroyed while using nav station.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused rooms to duplicate and break when loading a save. (a.k.a. Sudden atmo loss.)
  
• Fixed a bug that used incorrect damage images on COOverlay items in inventory.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused EVA suits to spawn new batteries and O2 bottles inside after some actions.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused player to be stuck in future conversations if quick saved during a social combat conversation.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the emotional clobber event to interrupt socializing with an NPC and appear to get stuck.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented finishing restore on a sink, and restoring loose sinks.
  

The biggest change here is the new ability to move outside the ship. Each ship now has a 1-tile border in which crew can conduct extra-vehicular activities (EVA). Crew can also now float over damaged and missing floor tiles.

Crew AI also had a few tweaks added to make them prioritize tasks better, and avoid spacing themselves when doing tasks.

There are also several new quality of life enhancements to the user experience, particularly with tasks. Icons now show as red when they are blocked by something, task tooltips show more relevant info on status, and the player can now cancel tasks via right-clicking. The nav station now shows ETA to target.

Several new items now have a damaged state, and can be repaired. And a couple new items were added to the game, as well. And most items can now be carefully dismantled to get the most spare parts and materials possible.

We have a new text input area in the error console, and if you type "help" there you can see our growing list of debug commands.

Finally, there was a raft of bug fixes, including one which caused random atmo loss on stations, and another that caused NPCs to drop dead on stations in some cases. (Note, this fix will not resurrect dead NPCs.)

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 v0.9.0.10 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix to our recently released "Wear and Tear" update, primarily addressing AI issues, endless sickness, and some other bugs.

Saves from v0.9.0.0 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 caused player to remain stuck in social combat if police accepted salvage license.
  
• Fixed a bug that gave player permanent weak stomach illness when they became nauseous or vomited.
  
• Fixed some health conditions which could cause out of control cascading health side effects.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused AI to sometimes pick up installed hull pieces for comfort, slowly draining atmo and temperature.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused player's crew to be used as an NPC pilot around OKLG, if that NPC was not on-screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed NPCs to walk onto player ship to pester them if the player owned both ships on screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause null errors after saving and exiting a game, then reloading a save without quitting app.
  

One of today's fixes involves the police shakedown encounter, where they accept your salvage license, turn to leave, and then continue to pester you, preventing you from leaving. This came down to a missing "exit" flag on the end of that conversation branch, and should be fixed now.

We also found and fixed a number of stomach illnesses caused by certain events, including choosing "Temperate" in the chargen trait kiosk. Players afflicted by these should be cured when loading their saves, and it should no longer happen in future games.

There was a bug in the AI that allowed it to pick up installed floors for fun, and this has been curbed. The AI will still pick up other things for fun, though. This behavior is limited to their free time when set to behavior "auto," in case you wish to fully prevent this.

Player crew was occasionally being selected to fly craft around OKLG if there was a spawn pilot needed and the crew was off-screen. This has been fixed.

AI was also occasionally walking onto the player's ship to pester the player in cases where the player's captain thought they owned both ships on screen. This has been fixed.

And finally, there was a null error introduced by the new power icons visible during item installation. This only happened if the player returned to the main menu and reloaded a save without quitting. This should 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. 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