Icarus News

This weeks update we release the work we have been doing towards performance improvements. We have been working on these improvements for some time, and they represent a major change in how a number of assets and parts of the map are loaded. Most specifically these are targeted to address hitching and stutters caused by level streaming and asset loading when moving across the ma, but in many cases they also give modest general FPS improvements as well.

We’ve done a big write up to explain the changes we’ve made and our logic for it also, to give you an idea of the background work that’s going in to improving the experience for all players as we add more content to the game in the future.

This week also brings the long awaited wind power system, with new wind turbines giving you a third sustainable power source, and a sneak peek at our next improvement to the electricity system, batteries.

We’ve also got an update on Hypatia, our next big free update, and even a look at what is coming next week to Icarus.

Jump in and have a read.

• Fixes to outposts so they all spawn creatures as intended
  
• Fixes to voxel mining audio which was causing a machinegun like sound effect that would not stop
  
• Fix for Deployable Destructible not being cleaned up unless the host / server restarted
  
• Fixed an issue where Weather effects were played inside caves
  
• Fixed issues where the Weather effects would appear incorrectly when mounted
  
• Fixed issues where Ice Borers could not be snapped and deployed
  
• Fixed issue where minerals and ores would sometimes revert to un-mineable grey chunks
  
• Frozen ore is now scaled based on ore gained not chance per hit, providing more overall frozen ore
  
• Fixed issues on Prometheus where Unstuck would place players outside of the map bounds
  
• Fixed issue where you couldn't upgrade buildings to Scoria Brick
  

This weeks update has a number of performance improvements that we’ve been testing out in our experimental build for the past few days. These are focused around reducing stutters and hitches caused by ‘level streaming’ (which is when a map tile is loaded into the world as you move into the area). The key areas include:

Improved load times for a number of in-game objects such as voxels

Changing ‘navmesh’ loading to a background thread

Changing the garbage collector to only run whenever important map tiles are streamed in our out

There’s a couple of core concepts that are tricky to understand, which are important to get the full picture of our improvements this week.

[h3]Threading:[/h3]

Threads are pieces of work that are split up and run on different cores in your CPU at the same time.

Think of of this like queues at a bank. A single threaded game would be like having a single queue for a single bank teller (who represents a CPU core). In this scenario, only one customer can be served at a time (or one piece of work completed in-game on the CPU):



Multi-threading would be having multiple tellers and multiple queues, allowing for you to get through all of the people in the queue faster:



In theory, this means everything would run faster and smoother as the CPU cores could process more work, faster and more efficiently. But in reality, there is a problem on the other side of the bank counter. In order for the teller to process the customers job (the CPU to process the job) they have to go to the banks one and only ledger containing all the customers information (your RAM) in order to read and write the customers data.

In a single teller scenario this is perfectly fine, but once there are multiple tellers trying to do this at the same time, it’s chaos; numbers get overwritten, delays happen, and your bank crashes with weird error messages:



So what’s the solution to this? All modern game engines use a single “main thread” (also known as a “game thread”) to do most of the work. This puts a lot of strain on your CPU as it’s only able to use a single core for this work, resulting in your CPU utilisation showing something like 15% when the game is running poorly. Some work is still done multi-threaded, but it is a case by case basis as not everything is even suitable for it.

To return to the bank analogy, imagine the single queue, single teller setup, but this time we have a special second teller whose job it is to process forms.

1. The customers who need a form processed will join the main queue until they get to main teller.
   
2. The main teller then sees that the customer is trying to get a form processed. The teller then gets all the information from the ledger that the form needs and attaches it, then sends the customer over to the special teller for that form to get processed.
   
3. The main teller then continues processing the main queue while the other customer is getting their form processed at the special teller. The special teller doesn’t need to use the ledger because all of the relevant information to get that form processed has been attached, removing the issues from the original multi-threading scenario.
   
4. Once the form has been processed the customer rejoins the main queue to hand the completed form to the main teller who puts the results into the ledger.
   

This is an example of using ‘worker threads’ to offload work from the main thread.

The main thread has to prepare the data that the worker thread needs to do its work, and when the worker thread is done ,the main thread has to apply the results back to the game.

This is used in a few places in Icarus, PhysX runs on a thread, as do things like voxel updates when you mine them. The important thing to know here is that threading is a tool can solve some problems but not all.

[h3]Time Slicing[/h3]

Another such tool is “Time Slicing”. Time slicing is used to process a little bit of data each frame up to a certain time limit or number of items.

This smooths out a big spike of work over multiple frames, removing hitches at the cost of a slightly higher frame times while the work is going on.

This method is good for processing things that don’t need the results immediately and aren’t suitable to be threaded because they need access to the game data.

[h3]Start up times[/h3]

When a map tile finishes streaming in, all of the objects on that tile need to start up on the same frame.

Icarus has both a lot of objects on its map tiles, and specifically objects that take a long time to start up, the combination of which led to a significant 'hitch'. While there isn’t a good way to reduce the number of objects on the tiles, a lot of the objects have now had their start up times shortened or spread out over multiple frames.

One major example of this is the voxels. There are roughly 800 to 1000 voxels per map tile, so everything they do during startup is magnified massively.

Voxels now have a lot of their setup done in the assets themselves instead of during their startup scripts.

'Loading their resource type' and 'registering with the shelter subsystem' have both been time sliced over multiple frames. Loading the voxel save data has been given a fast path that can quickly find the matching data without the slow search through all of save data.

In the test scenario these changes reduced the tile start up hitch from about 100ms to 18ms.

[h3]Navmesh loading[/h3]

Navmesh (Navigation Mesh) is used by the AI to know where they can and can’t go.

Icarus being an open world game has a lot of navmesh to cover that surface area, as well as having to update that mesh when buildings are built on top of it. A previous engine update now allows us to use async navmesh loading, which is carried out on another thread. This completely removes navmesh loading hitches.

[h3]Garbage Collector[/h3]

When a map tile streams in or out the engine forces a garbage collection.

This is to ensure that all unused objects get removed from memory and keeps the RAM usage as low as it can be. While this is good for reducing memory usage spikes, it takes a long time to complete a collection.

Garbage collection was happening even for distant tiles changing their LoD’s, resulting in a lot more than expected. We’ve disabled the default garbage collection during level streaming in favour of only doing them when streaming out the main level tiles. This massively reduces the amount of hitching during regular gameplay at a very slight memory usage increase from time to time.

[h3]Future work[/h3]

While these changes have a big impact on the number of streaming hitches there are still some remaining, such as removing objects from a tile when it streams out, and high density foliage loading in (on both CPU and GPU). The remaining hitches are currently being worked on and we will have a patch addressing those in future.





Wind Power is finally in Icarus.

We’ve added the long-awaited Wind Turbine this week, giving you another way to generate electricity to power your Tier 3 and 4 deployables.

The Turbine requires a fair amount of space around the propellor, so these need to be spread out to be activated. When placing these or hovering over them, you’ll be able to see the range required to be free of any obstructions. The range required around these objects can be seen when highlighting over them (this will not be shown if the ‘Show Item Highlights’ setting is off).

The Wind Turbine is a Tier 4 item, crafted at the new Fabricator. Unlike solar panels, wind turbines will work around the clock, and don’t require cleaning such as water wheels do. This makes them the most efficient and easiest system to deploy and use, which is balanced by their lower power output and cost.

[h3]Batteries[/h3]

With Wind Turbines being our third sustainable power source added to Icarus, providing a storage source for power is something we are actively working towards.

The initial implementation of resource networks doesn’t allow for batteries in the traditional sense. The way we developed these systems, is with machines registering themselves on the network and controlling their own on/off state, rather than it processing within the network itself.

To add batteries, we’ll need to modify this system to allow for them to exist and function as intended. This will allow for proper resource flow control, allowing for brownouts and variable energy flow rates.

Once these changes to the network have been made, the priority will be getting batteries added, so keep an eye out for these in the future.





Now that New Frontiers has been released, our core development focus is shifting to our next major update, Hypatia.

We have a few more bugs that have been discovered in New Frontiers and other areas of the game that we will be working on, but the majority of the team's effort now moves towards this upcoming milestone.

Because of the massive hit Operations have been in New Frontiers (for those still unclear on what these are, this is the new system that allows for full missions to be triggerable from Open World), we have decided to focus our efforts fully on the Open World Operations in Olympus and Styx, rather than wait for the Biolab feature to be completed, which is still in the early stages of development.

This means that Hypatia with the Operations added to Styx and Olympus can be brought to you sooner, and our timelines will adjust to incorporate the Biolab into a future update.

At the same time, expect our regular, weekly updates with bug fixes, new content and quality of life to continue as they always have.





Speaking of new content, next week will be bringing some new friends to adventure with. New Mounts are coming to Olympus, Styx, and Prometheus as our free Week 92 update.

