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Icarus Week 154 Update | Cows, Milk and most importantly, Cheese

`Welcome to Week 154.

Cows, Milk, and Dairy products have arrived on Icarus, opening up new recipes and farming systems to use.

With new animals also come new trophies that can be crafted and placed in your base.

Lastly, we’ve got a preview of a new weapon type that is coming to Icarus next week.

Originally posted by Exctoris
If you are using an NVIDA GPU and have updated your drivers recently to NVIDIA Driver 565.90 or newer you may be experiencing more frequent crashes with Icarus and other games. We have contacted NVIDIA and let them know. In the meantime we suggest reverting to 561.09.
Notable Improvements:
  • Deep Wood Veins will now appear in the Null Sector Zones in Prometheus. This fixes an issue last week where they would not appear on existing prospects
  • Stonejaws now take damage while wet if they're enraged, and wetness is removed from them after 5 seconds (the Fire Extinguisher is an effective anti-stonejaw weapon)
  • The issue with the Talent Points not always being granted from the Null Sector Final Mission, and the associated exploit with brand new characters has resolved, if you have completed the mission and have the account flag, all of your characters receive the three bonus talent points - once only.
  • Teenage Caveworm Fire Resistance has been reduced from -1000 to -100
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This Week: Cows & Milk


Cows have come to Icarus. You can now purchase Calves from the orbital workshop and bring them down to your prospects, where you will need to then raise them up into Cows the same way you raise Terranus foals or Moa chicks found in the wild.

When the Calves mature, they will become Cows and periodically produce Milk if they are kept fed and watered. Two new items, the Milk Pail and the Milk Bottle, allow milk to be collected.

The Milk Pail (craftable on the Anvil) holds 5L of milk, but the Milk will slowly spoil, and once spoiled, the pail will empty. Milk bottles, craftable on the glassworking bench, hold 2L, but the Milk inside will not spoil.

Milk can then be crafted into Cream or Cheese or even drunk on its own for a stamina buff.

Cream and Cheese can be used as an intermediary for some new recipes, including Butter, Pavlova, Bacon Butties, Cheese Pizza, and Rolls, with more coming in the future.


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This Week: Trophies


With new animals come new trophies, in Calf and Cow versions. These are craftable on the Trophy Bench.

A reminder: you will have to kill and collect the vestiges of both Calves and Cows to be able to craft these, so don’t get too attached.


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Early Next Year: Husbandry


This addition is part of a bigger project we’ve been working on that we hope to bring out early next year - Husbandry. Specifically, with Cows, Bulls, Chickens, Roosters, Sheep, and Rams, we will be introducing a way to breed your animals to create new juvenile ones. We have this working internally but want to spend some more time testing and honing all the functionality to make sure it fits the game well and is rewarding to use. We are also looking into having some inherited traits to further the system.

Alongside this, we plan on updating the talent tree to include these changes and a few features that have been added over the years but haven’t been incorporated into the the tree fully.


[hr][/hr]
Next Week: Assault Rifle


Next week, we plan to release the second new type of weapon in the ‘series’ we’ve been debuting—the first of which was the flamethrower.

This will be Icarus' first automatic assault rifle, which may seem overkill for the current foe you encounter but will make a lot more sense with some other upcoming features that will require a bit more firepower.


[hr][/hr][h2]Your support makes these updates possible.[/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/40692/Icarus_Pets_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/
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Changelog v2.2.29.129911