Originally posted by author

[h3]If you like what we’re doing with Icarus, and want to support our continued development, consider purchasing one of our DLCs for a few dollars, it would mean a lot to us.[/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1648532/Icarus_New_Frontiers/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/33813/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/34141/Icarus_Outposts_Bundle/



New Content

[expand]

• Unlocking Wind Turbine and adding new UI to show Turbine State
  
• Removing DNT from Wind Turbine & Damaged Audio Logs
  
• Adjusting wind turbine recipe and adding 'clear zone' visualistion which can be seen when highlighted, this zone must be kept clear for the turbine to keep running
  
• Adding first pass turbine audio and event and BP imp
  
• Adjustments to the wind turbine audio. Removed unnecessary layers and updated sound and spacial
  
• Added text for the wind turbine item
  
• Effects of equippable modifiers are now reduced when stacked (1 = 100%, 2 = 50%, 3 = 25%)
  
• Adjusted Module Stacking to only apply dimishing returns to specific modules
  
• Added icon and tooltip text to let player know if modules are affected by diminishing stat values when duplicate modules are stacked together
  

[/expand]
Fixed

[expand]

• Fixed issue where some voxels were not receiving their material after they start being mined
  
• Shifted a voxel log from Error->Warning
  
• Fixed Larkwell Martinez Piercing Bolt not colliding with enemies.
  
• Fixed workshop item name typo.
  
• Celebrity Chef: Fixed mission pod not being cleaned up on mission abandon.
  
• Reduced the cost and output of the Wind Turbine. This allows the device to be a lower entry cost to power, while massive power output is better suited to other devices (or careful base design).
  
• Added missing roat bestiary event and corrected some bestiary data table entries that were not allocated the right sound. Added roat specific Audio Data Table entry
  
• Remove DNT on rain exposure modifier
  
• Fixed a few typos in ST_UMG
  
• Adjusting gasfly ballistic travel sound to be appropriate for faster travel speed
  
• Fixed bug where Swamp Bird didn't have an animation set for use with corpse eating action. Removed debug print from BTTask_RandomFlight
  
• Adding cooldown to gasfly explosion to stop double up of sound occasionally playing
  
• Fix possibility of infinite final hits on voxels when using multi-damage pickaxes. If a fully mined voxel resource tries to clean itself up on tick while remaining reinitialisable, explicitly turn tick off again, as cleanup function is not guaranteed to do this, potentially resulting in the final hit event getting spammed each tick. Also add a check to final hit events to only fire if the previous state was not fully mined
  
• Adjusting Cold Steel Arrows to be on Par with Steel arrow
  
• Noxious Crust now provides resource when cleaned
  
• Fixing workshop bolt sets providing the wrong bolts when consumed
  
• Adjusting Obsidian sickle stat description to mention crops and not just fruit or veges
  
• Clay brick building piece recipes have been adjusted to account for size
  
• Ice Borers no longer fall through the terrain when dropped
  
• Fixed typo in game mode info pop up
  
• Added a bone blacklist so the killcam doesnt target specific bones that protrude out of the AI mesh and makes the arrow float in mid air
  
• Enable custom weather for quests
  
• PRO_Story_3: Removed extra purple search area
  
• AI Spawned via BP_AISpawner now have their spawn locations offset by half their capsule height to prevent them from spawning inside the ground
  
• NPCSplineTrailComponent now correctly removes spline points as they are cleaned up
  
• forgot to add data structure change for blacklist bones
  
• Resaving AI Setup DT to fix build validation error
  
• Fixed New-Game Tutorial Popup string not being picked up by localized content generation
  
• Fixed duplicate spawn map color preventing creatures from spawning in a small area of the grasslands
  
• Removed Cave_SW_SML_004 as it was a duplicate version of Cave_SW_SML_003 and Swapped all 004 prefab caves to 003, Prometheus
  
• Added Tool Action helpers to the B.E.A.S.T meta item and all fertilizer items
  
• Rock Dog's lava spots now apply correct modifier and spawn when hitting landscape, or anything with the landscape collision profile
  
• Fixed a bug where if you drag the shield out of the utility slot the backpack stays invisible
  
• Fixed normals on all Shengong Bows and Axes
  
• Removed debugging text in 'on focus item'
  
• Rebalanced Miasmic tools to use Refined Wood in addition to Carbon Fiber
  
• Rebalanced Cold Steel tools to use variable amounts of Refined Wood per piece
  
• Rebalanced Obsidian tools to use Refined Wood across all pieces, rather than just the sledehammer. Removed Fur from Obsidian Sledgehammer and replaced with Leather
  
• Fixed various ammo recipes across the new toolsets not using the correct resources
  
• Fixed item setups for Acidic Glands, Infected Bark, Noxious Crust, Crystalized Miasma and Distilled Miasmic Coating directing to incorrect drop mesh, added representitive placeholders
  
• PRO_Story_3: Fixed wrong dialogue line being played when collecting recipe at end of mission
  
• Switched a number of lava cave voxels over to using the correct BPHV foliage type (conifer -> volcanic)
  
• Replaced Voxels in CAVE_AlienFossil_MED_001 to Pro_Volcanic_Cave_2, Prometheus
  
• Disabled shadow casting on slug slime trail
  
• Fixed bug where client was incorrectly applying slug slime modifier as well as server which was resulting in the modifier never disappearing from the list for clients.
  
• Slime trail particles are now properly cleaned up when their owning segment is removed.
  
• Slime trail particles are no longer spawned for dedicated server
  
• More datatable validation on FLOD Descriptions
  
• Added additional logic forcing Grasslands Crocodiles to spawn only near water
  
• Intersecting the slugs slime trail will now only cause a reaction if overlapping actor is a valid AI target
  
• Slightly increase melee distance of sickle, make some brambles simple collision
  
• Fixed seams between cliff actors and the landscape, moved deep ore deposit and fixed streched textures on a macro cliff, Purple and Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added new cheat function and dedi server command 'PrintAIDebug' to print useful debug information regarding currently active AI and relevant spawn blockers
  
• PRO_Story_3: Fixed base pieces being on low durability / destroyed state on reload
  
• Prometheus: Added descriptions for exploration missions
  
• Fixing iron window playing the closing animation for opening and closing the windows. Also added more surfaces to my test level
  
• Match the hit behaviour of new elemental pickaxes to that of existing pickaxes
  
• Submitting Bear Cub carcass mesh and textures
  
• Fixed Miasmic Ammo set being named Iron Wood Ammo
  
• Clamping att resistances to 99%
  
• Fixed new workshop crossbow bolts having incorrect collision
  
• Fixed new workshop crossbow bolt break chance to match workshop arrows at 100%
  
• Reordered workshop crossbow bolts, allowing the advanced bolt options to be unlocked in any order
  
• Tweaked placement of many workshop items for visual consistency between groups
  
• Swapped the item name, description, icon and mesh of workshop pickaxes, axes, spears and arrows that did not match their color scheme to their damage type
  
• Fix an issue where buildings cannot be damaged by weapons (due to prior commit)
  
• Updating my test level to include more buildable pieces for quick testing
  
• Addin Roat head shake audio to animation
  
• General polish pass across Drifter VFX, Effects will now be an appropriate color depending on biome. This fixes VFX for the swamp drifter
  
• Fixed floating tree in Grasslands & fixed hole in Swamp cave on Green/Yellow Quad, Prometheus
  
• Reset static mesh locations for geothermal pools and fixed some cliff seams in Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Drifter VFX polish
  
• Changed IMP Meshes & Removed Sea Grass on Land on Green/Yellow Quad, Prometheus
  
• Macro Cliff pass, Landscape Sculpting pass and Lava Lake placement, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Fix issues with the fish finder scanning forever
  
• Removed all vehicle related code and dependant assets to free up linker library items
  
• Removed IcarusPhysXVehicle plugin to free up linker library items
  
• Made a number of assets static
  
• Made spawn point helper mesh components all editor only so they will be deleted from cooked builds
  
• Removed overlap checks from environment spline meshes
  
• Removed actor gathering from actor recorders that aren't using the gathered list
  
• Optionally removed transform reloads from recorders that don't need them
  
• Added recorder fast path for actor path names and guids (currently disabled)
  
• Time sliced shelter modifier initialisation
  
• Time sliced voxel initialisation
  
• Multiple tweaks to voxels to get their start up time (when a map tile streams in) as low as possible to reduce hitching
  
• Enabled async lazy navmesh rebuilds to reduce hitches
  
• Disabled garbage collection during level streaming to minimise hitches
  
• Offline processed voxels to reduce the amount of operations they perform on startup
  
• Disabled pre-loading of quests. This should reduce RAM usage by about 1 gb in some cases
  
• Added async loading of quests during missions
  
• Added proper PMs to Mangrove Roots and Fallen trunks
  
• fixed hands for shengong suit 3rd person
  
• Fixing snow wolf carcass and bones by creating a snow wolf carcass mat and overriding the relavent functions in the Corpse BP to match the other carcass flow
  
• Fixed missing materials for brick beams
  
• Re-enabled GC after main map tiles stream out. Not having this on was causing some bugs due to old actors being reused if the tile was streamed back in before they could be properly deleted. This will cause some hitches, but has been changed from original behaviour to only occur after main map tiles stream out, not just any map tiles streaming out. So it should still be significantly better
  
• Re-enabled fast actor path name lookups for voxel reloading. This reduces the time for voxels to find and load their data when they stream in. This behaviour is now only disabled for FLOD based voxels (i.e. stone)
  
• Removed context menu from loadout screen in OEI as it could be used to drop items on the ground directly from the inventory instead of putting them in a dropship for request. This would cause them to not be checked out in a loadout
  
• Fixed being able to start Prometheus missions /open worlds using the UI on dedicated servers if the launching player doesn't own the New Frontiers DLC
  
• Fixed Prometheus not appearing at all on the mission / open world screens if the DLC isn't owned (should show up as locked)
  
• Fixed Redback being unable to be crit and not having an armoured shell
  
• Slightly increased head crit area on Blueback and Redback
  
• Prometheus Shadow Geo - fixed mesh in D4 (arctic) to correct shadows
  
• Fixed walls not being able to be upgraded to Scoria Brick
  
• Removing streaming setting from some SFX, and adjusting preferences auto streaming setting
  
• Fixed Ice-Borer not attaching to super cooled ice nodes
  
• Fixed Scoria Brick wall angle right inverted from being unable to be upgraded to using the hammer
  
• Added additional validation to building piece lookup table
  
• Removed spawn overrides from outpost prospects
  
• Updated Everbark difficulty to use Forest outpost difficulty settings
  
• Prebuilt structures now save and load their spawned actor references so they can be referenced and interacted with after the first spawn
  
• Fixing repair hammer not making sound on fortifications. Also adding cooldown to mission update UI sound
  
• Change Cold Steel frozen ore reward behaviour (roll chance => percent of rewards paid)
  
• Remove resupply quest start dialogue which caused incorrect dialogue replay on PRO_Story_3 quest reload
  
• Improved Batdog physics asset.
  
• Adjusted drop location of Batdog corpse when placed on skinning bench.
  
• Added new ISlotableItem interface that can be implemented to adjust the actor spawn location when placed in a slot.
  
• Added an extra ragdoll-blocking collider to skinning bench to prevent corpses falling off right side
  
• Adding footsteps for mount on lava and slime
  
• Fixed animals not spawning on three new outpost maps
  
• Predator birds no longer target alive players/creatures/mounts within active spawn blocker/deterrent radius
  
• Slightly lowered armor paperdoll so it does not overlap build number
  
• Fixed visibility bugs with the shield and the backpack being invisible or both visible at the same time
  
• Missions 2,3,4,5,6 prebuilt structures are now destoryed when you abandon the quest
  
• Ensure unstuck respects out of bounds checks in Prometheus
  
• Fix abandoning a quest causing multiple quest dialogues to play. Dialogue trigger suppression is now applied during quest cleanup in all scenarios (previously it was only scoped to end-of-mission cleanup)
  
• Arctic Outposts: Added Deer to allow easy difficulty more sources of fur
  
• Desert Outposts: Added Scorpions, added spawn difficulty rules
  
• Prometheus: Increased likelyhood of Ashen Drake spawns in their areas
  
• Fixed stone voxels not reloading their mined state correctly
  
• Weather effects are now correctly attached to camera when sitting on mounts/other seats. Fixed screen damage post process effect overriding weather effect particle visibility when pulsed
  
• T4 Anvil Bench - adjusted position of output proxies in blueprint to line up correctly with the rack
  
• Reimport of swamp bird base mesh to fix bind pose with mouth open
  
• Changed frozen ore processor recipe to output 'Unknown Ore' rather than 'Metal Ore' so it shows the ore is random
  
• Fixed bug where wind/rain/other weather effects were appearing in caves
  
• Fixed broken deployable debris not cleaning up correctly
  
• Updated credits
  
• Created DMs for Bramble_A bushes in preparation for fixing this bug where brable bushes DMs are incorrect model
  
• Added proper Bramble DMs to Bramble BPs
  
• Fix quest dialogue replaying when resuming a prospect. Quest start dialogue entries defined in quest DT are now not played if the quest was reloaded
  
• Fixed issue where voxels receiving a resource type when loading in could fail
  
• Fixed Frozen Ore granting Aluminium Ingot instead Aluminium Ore
  
• PRO_Story_5: Updated tech level required to correctly mention Tier 4
  
• Adjusting Bounds Mask for Prometheus to Fix out of Bounds Zones
  
• Fixed the IRD showing an unsheltered warning when placed in a prospect you would never be able to accept a mission from it anyway
  
• Improved the effectiveness of elemental weapon effects on most creatures, notably Prometheus creatures.
  
• Arctic creatures typically take double damge from Poison, half damage from Frost. Swamp creatures typically take double damage from Fire, half damage from Poison.
  
• Lava creatures typically take double damage from Frost, half damage from Fire.
  
• Desert creatures typically take double damage from Frost.
  
• Some creatures have additional resistances, or slightly different resistances than the rest of their biome counterparts
  
• Removed the ability for the Electroshock modifier to stack
  
• Adjusting tree sap and expoxy item icons so they are visually distinct
  
• Being wet now increases Electric and Frost damage taken by 50%
  
• Increased the frequency that swamp water checks to infest you with parasites
  
• Reverted previous change due to metal ore not being able to be randomized. Added an itemable rowhandle to the processor recipes for when there are random outputs to use as an image
  
• Fixed Hail weather events incorrectly not filling water reservoir or watering crops
  
• Switched mobility of cave weather blocking volumes from Static->Stationary to ensure they render correctly onto RT_Shelter
  
• Pieces of destroyed deployables and buildings now fade out instead of popping when actor is destroyed
  
• Updated the building upgrade radial menu to show the New Frontiers icon on applicable building tiers
  
• Joining a Styx/Prometheus prospect will now show the difficulty warning popup and level boost option (was previously only shown when creating a prospect)
  
• Prometheus: Lava boss now takes +200% damage from Frost, -40% damage from Fire
  
• Added new higher resolution image for the random ore image
  
• Changed processorrecipes to take in itemdata to use as an image rather than the outputted item for when we want random outputs
  
• Frozen ore now shows 'Unknown Ore' when placed in a heat source
  

[/expand]

This is an urgent hotfix we are deploying to fix two issues with missions in New Frontiers. Please do read below, we have to be very careful doing hotfixes as we know they are disruptive and steam downloads are occasionally corrupting for some users. We apologize for the inconvenience for triggering these downloads on launch weekend, but we didn't want to wait on these are they are progression blockers for players.


Over the last two years we have noticed a number of users experiencing crashes related to steam downloads. Sometimes the game files are becoming corrupted when steam downloads the files, and this causes very unstable results ranging from crashes during startup, through to crashing opening chests or other things.

Note that we can't do anything to fix this directly, as it is a mixture of how steam downloads work and sometimes compounded by leftover mod files. We no longer recommend using the "verify files" for solving this as we have noticed steam appears to have changed how this works.

If you experience these issues, you should:

• Open the directory where steam has installed the game
  
• Uninstall the game via steam
  
• Take note of any files leftover, and let us know what these files are either in the forums, or on discord, or email our CEO ([email protected]).
  
• Delete any files leftover in the install folder
  
• Reinstall the game
  

We are trialing some major, but very complex, performance fixes targeting many of the causes of stuttering/hitching while moving around. This is an opt-in beta branch you can select in steam that will trigger a new download. Please try this out and let us know how it goes on the discord or on the forums. It has made a major difference for those of us internally who experience this problem, and we want to get player feedback in addition to our own testing before deploying to main branch.


A lot has changed if you haven't been keeping up with Icarus, here are some basic recommendations to make your journey start well:

• If you haven't played in the last nine months your original character may be missing. At the end of last year we migrated all character data to your local PC. We provided a migration service for several months but if you missed this window you may have to start again. To help out, when you begin Prometheus for the first time we've provided an option to start at Level 20, and at Level 10 on the Styx map.
  
• Dead bodies attract carnivores, so cleanup your kill quickly before it is attacked by hungry animals. This is especially true in areas where carnivores find it difficult to find other animals to eat.
  
• Animals will sometimes attack other animals. This can be useful, but it also might mean a panicking animal runs a dangerous enemy into you.
  
• Don't forget you can use the repair hammer to automatically upgrade stuff instead of having to pick it up first.
  
• If you have a steam cloud conflict that won't go away when you click the try again option, try starting the game. Often that completes the steam cloud synchronization and solves the issue.
  
• If your camera ends up in a weird position when you get on your mount, remove the saddle and add it back on to reset the camera position.
  
• Aluminum building tier has been fixed so that it is correctly equivalent to the stone tier, but much lighter to carry. Perfect for the arctic.
  