[h3]New Content[/h3]
[expand]
  • Fixing it so calves only grow up into cows for now
  • Added cow talent tree icon
  • Assigned cow talent icon
  • Adjusted calf locomotion speed to match animations, should reduce foot sliding
  • Fixed cow and calf meshes hovering below and above ground
  • Fixed additional, uninitialised tooltip showing on juveniles
  • Tweaked fuzzy search on CustomComboBox widget to show exact match first
  • Added ParentCharacter variable to IcarusCharacter and IcarusCharacterRecorderComponent, is currently used to record and restore a juvenile's birth parent
  • Domesticated juveniles (calf, lamb, chick) can now be led/tamed even if they have a parent creature
  • Added cheat to make nearest animal pregnant (if supported)
  • Tweaked lookat height for both cows and calves
  • Fixed bug where IcarusMountCharacter::HusbandryBehaviourState wasn't replicating correctly
  • Fixed calf carcass itemable name
  • Updated the INT_02 dropship texture with Sol tribute added to one one of the post it notes
  • Added small amount of physics sim to calf/cow tails
  • Fixed bug where domesticated juveniles were designating nearest mount as parent on spawn
  • Update Seat camera/springarm setup to make it customizable so that RespawnPods can have their camera adjusted to be inside the pod
  • Add FirstPerson arms to Respawn Pod
  • Show FirstPerson arms when in first person and seated
  • Restrict FP camera rotation amount in dropship seat to prevent players looking through FP arms
  • Unlocking Workshop Item: Cryogenic Calf
  • Unlocking Cow
  • Unlocking Cheese, Cheese Recipes, Milk Containers and Associated Blueprints
  • Milk can now Spoil - when spoiled the milk container will empty
  • Adding Milk Function Library for Easy use of milk related items
  • Unlocking Cow / Calf and Milk Related Items Blueprints and Talents
  • Adding Descriptions to Milk Pail and Milk Bottle to describe if milk spoils when contained within
  • Added interactable to cow that calls milk bucket actionable behaviour
  • Flipped boolean condition inside BT_Tame_CowIdle to fix cows not producing milk correctly
  • Slightly increased precise reach height multiplier for Cow BP
  • Milk can now be consumed for a stamina regen & shared xp bonus
  • Milk now provides water when consumed
  • Adjusting Cow Milk production times (as 12 seconds for a cow to produce a full udder of milk was just a test value)
  • Adding Cream, Butter, Cheese Roll, Cheese Pizza & Pavlova Recipes
  • Cows now have their fillable set to milk by default
  • Cows produce ~1.5 L per 10mins if they are fed and watered, they hold a maximum of 30L
  • Fixed bug where calves couldn't eat from food containers
  • Added cow, bull, and calf trophy art assets. Updated cow and bull torphy BPs and created calf trophy BP. Added cattle bestiary image and updated bestiary data table
  • Added Cattle bestiary text
  • Setup Cattle bestiary stats
  • Fixed Skittish bestiary trait icon being missing
  • Fixed stack sizes and recipe sets for new dairy recipes
  • Added modifier stats for new dairy food items
  • Added variant recipes for pastry and crispy bacon using butter
  • Workshop crates that spawn juvenile NPCs will now automatically start the taming process and make the spawned NPC follow interacting player
  • Adding Cow / Calf Vestiages / Trophies and unlocking
  • Updated cattle trophy fur meshs LODs. Uopdated cow trophy LOD with custom LOD to prevent fur clipping. Added splines to cow trophy Gfur
  • Adding Recipes / Items / Icons / Modifiers for Butter, Cream, Pizza, Pavlova, Bacon Butties, Berries and Cream
  • Adjusting Milk Pail Fillable Size, reducing cow fillable size, and reducing the amount of milk produced per 10 minutes
  • Added bestiary points for milking cows
  • Added setup for emptying milk, controls and resetting the milks spoil timer when the pail is empty and you get new milk
  • Update milk resource color to be closer to white but still slightly tinted (to differentiate from oxygen)
  • Setup milk field guide resource
  • Fixed food tag on new dairy items (food slots, ice box, refrigerator)
  • Changed milk resource icon colour
  • Unlocking Workshop Calf as it was locked
  • Fixed bug where cow would immediately fill up with milk on first tick of relevant idle logic
  • Increased the efficiency of Butter alternate recipes
  • Fixing issue where cream and butter would not spoil into anything
  • Fixed new dairy not being able to be placed in Deep Freeze. Updated tag for Deep Freeze, Icebox and Refrigerator to all use a Spoilable_ColdSlowsSpoilRate query, so items that can go in one can go in all of them
  • Adding Recorder Component for cows so their milk status is saved
  • Fix Bestiary setup for Dribbo (from the quest) being not set
  • Coffee can now correctly be crafted with or without cream, adding cream now grants the Coffee with Cream flavoring, instead of the Coffee flavoring. Crafting Coffee without Cream correctly grants the Coffee flavoring (instead of Coffee with Cream)
  • Fixed cheese, butter, milk pails and cream being not storable in fridge or icebox
  • Updated calf trophy LODs to remove base mesh crashing through Fur. Updated Deployable data tables with correct placement meshs
  • Fixing Coffee With Cream Recipe to Include Cream

[/expand]

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
[expand]
  • Fix Lupine: Extraction is not granting players ability to craft black wolf items
  • Add translated text to Operations selection button
  • Fixed animation on gears as the small ones driving the stones were going the wrong direction. Turned out being a seeming limitation on how many times a bone is able to rotate in an animation in UE4
  • Update quest strings to permit keybinding
  • Add ability to show bound/remapped keys in quest steps
  • Fixed a number of typos
  • Fixed highlight tooltip not following overflow bags if they fall due to gravity
  • Stonejaws now take damage while wet if they're enraged, and wetness is removed from them after 5 seconds (the Fire Extinguisher is an effective anti-stonejaw weapon)
  • Fire Extinguisher water usage increased
  • Cleanup Olympus: remove many Notes that are now obsolete, ungroup everything, remove (unsupported) vertex mesh painting to dramatically reduce developer level filesize, flush grass cache
  • Correcting the stone pickaxe crafted sound to be the correct generic craft sound not the crafting bench sound
  • Fix final nullsec '3 character talents' is awarded, but does not apply to subsquently created new characters, or other existing characters
  • Reduced amount of hitching when opening loadout screen via Orbital Exchange Interface
  • Fixed HEAL device being unable to be crafted at the Machining Bench
  • Added translatable text to server join message when the server is in lobby mode
  • Fixed multiple error messages showing when the Orbital Exchange device is sheltered
  • Adding Logic so Frozen Wood Viens will now spawn on existing prospects
  • Fixed a typo in some generic dialogue
  • Adjusting Teenage Caveworm Fire Resistance to match the cave worm (-1000 -> -100)

[/expand]

[h3]Future Content[/h3]
[expand]
  • Quick Prototype of a Mission Radio Device that accesses a C0NT4CT device when held in your hand so you can kick missions off while not being at a C0NT4CT device
  • Adding IceMammoth Trap Description and Lore
  • Setup up Great Hunt device as a device brough from orbit
  • Great Hunt Device can now access hunts or open the crafting menu depening on interact point
  • Add Scorpion, Sandworm, Lavahunter, Black Wolf, Slug, Lava Hunter, Ice Mammoth, Rock Golem & Great Ape items to the great hunt device
  • Adding Blueprints and Setup for the Rock Golem Trophy Lamp
  • DLC2 - swapped entrances and added switchbacks to new DC caves
  • Modifying WorldStats Subsystem so it can incorperate all of Prospect Stats, Great Hunt Stats and Custom Game stats into the World Stats List and calls update appropriately where required
  • Adding World Stats for the Rock Golem Great Hunt and Assigning to Various Missions
  • The World Talent Manager now spawns as part of the IcarusGameStateSurvival, is set to spawn everytime and set to findonly when reloading
  • Added most appropriate armour audio set to swamp ape armour in data table setup
  • DLC2 - duplicated meshes and BPs for DC cave entrances, added switchback segments to CAVE_DC_MED_001_DLC2
  • Shifting the Location of one of the sub quests in GH_RG_D
  • Placing Outpost Quest Markers for GH_RG_C2 & GH_RG_D
  • Making Ice Version of the Rock Golem Juvenile Spawner
  • DLC2 - added 3rd new impassable for desert
  • Adding open audio for hte great hunt interfaced device. Audio, event, notify
  • Small fix to assault rifle recoil which was meaning it would move more horizontally than vertically with each shot
  • Added DEP_LandingPad_T4 with meshes, animation, textures and materials. Also added the meshes to the BP. Still need to add lights to BP
  • Adding appropriate audio for rock golem boss trophys
  • Fixing build issue for D_DeployableSetup_Rock_Golem_Lamp_B
  • Updated DEP_Trophy_Golem_2 and destructible
  • GH_RG_C mission has had the mining platform updated
  • Cliff Pass Blockout on Yellow Quad, Elysium
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass on Green Quad, Elysium
  • Delete Portable Beacon actor accidentally placed into Outpost 002 level and folder cleanup
  • DLC2 - test mesh and FT for cliff foliage
  • Adjustments to great hunt device deploy audio volume. Also adjustment to sledgehammer whoosh
  • Adding Widget for displaying images on the great hunt device
  • Added lights to the BP for DEP_LandingPad_T4
  • Adding unique sledgehammer events and notifys with anim data to swap depending on what sledgehammer is used
  • Adding audio for ape swinging in trees. Audio event and anim notify
  • Fixed Rock Golem Chair crafting and placement
  • Add power requirement to light up the landing pad
  • Filled in some interior holes in DEP_LandingPad_T4 to make it a bit more air tight
  • DLC2 - duplicated LC SML rocks+ FTs, new decal for covering slopes
  • Adding biome entries for GH arenas
  • Updated all meshes for ITM_Sledeghammer_IceMammoth with added Core Skeletal Mesh
  • DLC2 - added new sand variant materials for remaining cliffs and lrg rocks
  • Added additional control for sand overlay on master rock material
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass on Green Quad, Elysium
  • Cliff Pass Blockout on Yellow Quad, Elysium
  • Added combined mesh for DEP_LandingPad_T4 to use for placement
  • New BuildingBase weather blocker mesh no longer affects raytracing
  • Added all textures and updated materials for the different mineral variants for the Juvenile Rock Golem
  • Fixed Great Hunt UI image reference link for Ape hunt
  • Fixed IceMammoth Sledgehammer Core blueprint reference
  • Progress on Garganutan Great Hunt missions D, C and C2
  • Adding IceMammoth Sledgehammer Item Icon
  • Rock golem balance pass. Adding cave reverb snapshot to cave ambience so cave audio is triggered in a controllable way. vocal priority adjustments and general distance tweaks
  • Fix IceMammoth sledgehammer meshable setup
  • Updated ITM_Sledgehammer_IceMammoth Skeletal and static meshes
  • DLC2 - various desert and tundra material variants for cliffs and rocks, adjustments to master rock material to fix snow overlay not matching landscape
  • Fixed landing pad preview mesh
  • Cliff Pass Blockout on Yellow Quad, Elysium
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass on Green Quad, Elysium
  • Added inital setup for the flamethrower living weapon textures, materials, and static meshs
  • Add Ape great hunt mission C and C2
  • Adding Rock Golem Gauntlet Upgrades
  • Added HG_Aspen_Var1 with it's colour variants, including the burnt version, FTs and BPs
  • balance of boss arena reverb level
  • Adding Ape Leagendary Weapon Upgrades
  • Adding Hammerhead Slug GLob Launcher Upgrades and setup to Datatable
  • Display localized keybinds correctly in mission objectives overview
  • Adding correct biome to rock golem biome override
  • Adjustments to ice pillar audio culling and volumes, adding boss biome fmod param to set reverb for each. Adjustments to ballistic travel and impact
  • Added Garganutan quest step setups and first 2 mission implementation framework
  • Adding audio rows for the boss biomie arenas
  • Great Hunt Dep Blueprint updated with widget and mission images
  • Great Hunt Dep widget updated
  • Great Hunt Dep images added to screen widget
  • Setting up Lava Hunter Flamethrower Legendary Weapon
  • Added 3 Custom LODs and two generated LODs for DEP_LandingPad_T4_Base as well as generated LODs for SK_DEPLandingPad_T4_Lights. Also added more appropriate PMs for all materials
  • adding Great Hunt Dep info screen images
  • Adding ice pillar audio event and blueprint imp for ice mammoth boss
  • Fixed some decal FTs that weren't correctly aligning to landscape
  • Adding Ice Mammoth Sledgehammer Legendary Weapon Part Setup, it can now be purchased used and upgraded
  • Fixed an error in the flagpole description
  • Setting biome override on Ice Mammoth and Rock Golem arenas to new entries
  • Adding unique events for the great hunts boss arenas
  • Adding back mesh context for condensed exotic meteor and hooking up to Meshable and BP
  • Ice Mammoth - Added ice pillar attack that targets every nearby player and spawns them under the bats. Added weather events for the ice mammoth
  • Adding correct deploy audio for landing pad
  • Added BLD_Door_Barn_Wood_1by1, BLD_Door_Barn_Wood_1by2 and BLD_Door_Barn_Wood_2by2 with animations
  • Added ice mammoth montage instead of mammoth montage to the ice pillar behavior tree. Adjustment to speed curve of mass projectiles
  • Reduction in rooster vocal frequencies
  • Elysium - started blockout of red quad geothermal area
  • Adjusting Great Hunt Talent Controller so it doesn't require a character state to perform operations as its linked to the prospect and not the character
  • Fixed resistance and weaknesses on Lava Broodling world spawns