• Make sure you update your drivers to the latest, as Nvidia released a new driver specifically to support the New Frontiers launch.
  
• If you plan on hosting a game with more than two players in total, consider running a dedicated server especially if you are streaming or your computer is struggling. There is a lot of data going on with the game, so offloading some of the work to the dedicated server can help a great deal.
  
• If you want to try out our fixes for "hitching" or "stuttering" during gameplay, try out the build on experimental branch but be aware this branch may update often so it is not appropriate for those with slow download or download problems.
  

There are additional known issues that we are working on fixing ASAP. We apologize for these are we are working hard to get these and other bugs fixed as soon as we can. We are trying to balance doing hotfixes with disrupting players as well.

Some of the major ones include:

• Animals on outposts
  
• Voxel mining on dedicated servers sometimes stopping [WORKAROUND: Restart server]
  
• Some animals/players become floating in the air when a client on dedicated server. This requires us to change a few map files for maps and trigger a new build, so we will deploy this after the weekend
  
• Stuttering/hitching when moving around or rotating the camera [FIX: Try Experimental Beta Branch]
  

These fixes have been applied to both the main game and the experimental beta branch

• Fixed 'FRACTURE: MANHUNT' when you kill the boss, the quest step does not complete
  
• Fixed 'NOMAD: EXPLORATION' if you tell 'Daisy' to wait she will sometimes get stuck and will not move (you can kill her to skip the escort quest step)
  

Icarus: New Frontiers, the first expansion of the Icarus experience, has landed. It brings with it a new map, with all new biomes, mutated alien creatures, narrative missions (known as Operations) that further unveil the story and can are integrated into your Open World game, craftables, exotics, and more.

[h3]Icarus: First Cohort dropped prospectors into safe Earth-like terraformed zones. Icarus: New Frontiers will take you deep into new regions of Icarus where alien creatures and habitats survived but were altered by the terraforming process.[/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1648532/Icarus_New_Frontiers/

You may need to restart steam or verify files to trigger the New Frontiers update.

New Frontiers comes packed with new content and a few surprises to discover:

• A brand new map PROMETHEUS, with three new biomes - the searingly hot volcanic region, murky swamplands and eerie alien grasslands
  
• 10+ mutated alien creatures. The terraforming process drastically impacted the local wildlife, and while it didn’t kill the creatures as it did in other zones, it terribly mutated them into the species you face now. Dreadwings, Lava Hunters, Needlers, Dracs, Drifters - their nicknames only tell half the story
  
• Exclusive to this new zone of Icarus are the new Red Exotics, found in exotic flora around the map
  
• A New series of Operations (narrative missions) play out in a sequenced story, leading you on a gradually darkening mystery. See below for details on how these compliment your Open World experience
  
• New mission logic and technology, allowing you to launch any mission, big or small, from your Open World. This will be retrofitted to some of the Olympus and Styx map missions in our future Hypatia update
  
• 100+ new items to craft, deploy and use across Icarus, along with five new raw resources generating a range of new recipes and tiers: Obsidian, Scoria, Crystalised Miasma, and more
  
• With this new currency come 30+ new items in the orbital workshop for you to purchase and a new system which allows you to purchase these from the surface via cargo pods
  
• New extreme weather events for each biome, reflective of the atmospheric conditions of each environment
  

[h3]Continuing with the trend we’ve maintained for almost two years now, we’ll continue to update both the base game and the New Frontiers expansion with content, fixes and new areas to explore. [/h3]

New Frontiers is a paid expansion. Check out the Icarus sale page for launch discounts and bundles - including a discount on the Icarus base game if you want to invite friends to take on Icarus with you.


Icarus originally launched only with time-limited ‘session-based' missions where you could earn exotics currency to spend in the orbital Workshop. Then, by popular demand, we added Open World mode that allowed for permanent bases and full map exploration. We also added simpler, dynamic 'SMPL3’ missions to Open World mode.



Beginning with New Frontiers, we are combing the best of both game modes. These will also be added to the base game in the upcoming Hypatia update.

For the first time, our new map PROMETHEUS allows players to follow a storyline through a chained series of missions in the Open World mode. We are calling these 'Operations' and all can be embarked on from your permanent Open World base. Rewards are earned without having to return to orbit in your dropship.



Some game modes allow you to mine and earn rare exotics, that allow you to research and craft unique gear in the orbital Workshop.

Currently, on Prometheus in Open World you can earn exotics by completing operations. You can also gain exotics the old way by launching missions from Orbit and going through the normal extraction process. In the upcoming patch (the Hypatia patch) we will add a way to extract exotics in Open World mode on all maps.



You can still choose to play the Operations as one-off timed Missions if you like.

In addition to all this, there is also the Outposts game mode where you can purchase small scale persistent worlds without mission content, exotics or threats where you can focus on building.


Icarus can be a fairly demanding game. We have made many performance optimizations to the game since launch, and this work is an ongoing priority.



A known issue frequently mentioned by players is occasional stuttering or hitching as you move through the world. This is caused by things such as caves and voxels loading and unloading in the background as you enter new areas.

This is not a simple problem to solve and takes many small adjustments to see sometimes negligible gains - but as the result of many weeks of work we believe the stuttering situation has been vastly improved in many circumstances. However, given the scope of some of these changes we want to make sure it is thoroughly tested before making it part of an update distributed to everyone.

[h3]We already have fixed some of the related hitching issues and we have a build deployed on experimental branch that you can try out, if you would like to see how it runs for you. You can access this in the builds, under experimental. Please backup your data before doing this. We will deploy this to main branch once it has received more extensive testing and it is confirmed stable.[/h3]

We do several types of game update: free weekly updates (we’ve done 90 weeks in row so far!), occasional bigger named updates (like the previous Galileo and upcoming Hypatia update), and paid expansions (like New Frontiers).



For example, you’ll see the Prometheus map still includes some zones the UDA and Group 15 still have to unlock in future Operations.

The upcoming free Hypatia update delivers on more of the features in our roadmap, including reworking some of the missions on our current Olympus and Styx maps to work in Open World mode, an Orbital Exchange system for your gear and new items in a Biolab Research Lab. These apply to the base game as well as New Frontiers.



Next week’s regular weekly update will add a Metal Wind Turbine and wind power, plus any fixes and updates for the Prometheus map.

For players who experience hitching and want to help us evaluate our progress, we have made the latest build available on a separate Experimental Branch in Steam. To access the Experimental Branch, in your Steam Library, right-click on Icarus, select Betas and Experimental. While every effort is made to make this version of the game as stable as the default one, the changes are very cutting-edge and may not yet have had thorough testing so there is added risk you may encounter issues.




There is a lot to learn in New Frontiers, so join our Discord to share experiences and ask questions.

If you’re returning to Icarus after a while, check out this helpful guide from one of our regular community content creators Fortizar.

[previewyoutube]ICARUS - New Frontiers Expansion Introduction [/previewyoutube]



A lot has changed if you haven't been keeping up with Icarus, here are some basic recommendations to make your journey start well:

• If you haven't played in the last nine months your original character may be missing. At the end of last year we migrated all character data to your local PC. We provided a migration service for several months but if you missed this window you may have to start again. To help out, when you begin Prometheus for the first time we've provided an option to start at Level 20, and at Level 10 on the Styx map.
  
• Dead bodies attract carnivores, so cleanup your kill quickly before it is attacked by hungry animals. This is especially true in areas where carnivores find it difficult to find other animals to eat.
  
• Animals will sometimes attack other animals. This can be useful, but it also might mean a panicking animal runs a dangerous enemy into you.
  
• Don't forget you can use the repair hammer to automatically upgrade stuff instead of having to pick it up first.
  
• If you have a steam cloud conflict that won't go away when you click the try again option, try starting the game. Often that completes the steam cloud synchronization and solves the issue.
  
• If your camera ends up in a weird position when you get on your mount, remove the saddle and add it back on to reset the camera position.
  
• Aluminum building tier has been fixed so that it is correctly equivalent to the stone tier, but much lighter to carry. Perfect for the arctic.
  
• Make sure you update your drivers to the latest, as Nvidia released a new driver specifically to support the New Frontiers launch.
  
• If you plan on hosting a game with more than two players in total, consider running a dedicated server especially if you are streaming or your computer is struggling. There is a lot of data going on with the game, so offloading some of the work to the dedicated server can help a great deal.
  
• If you want to try out our fixes for "hitching" or "stuttering" during gameplay, try out the build on experimental branch but be aware this branch may update often so it is not appropriate for those with slow download or download problems.
  

We have prepared a guide that you can download to go through how to move your prospect from being locally hosted, to being hosted a dedicated server. This will dramatically improve performance. Note there is still some fixes to come for dedicated servers.