  • Ice Mammoth Boss - Added frost spots to the larger ice projectiles, Added auras to both the ice pillars and the ice mammoth that applies a cold/slow that then becomes frostbite, Added weather forecast for ice arena
  • Growth tweaks to the hammerhead slug boss fight to increase damage to structures and some cooldown tweaks to sweep volley attack for medium sized slug
  • Small further reduction to bounciness of smaller ice mammoth projectiles to stop mass audio and adding unique bat kill NS to play death FX at correct angle facing hte camera
  • Fixes put in place to stop ice mammoth projectile spawning infinite amounts of ice spots that would cause hundreds of audio cues to try and play. Reducing bounciness and spawning the ice spot on settle which is almost instant. Cooldowns on audio events to limit amount of times they can play
  • Add DX11/DX12/DX12+RT information to the UI to help diagnose with screenshot reports
  • Adding Virtual Stat Calculations for the Ape / Rock Golem / Ice Mammoth
  • Adding Stats for the RockGolem / Juvenile, Ape / Juvenile and IceMammoth and setting up their bestiary enteries + progressive stats
  • Ice Mammoth den entrance - added ice detail and adjusted mesh positions
  • Adding frost spot snow ice crack and snow PM to ice mammoth frost spots
  • Balance and behaviour pass for the hammer head slug world boss, upped health values, added a few new attacks and behaviors and general scaling per player connected
  • Cliff Pass Blockout on Yellow Quad, Elysium
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass, Cliff and Macro Pass on Green Quad, Elysium
  • Adding frosted wind gust ice crack for potential use on overlap of frosted spot. May use something else depending on VFX pass. Not added to BP yet until visuals are updated
  • WIP Ice Mammoth den entrance
  • Added new ForceGripIK curve to 1st character rig that will enable left-hand IK for any animation that has the curve (not just weapons as the system currently works)
  • Remove custom UIProjectionLocation component from Caveworm Drop actor after its base class was changed and now inherits one already
  • Slight reduction in size of bat kill fx
  • Add Ape D2 Great Hunt mission
  • Added sockets to the Lava Hunter Flamethrower skeleton
  • Fixing focusable disabling the back context for the mesh by adding in 1H focusable and dummy cube context mesh
  • Fixing Bestiary Progressive stats for Ape & Juvienile
  • Updated flamethrower legendary weapon meshs, testures, and materials. Added skeletal mesh. Added assets to the data table
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass, Cliff and Macro Pass on Green Quad, Elysium
  • Add the rest of the Garganutan Great Hunt missions
  • Add DT validation for FLOD Flammable Tree entries with no Burnt FLODEntry defined
  • WIP Great Ape arena entrance, mossy CF cliff material variants
  • Rock Golem now has a loot inventory that is populated upon first interaction after death
  • Resaving soem elephant assets to try fix error
  • Fixed a few typos in GH quest descriptions
  • Increasing the distance of the spacializer of ice mammoths ballistics so they can be heard coming towards the player sooner
  • Added LookAt to Rock Golem and associated curve on various montages to disable it when necessary
  • Added screenshake to a number of Rock Golem heavy attacks
  • Fixed Rock Golem Juvenile not having it's modifier removed correctly
  • Increased intensity of Rock Golem's roll screen shake
  • Added extra knockback strength, damage, and range to Rock Golem's heavy slam attack
  • Increased Rock Golem's base melee damage by 70%
  • Setup Ape Great Hunt tree and restrictions
  • Fixed Garganutan Head Armor item info
  • Setup Garganutan Armor bonuses and set bonus
  • Ice Mammoth - Scaled bird spawning. max birds/spawn rate dynamically change value based on nearby characters. 'Scale int' distance now set to 25000 from 15000
  • Ice Mammoth Arena - Added cave enterance/Prep for instanced level
  • Ice Mammoth Boss - Turned on external actors/Removed RVTs
  • Added ActionAnimMappings to chick BP, enabling correct juvenile behaviours
  • DEV: Added deployable decal setups to allow easy placement of decals in the world while building bases for missions
  • Added chicken family bestiray image with rooster and chick included. Added art assets for the rooster and chick trophies. Updated rooster trophy bp and created chick trophy BP
  • Rock Golem Den Entrance - first pass
  • Great Ape Den Entrance - revised foliage, added extra detail + required material variants for rocks and cliffs
  • Adding Descriptions and Flavour text for Legendary Weapons
  • Ice Mammoth - Made ice pillars/map locations replicated
  • Added SM_DCO_Bed_Quilted_Double and destructicle
  • Added DCO_Rocking_Chair_Single and Double
  • Adding ability to see the number of units of a resource required for a recipeAdding all remaining meshes, materials, textures, FTs, BPs and data table entries for all variants of the Aspen trees
  • Added SM_DCO_DeskLamp_Var2_Brutalist, which has a square lampshade rather than a round one like the current Desk Lamp
  • Cliff Pass Blockout on Yellow Quad, Elysium
  • Initial setup of Ape Jr creature
  • Adding in unique event for when the rock golem loses some of its armor. Also adjustments to some distances for better audible cues for important moments
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass, Cliff and Macro Pass on Green Quad, Elysium
  • Add a temporary Ice Mammoth Arena to Outpost_009 for instanced level testing
  • Updated DC Cave Prefab Switchback
  • Added legendary weapon - hammerhead slug launcher static meshes, materials and textures
  • second pass on Rock Golem Den Entrance
  • Ice Mammoth - Fixed replication issues on pillar on client. Client wasn't able to see ice pillars coming up due to timeline being on server only
  • Rock Golem Boss VFX for Death/Burrow/Idle/Roll/HeavyAttacks/LightAttacks/Roar/Rock Payload
  • Added sk meshes for legendary weapon - hammerhead slug and updated data table
  • Various setup for Great Ape (Anim BP, Blackboard, placeholder behaviour tree etc.)
  • Adding BaseLevelRecorderComponent to BaseLevelTeleports, this is set to FindOnly and currently only records the teleport active state
  • Reparenting Den Entrances for Great Hunts to use the Teleport Main base class, fixed collision on assets and placed a single interact point inside the entrances
  • Replaced the Main Teleport in outpost 009 (temporary) with the Ice Mammoth Den Entrance
  • Cliff Pass Blockout on Yellow Quad, Elysium
  • Added art assets for a large plate and three cake flavours. Updated cake blueprints with new assets
  • Replaced the BP for the hammerhead slug launcher
  • Updated data table for legendary weapon - hammerhead slug launcher
  • Elysium - Building out geothermal area in red quad, added some material variants and decal for underwater geothermal assets
  • Adding IceMammoth Den to Prometheus
  • Shield no longer equips when holding a weapon with the 'thrown' tag

[/expand]

Survival game Icarus has a new flamethrower, and is free to play for the weekend

Deciding to slap your hard-earned cash down on a new game is always a little scary, so taking advantage of a free weekend is a great way to try out something you've had your eye on. First launched in 2021 by RocketWerkz, the studio founded by DayZ creator Dean 'Rocket' Hall, survival game Icarus has come a long way since then. To celebrate its latest update you can play it for free right now, with a big Steam sale discount making it cheap to keep if you like it.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Icarus update adds insured drops to make permadeath more forgiving

Icarus review - survival stories

Icarus devs targeting daily updates for the survival game following bumpy launch

Free Weekend & Double XP Event


[h2]ICARUS FREE Weekend![/h2]
So grab some friends and jump into the game!

[h2]Double XP Event [/h2]
This will last the duration of the free weekend!

[h2]50% Base Game Sale & Special Discounted Bundle [/h2]
The Icarus Game is on sale at 50% off and we have put together a special bundle including all our current expansions and decorations at a discounted price!

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https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/46753/Icarus_Free_Weekend_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/

Co-op survival game Icarus is celebrating 153 consecutive weekly updates by giving you a flamethrower and a free weekend




Over the three years since the release of co-op survival game Icarus, developer RocketWerkz has continually updated it. And by continually, I mean on a weekly basis: the newest update is the 153rd since December of 2021. That's a lotta patches!..
Read more.

Icarus Week 153 Update | Flamethrower, Double XP & Performance

Originally posted by author
FREE WEEKEND & DOUBLE XP NOW ON

For this weekend the base game of Icarus is available to play for free! All with a Double XP event for everyone. The Double XP Event will run until Monday NZ Time. We have also included a special bundle for this weekend so if people are enjoying the game you can get the game and its expansions with a big discount.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/46753/Icarus_Free_Weekend_Bundle/

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Welcome to Week 153.

This update comes a little early this week as its timed with a free weekend, a Double XP event and a reddit AMA.

This we are adding a brand new weapon type - a flamethrower. The first in a series of new weapons that will be introduced prior to some new creatures and bosses.

We provide a breakdown of some building optimizations and speak about Frozen wood veins we decided to add based on player feedback.

We currently have a reddit AMA for Icarus live where, Dean Hall - CEO, Jake Dodunski - Project Lead, Adam & Josh - Designers and other members of the team will be answering questions. You can find it here: /r/SurvivalGaming Icarus AMA

Also a quick preview into next weeks patch with the introduction of Cows, Calves and milk.

Notable Improvements
  • Adding Scoria, Clay and Obsidian Resource Packs purchasable in the Orbital Workshop
  • Players can now collect the notes in the Null Sector Missions as items and keep them to read them when they would like
  • Reduced Sandworm & Landsharks weakness to fire damage (21x → 2x)
  • Adding water as a requirement to craft a fire extinguisher, it now crafts full of water

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This Week: Building Occlusion Optimizations

Investigations have been underway for a little while now into why large prospects really don’t hold up well, performance wise. We found that some settings were being applied to building meshes that actually prevented some engine-level optimizations (“Occlusion Culling”). In most games, when you put your camera up against a wall/rock/whatever, the objects you can’t see behind that object get occlusion culled. This happens for pretty much every object in Icarus, except it wasn’t happening for Buildables. So while your base may have been on the other side of that mountain, it was still being rendered if you looked in that direction.