We had planned on a very cool Twitch drop, allowing you to earn a full set of an exclusive bone armor by supporting your favorite streamers. Unfortunately, Valve told us they could not allow us to have Steam keys to give away on another site unless we also give them away to Steam customers. As Steam customers are 100% of our customers, that would mean everyone would get a key. We aren't really sure what to do, but instead we will be crowd-sourcing ideas about how to give this away instead on our Discord. So hop in there and let us know. Maybe we might just give them away to everyone if we can beat our max Twitch viewer count on steamdb?



[expand]
note: This list simply includes the commits from the last week, changes that are part of New Frontiers have not been included.

• Fixing Quest Typo
  
• Adjusting Miasmic Modifier so it doesn't get added every few seconds
  
• Fixed T3 Masonry bench not having the T3 Masonry Bench recipe set, preventing crafting of new Brick building sets.
  
• Fixing up Frozen Ore UI
  
• Added specific dynamic quest rewards for the unique fruit and vegetables, rather than a single reward for both.
  
• Fixed Electroshock being 10x as much damage as other elemental effects, due to high tick rate but same damage. Have reduced tick rate and damage to do the same overall dps.
  
• Fixed water bodies not receiving the correct network settings.
  
• FAdded validation to rep policy table to warn if policies target classes don't have bReplicates set as it can potentially cause issues with the policy not propagating to child classes.
  
• Adding Seeker Trailer to Title Screen
  
• Fixed floating voxels and foliage across purple and green quads and moved floating deep ore deposit, prometheus
  
• Fixed Obsidian Arm armor being the same as it's chest armor, setup stats for the arm armor.
  
• Disable custom weather for quests in open world
  
• Added extra icons to the different 'New Game' buttons and map selection buttons to show what kind of content is available. Added one-time popup when clicking on 'New Game' button that describes new 'Outpost' mechanics introduced in New Frontiers. Added bold text on top right corner of screen making it more obvious if the player is currently selecting 'Open World', 'Missions', or 'Outposts'
  
• Enabled CPU Access flag on the various SlimeTrail static meshes
  
• Fix orbital laser strike effects are not correctly replicating to clients
  
• Swapping Map Icon from mission object to quest, as the icon was being culled due to relvency settings
  
• PRO_Story_6: Fixed replication on non-deployable cave assets, respawned cave assets that are unable to have replication added easily
  
• PRO_Story_6: Fixed decal orientation, and decal and light respawning on reload.
  
• Shifted Story6s cave lights and decals into a separate IcarusActor so it reloads and replicates correctly. Increased lighting intensity values for some of Story6s cave lights so they show up better in the darkness
  
• Adding RepGraph Policy for Orbital Lazer and setting up replicated variables so the effect plays correctly on clients
  
• Fixed player reward records not reloading previously received red exotics counts
  
• Adding Collision to bone armor packaged mesh
  
• Fixed reloading preventing miasmic debuff not removing on death.
  
• Reduced the titanium cost of the Encrypted Satellite Communcator, added some electronics to be representitive of the device's tech level.
  
• Adding fixes for mission 4 & 6 mission blockers, after spawning AI and logging out, missions become uncompleteable
  
• Rebalanced in-world exotics availability.
  
• Red exotic collectables have reduced rewards (harvested exotics have the same rewards).
  
• Reduced chance of red exotics collectables to appear to 20% from 25%.
  
• Cleaning raw red exotics now grants 2 red exotics. With the above changes this means that harvesting exotics yields twice as many rewards, while other sources provide the same amount.
  
• Noxious Crust that grants exotics of either kind now grant 5 instead of 10 (universal 5 across all resources per Noxious Crust).
  
• Increased spawn rate of Purple Exotic voxels, now spawns at 10% chance rather than a flat 10 per mission.
  
• Doubled yield of Exotics from Purple Exotic voxels.
  
• Fixed game mode using the wrong value when checking if exotic plants had been spawned on startup. This was causing exotic plants to be duplicated each time the prospect was reloaded.
  
• Fixed issue where researching new workshop items through the OEI would fail
  
• Increased Aluminum building tier to match Stone, causing it to only take damage in the same storms as stone buildings.
  
• Red Exotic Plants suffer from fatigue and their growth rate decreases every harvest by 100%
  
• Generating Enum based on farming seeds row to use rows in code correctly
  
• Tomatoes and Beans are no longer rotated so that their stakes are off the ground when planted in Crop Plots. D_FarmingSeeds rows can now specify the kind of random rotation they'd like to apply to visible mesh when planted
  
• Adding in a plant fatigue for all plants, each harvest will increase the effectiveness of the plant fatigue modifier by 10% for all normal plants and 100% for exotics, the fatigue modifier reduces plant growth and yeild, making it beneficial to replant plants every 4 or so harvests
  
• Bump the recommended nVidia driver version to 537.13 Game Ready
  
• Adding in new map images for the Prometheus Map
  

[/expand]

Week 89 is here and - with only one week until New Frontiers - we’ve decided to do a week of focusing on Quality of Life improvements and introducing some new benches that allow for all the new content to come next week.

A bunch of QoL improvements recommended by our community have been added, including new keybinds and adjustments to blueprints.

On top of this, we’ve added three new benches - a Tier 3 Masonry Bench, a Tier 3 Forge and a Tier 4 Foundry (which are the higher tier versions of the Tier 2 Anvil).

These provide a more streamlined progression for the items previously on the lower tier variations of these benches, and allow for simpler consolidation to save floor space as you progress through the levels.

Finally, the New Frontiers Gameplay Trailer premieres this weekend on YouTube, and you can sign up to watch with us at the link below.





[h3]The New Frontiers Gameplay Trailer premieres on YouTube this weekend, Saturday the 19th at 6pm EDT.[/h3]

Just like last week's ‘The Seeker’ premiere, we’ll be on Discord answering questions and watching along with you - so come join us!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Before we launch New Frontiers, we wanted to spend this week making some QoL adjustments that the community has asked for.

• We’ve added a ‘Loot All/Take All’ key-bind option for you to map in the controls menu
  
• We removed XP debt upon death this also removes any outstanding XP debt that remained from a death before this change was implemented
  
• The ‘drop’ keybind will now default to ‘unbound’ rather than Q, but can still be set manually. You can still drop items by dragging them to the drop box in your UI
  
• Building pieces can now be unlocked as ‘Building Pack Kits’ rather than individual items. This will save your blueprint points for other unlocks, only requiring three per building tier now for three ‘packs’
  
• If a blueprint provides multiple recipes, the UI will now show all the recipes that it will unlock
  
• Farming and Harvesting XP have been added to the new farming system changes from last week
  
• All T2 and above arrows now craft in packs of five and higher tiers of arrows have had their costs reduced to balance against this
  
• Fur has received a balance, with the amount found on aggressive creatures reduced, and increased on passive creatures. This is because of the lack of recipes requiring fur, and the abundance of engagements with aggressive creatures leading to players stockpiling so much of it.
  
• We’ve added an alternate ‘Steel Bloom’ recipe that uses charcoal
  
• We’ve added more seed packets for seeds which were currently missing from the workshop pool
  

This week we’ve added three new benches in preparation for the new content to come in New Frontiers, and also to provide a consolidation route for benches as you progress up the tiers.

These are the T3 Masonry Bench, The T3 Forge and T4 Foundry. The Forge and Foundry are the higher tier variations of the Anvil found in T2.

All of these benches contain the recipes of the previous benches so, as you build the new versions, you can deconstruct previous iterations to save room in your base. This also means we have shuffled some recipes around to make this more streamlined and easier to navigate.

The new tiers of benches are:

Tier 2 Masonry Bench → Tier 3 Masonry Bench

Tier 2 Anvil → Tier 3 Forge → Tier 4 Foundry

The Tier 3 Masonry Bench will focus on brickwork, and while this week it only contains the recipes from the current Tier 2 bench, from next week it will include the brand new building items that come with New Frontiers. This means that once the Tier 3 Masonry Bench is built, you can scrap your Tier 2 variation as all recipes will be available on this option.

The Tier 3 Forge will now hold all the recipes for tools, shields, bows, crossbows, arrows and bolts that were unlockable at Tier 3 but craftable on the Tier 2 anvil. It will also have all the Tier 2 recipes, but the Tier 2 anvil will no longer have any recipe for an item that is above Tier 2.

The Tier 3 Forge requires coal or charcoal to fuel while you craft, and also needs to be placed outdoors to allow for ventilation.

The Tier 4 Foundry is the pinnacle of tool crafting on Icarus, and has all the Tier 2 and Tier 3 recipes of the Anvil and Forge, along with all the Tier 4 recipes that were previously available on the anvil also.

This is a large machine, and requires a lot of space. Because it requires electricity to run, it also needs to be placed inside, and a strong power source is necessary to keep it running.

This new system allows for you deconstruct lower tier benches as you craft the higher tier ones, alleviating any issues with the growing need for floor space, but also allowing for the evolution of items in your base as your level grows. Ideally, a base running high level electronics wouldn’t also be housing a basic anvil, and these new benches allow for that progression.

With the addition of these new benches, the blueprints tree has also been altered slightly to reflect the shift. You may notice some gaps, but these will be filled next week as all the New Frontiers content is added to the tech trees.