Early on in the project we implemented a method for preventing weather effects appearing when standing inside buildings. While this works perfectly fine, the method implemented relies on a setting which also prevents occlusion culling on the building mesh itself, and as we discovered recently during early testing (thanks testers!), also prevents us from applying distance culling optimizations too. After rejigging the way in which we handle weather culling on the building meshes, we’re now able to ensure the building meshes are now both Occlusion and Distance culled, giving you the best possible performance!

In addition to the Buildable optimizations, we have also applied some more aggressive distance culling values to Deployables and Spline networks. The draw distance for Buildings, Deployables and Splines is now based on your “View Distance Quality” setting in the options menu.

In our test scenario, these changes resulted in a nearly 2x performance increase. We completely expect this result to vary based on a nearly infinite number of factors, but in general, players with large, heavy-hitting prospects should see a tangible performance increase.

We welcome your feedback on this change, let us know how your performance has changed (and what hardware you’re on and some details about prospect object numbers!), has the shorter draw distance negatively (or positively) impacted on your gameplay? Are certain buildings now leaking weather effects? Please let us know!



[hr][/hr]
This Week: The Flamethrower

This week we are introducing the first of our new weapon types in preparation for some new creatures and bosses that are on the way.

Flamethrowers shoot a jet of flame and will deal continuous damage to anything within the area. Any flammable objects in the world also have a chance of catching on fire, further adding to the destructive power of this weapon!

The Flamethrower is crafted on the Machining Bench and is required to be filled up with biofuel to use. As the weapon’s recipe also takes biofuel, it comes with a full tank to start with. A handy gauge will keep you updated on how much fuel is remaining.


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This Week: Free Weekend & Double XP Event

This weekend to coincide with the Free Weekend we have decided to introduce a double XP Event, this event will run through until Monday NZ Time. We hope you all enjoy it!
Also, for the duration of the free weekend you can get all the expansions and main content packs for the ultimate ICARUS experience at a great discount! Check out the Free Weekend Bundle above.



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This Week: Frozen Wood Veins

Listening to feedback due to the lack of wood in the Null Sector we decided to add a very limited number of frozen wood nodes that can be drilled into with the Ice Borer. This allows wood, without having to trek all the way back out, which is an extremely long journey. We have only added a few so be on the lookout while in the Ice Sheets.

Frozen Wood Veins will provide Frozen Wood when drilled. This Frozen wood then needs to be heated up in a furnace, campfire or any of the heat based benches or devices, this then converts the frozen wood into wood.


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Next Week: Cows & Milk

Next week we are introducing a new animal and resource. This is the cow. You will purchase a frozen calf in the orbital workshop and then raise them up into a cow. Cows then need to be fed and watered to produce milk. With that new milk resources comes a range of new recipes.

This is the first step we have towards animal breeding, in future you can expect Bulls, Chicks, Roosters and Lambs, we are ironing out the breeding mechanics at the moment and we will release it when we are happy.


[hr][/hr][h2]Your support makes these updates possible.[/h2]

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Changelog v2.2.28.129531


[h3]New Content[/h3]
[expand]
  • Unlocked scoria, clay and obsidian resource packs for release
  • Add V2 version of flamethrower effect for comparison
  • Adding all flamethrower footstep anim notifys
  • Adding first pass flamethrower audio, event and blueprint data
  • Adding new aim fire anim to reduce recoil spam on the assault rifle, rejigged reload anim and added 3RD person variants of the animations
  • Flamethrower v2 prototype assets
  • Setting up flame thrower actionable BP to trigger and stop audio based on click hold. Currently playing extinguisher as a placeholder
  • Tweaks to the flamethrower audio. Also reduced equip canteen volume by 3db and added missing equip audio
  • Updates to Flamethrower VFX V2
  • Update Buildables, Deployables and Splines to all have reduced draw distance (Distance Culling) based on View Distance Quality setting
  • Change CustomDepth pass to false (default) for main buildable mesh as this has no effect except causing the mesh to not be considered for Occlusion Culling
  • Tidy up of Building Base BP, split up Event Graph into separate graphs for readability
  • This change should have a substantial (in some extreme cases, up to 2x) performance improvement for larger prospects with many buildables/deployables
  • Added Local Space VFX system to Flamethrower to fix gap when moving or turning
  • Enabling Double XP Event, XP Bonus and Title Screen UI
  • Unlocking Frozen Wood -> Wood Crafting Recipe in Most heated benches and devices
  • Adding 6 Frozen Wood Deposits to the Icesheets Biome
  • Unlocking Flamethrower Blueprint, Recipe and Item
  • Adding biofuel as a requirement for crafting the flamethrower initially so it comes with a full tank
  • Added Frozen Wood to advancced deep ore scanner
  • Updated tag on Frozen Wood show it will show as a resource, and benefit from wood carry talents
  • Updated Workshop Extractor and Battery to show on each other's Field Guide pages
  • Updated Workshop Biofuel Canister to return to orbit again
  • Change V2 flamethrower FX to be CPU not GPU to fix barrel disconnect. Increase sphere trace range from 5m to 10m
  • Add new local version of Flamethrower FX as a _V3 revision and use V2 version for now. Flamethrower will now ignite any flammable target (not just Creatures)
  • Tweak flamethrower hit length and radius to better match animation
  • Fixed resource recipes not showing an icon when in the processing queue
  • Small reduction to the pilot light audio on the flamethrower to avoid it becoming annoying at longer times of use
  • Enable CustomDepth for Buildables during storms as it handles the weather culling. Don't apply Distance Culling to Destructible Meshes as their pieces can fall through the ground and decide it should cull the entire mesh
  • Removed light particles from Flamethrower FX to avoid flickering when tesellation is on. Added fill light to Flamethrower BP
  • Adding additional blend layers to the flamethrower to make it feel more weighty and dangerous. More low end gas boom
  • Adding dry fire audio for flamethrower when its out of ammo and tries to be fired. Blueprint Imp
  • Lowered landshark and caveworm fire damage weakness
  • Adding Image for Double XP event and adjusting connecting overlay so its displayed on the title screen
  • Add custom weather culling setup for buildings which allows the main building mesh to no longer be used for this purpose which allows further culling optimizations to be made. Small cleanup to Building Base BP to allow for additional begin play logic
  • Add weather culling setup to Dropship so it no longer rains inside on your way down from space
  • Don't allow flamethrower to be fired underwater. Remove secondary screenshake on fire-off. Dial back screenshake amount for initial shake
  • Update unsaved Obsidian resource pack cost
  • Fixed resource pack positioning for dirt
  • Reduced clay and scoria resource pack cost slightly, increased obsidian resource pack costs
  • Fixed third-person animation issues related to player not being able to look up or down when using the flamethrower.
  • Fixed bug where flamethrower could get stuck in ADS animation when swapping focus from an equipped firearm.
  • Added new TwoHandedRifle overlay state that should apply up/down movement dynamic additive anim
  • Reduced cost of scoria, clay and obsidian workshop packs, but added red exotic cost
  • Add Camshake setups for Flamethrower
  • Remove distance culling on Building meshes as this breaks weather culling. Still should see solid gains via the remaining CustomDepth setting being removed preventing occlusion culling, but this needs to be disabled during weather again due to weather culling support. Investigation into alternatives to using CustomDepth for weather culling should happen at some point in the future but its heavily embedded into the codebase at the moment
  • Tweaks to Flamethrower VFX, better bounding box and removing unnecessary persistent ID
  • Tweak flamethrower hit length and radius to better match animation

[/expand]


[h3]Fixed[/h3]
[expand]
  • Disable navmesh generation on the base mesh for Scoria/etc nodes. Animals were getting caught on the upper meshes so they should nav around them instead
  • Fixed bug where CHAC Pistol and Assault Rifle gun animations weren't playing correctly
  • Add translatable text to RELOCATED and VOYAGER
  • Adding new Collectable Note Items, Logbooks and Audio Logs, these can be picked up and re-read whenever players want
  • Adding new stat to goven what text / setup a note item refers to
  • Converted ashlands / icesheet notes into this new format on reload
  • Significantly reduced the Sandworm fire weakness (21x -> 2x damage taken)
  • Fixed power toggle being visible on windmill where not required
  • Add water to the fire extinguisher recipe and output
  • Add water mention to fire extinguisher description
  • Update weight of workshop creatures to not be 10 grams
  • Fix another intermittent terrain anchor crash reported in Sentry (again)
  • Fixed skinning bench slottable helper text being untranslated
  • Fix stamina depleted animation stays up if player dies when stamina completed
  • Fix divide by zero error on Flamethrower AnimBP for fuel gauge needle

[/expand]