We are now less than a week away from the New Frontiers expansion and the excitement in studio and among the community is palpable. For those of you who haven’t caught up on what’s to come, here’s our announcement blog to check out.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1149460/view/3684558162502822183

Originally posted by author

[h3]If you like what we’re doing with Icarus, and want to support our continued development, consider purchasing one of our DLCs for a few dollars, it would mean a lot to us.[/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2445280/Icarus_Interior_Decorations_Pack/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1995690/Icarus_Styx_Map__Missions_Pack/





New Content
[expand]

• Setting up T3 Masonary Bench, Assets, Talents, Recipes, Icons, Animations
  
• T3 Masonary Bench Proxy Meshes Fixed Collision
  
• Added T3 Masonary Bench Proxy Meshes, Textures & Material
  
• Setting up T3/4 Anvil Benches, Assets, Talents, Recipes, Icons, Animations (Dev Locked for now)
  
• T4 Anvil - fix and reimport of output proxies to correct position and avoid stacking
  
• T4 Anvil - added destructible mesh
  
• Adding Charcoal steel bloom alternate recipes
  
• Adjusting all arrow and bolt recipes to craft 5 arrows or bolts, reducing recipes cost for the higher tier arrows and bolts
  
• Removing Tool / Weapon Recipes from the Machining Bench and Fabricator and placing them on the T3/T4 anvil Benches
  
• Removed unused references on T3 anvil destructable mesh
  
• Adding T4 Anvil bench impact sound, start / loop / end event, BP imp and data table entry
  
• Using parent class logic to replicate audio for anvil t3 instead of creating new logic. Simplified BP setup
  
• Set up start / loop / stop event to play when Anvil T3 is activated. Set replication to play for clients
  
• Added text for Forge, Foundry, and Masonry benches
  
• Updated name of the T3 Masonry Bench to Advanced Masonry Bench to differentiate it from the T2 bench
  

[/expand]

Fixed/QoL
[expand]

• Update normal shovel description and flavor text to match new Stone Shovel description and flavor text, which better communicates its uses
  
• Updated the Supply and Demand talent to apply to crafted bolts as well as arrows
  
• Updated credits page
  
• Fur Rebalance: Significantly increased the amount of fur granted by passive creatures and significantly reduced the amount of fur granted by hostile creatures. This affects both skinning an the skinning bench. The aim is to allow players to gather fur earlier in the game easier, while reducing the abundance of fur as you progress through the tech tree
  
• Large deer now have their own loot distinct from regular sized deer, yielding more leather, fur and increased chances of gamey meat
  
• Adding in Additional Farming Seed Packets for thouse that weren't present in the workshop
  
• Enabled recipe set view for blueprint tooltips
  
• Cleaned up contents of blueprint tooltips
  
• Adding XP events for planting, harvesting, watering and fertilizing crops
  
• Combined building blueprints, refunding the existing blueprint points spent. Building sets are now split into 3 groups: Base, Advanced and Trim. Base Sets have beams, floors, walls, angled walls, ramps and doors. Advanced Sets have roof corners, half pitches and half pieces. Trim Sets have railing, trap doors, windows and ladders. All variants of the building piece type are now unlocked within the same building set
  
• LIVEWIRE: Reduced the spawn rate of smaller creatures to help new players get used to the game
  
• AGRICULTURE: Supply Stockpile has been renamed to ACCUMULATON
  
• ACCUMULATION: Reduced resource requirements across all objectives, but particularly cooked meat
  
• Fixed workshop gear with a large number of stats having parts of the tooltip UI not appear correctly
  
• Tweaked building sets, moving items into trim sets if it makes sense for the set. Renamed some trim sets to better communicate their aesthetic
  
• Removing Experience Debt, players no longer gain experience debt when they die, any existing debt is removed
  
• Watering Can now only grants experience once per water action and only if a crop plot required water
  
• Added new crop plot modifier icons
  
• Added UI to the blueprint tooltip to show if the unlocked blueprint recipe shown is for multiple output (eg arrows and bolts)
  
• Tweaked distribution of outside voxel resources, reducing salt and oxite, while increasing resources favored to each biome
  
• Setting up carpet data entry that was missed for player footsteps. All rugs will now sound like carpet
  
• Fixed Tomato and Potato decay setting to correctly grant spoiled plants
  
• Drop Key is now unbound by default
  
• Fixed Bean Seed Packet giving Squash
  
• Fixed Typo in Fertlize Crop tooltip when viewing crops with fertilizer
  
• Added action reminder when holding Fertilizer
  
• Fixed Wild Coffee granting Cocoa seeds
  
• Added to dynamic quest rewards: Shields, Seeds and Shovels
  
• Updated existing farming related dynamic rewards to use seeds instead of grown plants
  

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand]

• Lava Hunter Arena, Clean Up Landscape and Added Few Rocks in Purple Quad on Prometheus
  
• Fix damage numbers and audio feedback sometimes incorrectly presenting damage as crit or hardened.
  
• Spawn damage numbers function was re-checking crit status of hits for itself, and in some cases e.g. DOT effects would do this incorrectly - instead we now just pass it the crit area value from the damage packet which has already been calculated.
  
• This change only has a cosmetic effect
  
• Bulk commit of updated thatch buildables
  
• Fixed Ground Collision in Swamp & Floating Rocks in Cave on Blue/Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding Niagra system propogation to NPCTrailComponent,
  
• Adding first pass WIP VFX for slug slime trail, updating NPCTrailComponent_Slug with correct niagra system reference
  
• Updating mission communicator overlay for priority missions
  
• ProStory5: Increase spawn rate of creatures during defense phase, added swamp slug
  
• ProStory5: Fixed base being unable to be interacted with during final phase
  
• Fixed priority mission overlay appearing while already on a mission
  
• Added background blur to priority mission overlay to help separate it from the dynamic mission buttons behind it
  
• Final pass on slug trail VFX, culling setup.l
  
• Fixed issues with future collect and deliver item missions that require a stat on the item failing to find the correct item in the players or delivery targets inventories
  
• Setting up App Ids and DLC Flags for Outposts 4, 6, 7, 8 and assigning to talents
  
• Small update to subwave sound. Slightly less distortion
  
• Adding sound of the suit subwave harmonic generator intermodulator to play before dialogue event so the dialogue feels like its reacting to it
  
• Imprrovements to lava lake audio when in a cave
  
• Smooth landscape near Lava Hunter Arena, Added Macro IMP Meshes to Artic & Fixed Grass Floating in the Grasslands on Green/Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adjusting displacement on slug trail material
  
• Updated slug slime trail RAO texture with minor seam fixed
  
• Adding the best sounding PM to the fortifications. Sounds less hollow than wood floor
  
• Adding optional curve to control trail fade out in BP_NPCTrailComponent, will default to PercentageTimeLeft if bool unchecked. Adding curve for slug slime trail
  
• Adding a more appropriate sounding PM to wood railing
  
• Fixing narrative music looping issue
  
• Adding gasfly explosion to play for clients
  
• Fix search area isn't shrinking as clues are discovered on PRO_Story6_Traitor
  
• Dialogue retiming for mission 6
  
• Added the updated verisons of the stairs and half ramp thatch pieces
  
• Fix shader parameter names, reversed normal map and highlighting for hunting trails
  
• Adjustments and improvements to the orbital laser kaboom. Adding bwaaaaah
  
• Lava Hunter Arena, Blended Rocks into landscape in Purple Quad on Prometheus
  
• Orbital Strike vfx iteration
  
• Added dev cheats for growing crops instantly
  
• Added several Wall pieces for Thatch buildable rework
  
• Fix hunting trails highlighting on clients and trails moving/resetting every save/load if entire quest objective not complete
  
• Added several reworked thatch roof buildable pieces
  
• Added several more wall pieces for Thatch Buildable Re-work
  
• Adding Map Masks for the OW Selection Screen to tidy up the Drop Point Selection View
  
• Added spawn rules to outposts to prevent multiple apex predators (such as bears or polar bears) from spawning in the area, the same as other play modes
  
• Update gas flyer loot bag mesh
  
• Fixing issue with texture groups for the Needler
  
• File name correction of the Needler Statue - Stone
  
• Resubmitting Komodo Variation textures and mesh due to wrong file names
  
• Submitting Komodo Variation Statue - mesh and textures
  
• Fixed bug where Slug's AimAssist sphere collider was including bounds of trail component.
  
• MegaTreeAudioVolume collision is now configured in Constructor instead of PostInitializeComponents.
  
• Slightly increased max spawn distance on Story5's swarm spawners.
  
• Remove water-type navigation modifiers from North-East swamp area in PROM
  
• Fixed Collision Near Mission Cave in the Grasslands on Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added Outpost 006 Minimap Data and created new in game map for Outpost 006
  
• Added Outpost 004 Minimap Data and Created New In Game Map for Outpost 004
  
• added sk meshes, missing textures and materials for larkwell armour
  
• Added new weather debuff icons
  
• Replaced priority mission border background
  
• Updated Prometheus In Game Map to reflect recent world changes, Prometheus
  
• Renamed Polar Bear Pelt to Arctic Pelt in preparation for new creature releases with New Frontiers
  
• Renamed Polar Bear Armor items, blueprints and talent to Arctic Armor
  
• Small adjustment to subwave generator before dialogue
  
• Adding additional BP imp to stop the G15 scanner from playing again if it's already activated. Also delay to dialogue line that interrupted important moment
  
• Added Outpost 007 Minimap Data and Created New In Game Map for Outpost 007
  
• Lowering the predator bird swoop whistle by 2db
  
• Fixed item rewards from dried trees in the lava to ensure they grant a small amount of wood when harvested with an axe
  
• Updating lava hunter event min max to be the same as the spacializers. Increased distance of roar spacial
  
• Setting up Exploration Missions for Prometheus
  
• Batch commit of thatch buildable rework assets
  
• Add a large scale damage component for the oribital laser
  
• Added the ability to spawn creatures with bonus levels as part of normal swarm logic
  
• PRO_Story_5: Added additional levels to spawns, as this is in a lower level area, slightly reduced spawn rates
  
• Adding in second version of the egg as well as materials and fixed main egg UV problem with a reimport of the correct UVSet mesh
  
• PRO_Story_5: Tweaked spawning parameters to improve mission performance, minimal impact on gameplay
  
• Added drop ship locations for Prometheus story missions
  
• Enabled new particle effects for Lava Hunter's Earth Splitter attack.
  
• Reduced base health of Lava Hunter, slightly increase per-player additional health.
  
• Fixed Lava Hunter's hard points not working.
  
• Cooldown between stumble anims caused when dealing damage to Lava Hunter in limping state increased.
  
• Improved Lava Hunter navigation ability when target not on navmesh.
  
• Increased damage of Lava Hunter ranged attack projectiles.
  
• Increased max range of Lava Flyer explosion damage.
  
• Fixed Lava Hunter eggs expanding infinitely for clients.
  
• Added IK to BlueBack
  
• Removed DropShip 6 from Outpost 008
  
• Datawise missions are now opt in, you will need to make sure to setup the mission correctly for it to be triggered in open world
  
• Updating prospect talent UI to display 'mission unavaible' if a mission is not triggerable on open world
  
• Rewording Achievements to future proof
  
• Prometheus: Update new canteen and oxygen tanks in the workshop to cost red exotics
  
• Rebalance Larkwell Oxygen tank modifier to grant higher health regeneration and some exposure resist instead of movement speed
  
• Adjusting Iceholm & Holdfast App Id's for DLC Flags
  
• Added DM supports meshes INT wood For Buildable Rework
  
• Removed Cliff Actors from persistant level, Readded the dropship spawns and Respawn Pods, Outpost 008
  
• Adding Quest Marker for Swamp Construction Prometheus Quest
  
• Ducking interior dropship sequence audio when dialogue is playing to allow clearer and more audible dialogue playback
  
• Removed DM supports meshes with wrong names For Buildable Rework
  
• Added RoofPeak_CapEnd_Thatch reworked buildable piece to project
  
• Updating Cultivations to have a forceset functions for prebuild structure setup
  
• Updating farm present in Story Mission 5 so it has grown plants
  
• Added Outpost 008 Minimap Data and Created New In Game Map for Outpost 008
  
• Added infographic icons to scoria building piece icons
  
• Removed All Respawn DropShip from Outpost 008
  
• Added infographics icons to scoria pitch buillding piece icons
  
• Removed All DropShip from Outpost 008
  
• Updating Feature Levels for the new outposts
  
• Fixed a few typos in highlightable and st_umg
  
• Replacing depreciated niagra modules on NS_WaterSplash. Adding NS_LavaSplash, hooked up in BP_PlayerEffectsComponent to play when jumping into lava. No longer plays water splash effect when jumping into lava
  
• Adjusting the blueback footstep spacial curve to be a little more audible over longer distance to assist with mission location. Also adjusting dialogue for Daisy mission Fail
  
• Fixed deployable preview for Organic Residue Cleanser
  
• Updating Drop Locations for Prometheus Construction and Research Missions
  
• Fixed Riverbanks & Cleanup on Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Dialogue timing adjustment and lowering broodling attack sounds and spacial slightly to avoid volumes becoming overwhelming when surrounded
  
• Updated Blueprint Tooltip to prevent the Crafted At section from overlapping it's icon when the name is too long, this is both for future benches and translated text
  
• Setting up Prometheus Construction mission and enabling for NF
  
• Regenerated Visual Height Map Textures to fix blurry heightmaps, Prometheus
  
• Added shadow geo for reworked thatch buildables
  
• Added Outpost 008 Heightmap Data and Created New heightmap for the In Game Map for Outposts 008, 007, 006 and 004
  
• Adding Quest Marker for Swamp Research Prometheus Quest
  
• Added DM supports meshes Glass For Buildable Rework
  
• Removed DM supports meshes with wrong names For Buildable Rework
  
• Adding Notifiers for Extracted Item, Planted Seed and Crop Matured
  
• Setting up and Unlocking Prometheis Extraction Mission
  
• Fixing issue iwth being unable to unlock heavy obsidian armor
  
• Refreshed out of date D_Ballistic data table
  
• Adding in Quest Marker Locations for Arctic Extraction Mission
  
• Adding new Prometheus Research Mission
  
• Adding new crafting notifier subsystem
  
• Added ability to disable recording of Ballistic Actors via bDisableRecorderComponent flag inside D_Ballistic. Lava Hunter spit particles and all other pooled ballistics are no longer recorded. Lava Flyer spawn count per egg now scales with nearby players. SpawnAIAtCursor cheat now takes in an optional AI level parameter. BTTask_PerformAction_SpitAttack now correctly pools ballistics if required. Movement during LavaHunter_RetreatAndPowerUp action should now handle areas with no navigation better. Fixed bug where Lava Hunter wasn't playing it's heavy hit react / power up action when entering it's second phase of combat
  
• Fixed Cliff Actor sticking through cave in Lava Biome and Fixed Seams in Geothermal pools, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Further improvements to orbital laser destruction
  
• Adding very small cooldown to transport pods to avoid double ups of playback on clients
  
• Setting up Bone Armor Twitch Drops and unlocking bone armor
  
• Added gasflyer statue stone static mesh, textures and material
  
• Small DLC dialogue delay
  
• Update story prospect names to match biomes the mission takes place in
  
• Shorten duration of orbital laser damage
  
• Fix Story mission faction selection and add datatable validation to ensure these do not play additional random dialogue
  
• Added commenting into 'GetSeedRow' to show that if the stat is 0 then the seed has no type to it
  
• Fixed Needler Alert Widget and Healthbar disappearing when attacking
  
• Adding Extermination mission to prometheus
  
• Adding common hunt mission
  
• Fixed issue where abandoned missions would show as completed in the on-prospect mission board
  
• Fixed a seam between landscape and geothermal pool and removed voxels in the pesistent level, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Changed name of exotic node spawn cheat to not conflict with other SpawnAI cheats in search box
  
• Added cheat to spawn exotic nodes at cursor
  
• Updated all cave Template on Prometheus
  
• Added a keybinding to loot everything in an inventory (defaulted to Q)
  
• Added SM_BLD_Wall_Windowframe_Glass, SM_BLD_Wall_Doorframe_Glass, SM_BLD_Wall_Win_DBL_Glass_L, SM_BLD_Wall_Win_DBL_Glass_R DM Meshes, AO Masks & Set Up Materials for Buildable Rework Investigation
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Cliff Pass and Updated in Game Map to reflect these changes, Outpost 008
  
• Gate brambles overlap checks to server side only
  
• Remove instanced foilage actor from persistent level
  
• Adding time to prometheus missions
  
• Fixed being able to drop items while using orbital loadout request
  
• Adding rock dog explode attack audio and event. Not hooked up yet until new VFX are in
  
• Recreate water spawning rule
  
• Added art assets for ITM_Bio_Spray A-D
  
• Replacing the placeholder projectiles on the StoneJaw spit attack with projectiles that spawn lava spots on the ground, added entries for the modifier used for the spots
  
• Small adjustment / addition to increase the length of slug gas attack
  
• Fixing issue where the red workshop knife and blue workshop knife stats where switched
  
• Adjusted Burn, Electroshock, Miasma & Freeze modifier debuff stats, damage, descriptions
  
• Added new spawn rule for spawning near water
  
• Fixing Workshop Red Exotics text and image not appearring correctly when researching / purchasing items
  
• Fixing the timing of orbital laser damage
  
• Activating missing exotic nodes in prometheus
  
• Very small adjustment to blueback idle spawn rate and spacial setting
  
• Lava Hunter spawn count is now scaled by nearby alive players.
  