[h3]Future Content[/h3]
[expand]
  • Matching framerate from the assault rifle gun reload to the 1ST person reload
  • Adding in new 1ST person and gun animations for the assault rifle reload, 3RD person to follow once the gun anim can get hooked up for timing
  • Added biolab consumables to workshop (feature locked)
  • Add biolab currency setups for future bosses (feature locked)
  • Fixed stack sizes of biolab inhalers
  • disabled RVT on 2 materials used on cliffs in CF caves
  • Adding flinch audio to ape. Audio, event, data table setup
  • Fixed boss trophy stack sizes to be 1. Fixed vestige stack sizes to be 5. Increased durability on boss trophies to 500
  • bDoFullyAsyncNavDataGathering is now turned off for built agents before generating navigation
  • Migrating prototype fog to Icarus for testing
  • Elysium - adjusted new riverstones textures to reduce tiling artifacts
  • Adjusted ice mammoth ice kick to have 3 different types of projectiles. (Big + Many, Big + Accurate, Small + Many) to make a much wider spread
  • Adding ape death vocalisation and movement land event, data table and notify
  • Update biolab workshop tab to be named Bio-consumables
  • Fixed display of damage stats on attachments
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass in Green Quad Arctic and Flushed Grass On All Quads, Elysium
  • Adding first person load assault rifle notifys to animation. Waiting on third person to add those. Also adding missing solar panel audio row
  • Implemented Garganutan Frenzy Tonic
  • Elysium, yellow quad - flushing grass again
  • Adding black wolf trap set and catch audio, events and notifys
  • Fixed scorpion attachment recipe providing wrong output
  • Elysium, yellow quad - WIP geothermal transition area between tundra and desert
  • DLC2 - geothermal material variants for various cliffs and stalagmites
  • Fixed ice mammoth chandelier destructible mesh
  • Generated navigation for Rock Golem arena after enabling nav for rock walls.
  • Rock Golem light attack is now much quicker.
  • Updates to FollowSplinePath BTTask to fix some issues where RockGolem would get stuck trying to reach it's destination on spline.
  • Fixed issure where Rock Golem would try to navigate behind walls if player was standing next to one.
  • Rock Golem no longer attemps to eat fast moving projectiles.
  • Rock Golem no longer aborts its light attack phase if attacked.
  • Fixed bug where Rock Golem would damage player from a very long way away when first starting to roll.
  • Rock Golem now attempts to eat rock clusters when low on health, not when out of armour
  • Added Updated SK_DEP_Great_Hunt_Device with separates proxies and separate SK_DEP_Great_Hunt_Device_Bench with animations
  • Added Great Hunt juvenile-esque creatures
  • Add bestiary hookups for Great Hunt bosses, update feature level and names
  • Fixed Hammerhead module name
  • Adding New Logic for Reading in the ItemManipulation Component
  • Work on RG_C mission, adding new prebuilt outpost, quest steps notes etc
  • Adding Quest Markers and Prebuilt Island to be spawned in when starting the RG_C mission
  • Adding Ape Armor Icons & Notes / Logbook Icons
  • Added Garganutan Frenzy Tonic Icon
  • Strip unused RVT content from GeothermalTerrace BP to fix errors and optimize. Create sockets on meshes to position VFX correctly for the different shaped meshes. Trigger Sulfur VFX on Terraces during Sulfur storms (was sitting there, but never triggered)
  • Adding first person and third person assault rifle mag out and mag in. Audio events and notifies
  • Adjusted assault rifle out of ammo mech sound which clashed with reload
  • IMP Pass Blockout on Yellow Quad, Elysium
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Green Quad, Elysium
  • Increase recoil and reduce accuracy on the Assault rifle
  • Recoil is now reduced by standing still, aiming down sights and crouching
  • DLC2 - fixed holes in one of the new imp meshes, WIP insert cave tunnel mesh
  • Fix a race condition in instanced levels where a client in the instanced level returns to character select
  • Setting up wood deep ore drill audio event
  • Added missing items static audio table row for glass bottles
  • GH_RG_C mission is now in and fully playable
  • Update central node for cow talent tree
  • Add cow skill tree and fix some creature setup
  • Adding ape notifies. Footsteps and attack vocalisations and footstep event
  • Fixed AI relationship for cow, calf, chick and lamb, to ensure they get attacked by wild creatures instead of friendly creatures
  • Fix taming temperatures on juvenile cow, chicken and sheep
  • Adding deploy audio and correct data table rows for notes
  • Ape Great Hunt mission tree initial setup
  • Adding pilot audio that starts only if there is enough fuel in the flamethrower and stops when run out. Audio, event and blueprint imp
  • Slight further adjustment to assault rifle empty ring and mag in out volumes
  • Fix revive location when player dies in an instanced level, RTCS, then rejoins, then is revived
  • revised insert cave tunnel mesh with custom LODs
  • Adding ape beat chest audio event and notifys
  • IMP Pass Blockout on Yellow Quad, Elysium
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass, Lake and River Pass on Green Quad, Elysium
  • Adding movement layers for the swamp ape. Ape whoosh and all notifiers
  • Fix revive location when player dies in an instanced level, RTCS, then rejoins, then is revived (offset wrong direction)
  • More ape notifiers
  • Adding ape slam audio, event and notifiers
  • GH_RG_D is now fully playable
  • Adding new Item Condensed Exotics that is carried in the utility slot
  • Adding new recipe to convert Condensed Exotics into Exotics
  • Adding Item Icon for Rock Golem Juvenile Vestige
  • Adding Item Icon for Condensed Exotic
  • GH_RG_F is now fully playable
  • Added a workshop to GH_RG_D2
  • GH_RG_E Mission is fully playable
  • GH_RG_D2 is now fully playable
  • GH_RG_C2 is now fully playable
  • Juvenile Rock Golems now can be oxite/copper/coal/iron/gold infused, added modifier stats and icons
  • Added Juvenile Rock Golem Spawers elemental varients
  • Adjusting loot of rock golems to drop ore related to their infusio
  • Fixed Issue where Juvi Rock Golems would not transition into corpses when dead
  • Juvi Rock Golem now has its armor when it transisitons to a corpse
  • Fixed Juvi Rock Golem so it now longer walks on top of players, players can no longer get stuck inside Juvi Rock Golems
  • Adjusted Juvi Rock Golem Loot so it now longer drops all of the ores
  • Juvi Rock Golem now hides its armor when skinned
  • Fixed New Quest Cleanup Function which would try and turn recording off on actors that did not have a recorder
  • Added SK_ITM_Pitchfork
  • Added DEP_Trophy_Golem_1,DEP_Trophy_Golem_2 and DEP_Trophy_Golem_3
  • Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Green and Orange Quads, Elysium
  • Adding different audio events for smaller projectiles travelling and impacts for ice mammoth
  • IMP Pass Blockout, Added Re-textured DC Caves and Eden Cave Blockout on Yellow Quad, Elysium
  • DLC2 - added 2 new impassables for desert
  • Adding sledgehammer equip and pickup audio
  • Fixed Lava Broodling trophy being feature locked

[/expand]