• Lava Hunter will now stop laying eggs mid-way through lay action if maximum nearby children count is reached.
  
• Un-hatched Lava Hunter eggs should now be counted in nearby children calculations.
  
• Lava Hunter eggs are now valid AITargetables and can be attacked by nearby NPCs that are hostile to them
  
• Fixed missing material reference in M_LavaBomber_Wings
  
• Predator birds will no longer dive bomb players inside shelter. Fixed predator birds not correctly tracking target when diving. Predator bird's dive target is now cleared periodically instead of persisting. Increased Predator Bird's melee attack radius. Disabled debug drawing of spawn EQS in PROM Story 5 mission
  
• Mark sickle only brambles as Resource_Node interactables
  
• Added SM_BLD_Floor_Quarter_Glass, SM_BLD_Wall_Half_Glass, DM Meshes, AO Masks & Set Up Materials for Buildable Rework Investigation
  
• Fixing Solarpanel step, chemistry bench step and seamp creature step in prometheus research mission
  
• Fixing up typo's in prometheus construction mission
  
• Adding post process material. Added post process to BigBoom, Will apply PP when within orbital laser AOE
  
• Added General Resorces PFS to Purple Quad Swamp to Allow Generation of Resources, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding the sound of watering and feeding mounts, events and BP entry
  
• adjusting directional filtering for blueback footsteps for better clarity during mission
  
• Swapped General Resorces PFS to Purple Quad to Allow Generation of Resources, Purple Quad and Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Cliff Pass and Decal Painting, Outpost 008
  
• Rename Swamp Stryder to just Stryder, for better recognition and flow
  
• Fix typo in Yes Chef! accolade
  
• Submitting Crocodile Statue - Stone - mesh and textures
  
• Bombers no longer agro untill attacked in Pro Story 6
  
• Added a light source to G15 Camp in Pro Story 6
  
• Adding additional quest steps to Pro Story 6
  
• Adding loot items in various base locations in Pro Story 6
  
• Updated Sledgehammer recipes, ensuring they use tier appropriate materials and consistent material costs
  
• Added Miasmic Sickle to tech tree
  
• PRO_Story_5: Remove duplicate crop plots from the prebuilt base
  
• Correct rifle/pistol ammo payloads for cold steel and iron wood
  
• Adding new modifier for the gas flyers, tweaking payload radius values and color for trail and explosion for use with the swamp variant
  

[/expand]

Week Eighty Eight is here and with the New Frontiers expansion only two weeks away we have a lot to talk about.

The feature of the week is the revamped farming system, following on from our community discussion a couple of weeks ago. This changes how you interact with crop plots, introduces a more robust early-game farming system and adds five new items to support these changes.

We’re also calling for feedback on a proposed ‘arachnophobia mode’, so if you are someone who suffers from this (or know someone who does), we want to hear your thoughts on our proposed ideas in the comments.

Finally, if you haven’t already heard, ‘The Seeker’ - the newest installment in our live action documentary series - premieres this weekend on YouTube so go sign up today.

Originally posted by author

[h3]'The Seeker' is our newest chapter in the Icarus documentary series, and it premieres this Saturday August 12th at 6pm EDT. Come join us by signing up below.[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



A few weeks back we asked for feedback on some proposed changes to the farming system, and this week we’re implementing them with some adjustments made.

The most impactful change is how players interact with crop plots, which previously had their own UI, but now are interacted with in-world just as you would any flora found in the ground.

This means that crops can now be harvested by sickle as well as by hand, allowing you to gain the boost provided when using this tool.

This new system requires the new ‘Seed’ item we’ve created for each plant which acts like a deployable item. You can place these into crop plots from your hotbar, along with fertilizer which can be applied the same way. Crop plots can still be watered as they were before, so this process hasn’t changed.

Farming Talents are also now applied at a different step in the process, no longer when crafting a crop plot but rather when you place a seed in your crop plot. Crop plots now also auto-reseed, allowing you to plant a seed once and then reap the harvest when it is fully grown, while not interrupting the growth cycle.

Originally posted by author

[h3]Existing Crop Plots will be converted to the new system, and will be seeded with anything that was growing. Power and Water connections will need to be reconnected. If you have farming talents you will want to reseed these to get the bonuses as talents no longer craft alterations on to the crop plot BUT instead apply when a farmer plants a seed. Any inventory items inside will be placed in bag on top of the crop plot to be retrieved. [/h3]

These farming changes come with a bunch of items to support the improved system.

Seeds - one for each of the different plant types which can be gathered when harvesting resources. The chance of these being gathered is improved when using a sickle.

Watering Can (T2) - This can be used to water multiple crop plots at the same time.

Stone Shovel (T1) - Shovels can be used on grass/dirt/mud to spawn a dirt mound. Dirt mounds are the T1 crop plot alternative so you can get into farming straight away (this also means you can put plants almost anywhere).

Metal Shovel (T2) - It's behavior has been adjusted so it can be used to spawn dirt mounds.

Aeroponic Crop Plot (Workshop) - This is a workshop version of the crop plot with extra farming bonuses.





Dirt Mounds are a new addition to the farming system which introduces a simple version to the early game, rather than requiring players to wait until Tier 2 to access crop plots.

These can be created using either the Stone Shovel at Tier 1 or Metal Shovel at Tier 2, and allow you to plant seeds directly into the ground.

Because the soil you’re planting into is ‘infertile soil’, this does reduce crop growth speeds by 50%, but it provides a valuable option for generating food early in the game or for decorating.

All farming talents are applied to Dirt Mounds just as they are crop plots, as the change to when talents are applied allows seeds being planted in Dirt Mounds to receive the same perks.

The most noticeable difference is these will not reseed such as crop plots will, and when harvested, will need to be re-dug to be planted again.





With the new seeds, come new recipes.

We have five new food items you can create, three for consumption, one for animals, and one as a resource for other recipes.

Berry Bar - Craftable on character and requires any combination of seeds and berries. Long-lasting stamina based food modifier

Crackers - Stamina Based buff with ‘Tool-use’ stamina impact reduction

Seed Bread - Stamina Based buff with ‘Tool-use’ stamina impact reduction

Animal Feed - When fed to animals, this increases animal stamina and stamina recovery

Seed Oil - An intermediary resource that can be converted to biofuel or an alternative for the cured leather recipe





We are currently looking at how we can introduce spiders and an arachnophobia mode into Icarus. The simplest way is to have a setting in the settings menu which allows for this to be toggled on and off. Below are some concepts of what the creatures could look like with this toggled ‘on’ (changing the character models into an alternative).

If you are someone who has any level of arachnophobia, or know someone who does, we’d love your thoughts on our proposed concepts. Feel free to leave your feedback in the comments below.





We’re now under two weeks away from the New Frontiers expansion, and the response so far has been electric. If you haven’t caught up on everything that is coming with our first major expansion, click below to catch up:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1149460/view/3684558162502822183

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1648532/Icarus_New_Frontiers/

Originally posted by author

[h3]If you like what we’re doing with Icarus, and want to support our continued development, consider purchasing one of our DLCs for a few dollars, it would mean a lot to us.[/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2445280/Icarus_Interior_Decorations_Pack

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1995690/Icarus_Styx_Map__Missions_Pack/



[h3]New Content[/h3]
[expand]

• Reorganised datatables for farming and crop plots to specify number of cultivations per crop plot as well as if they auto reseed
  
• Crop Plot and Farming logic is now done via Cultivations, it is now setup to allow for multiple cultivations per crop plot if required
  
• Crop Plots no longer have an inventory and all interactions are performed in world
  
• Crop Plots can now be harvested with a sickle or by hand
  
• Crop Plots can be watered with canteens like before
  
• Fertilizer is how used on crop plots by placing it in your hand and applying it to the crop pot, just like watering
  
• Added Seeds for each fruit / vegetable which do not have a decay time
  
• Seeds can be planted in crop plots or by themselves on the terrain (anywhere), when planting seeds outside of a crop plot they will take a 50% decreased growth and yeild penalty
  
• Seeds that are planted in the ground will be destroyed upon harvesting and you will need to plant again
  
• Crop Plots now automatically reseed after a crop is harvested
  
• Decayed Crops will now stay in crop plots indefinatly until removed by player, via sickle or hand
  
• Set up new recorder for new crop plots so crops and progress is saved correctly
  
• Modified Crop Plot UI to leverage modifier system instead of bespoke modifier UI widgets
  
• Seting up and adding new Workshop Crop plot and added a new Workshop Category for farming and shifted seed packs into
  
• Updating item images for Cocoa, Coffee, Green Tea and Wild Tea as the images where not saved correctly in source control
  
• Adding Seed images and .psd to future use
  
• Adding upgrade logic for existing crop plots, they will convert to new crop plots, auto seed with whatever seed was inside and spawn a bag in world on top of the crop plot with anything that was in the inventory
  
• When crafting crop plots you will now only be able to get the new ones, the old ones have been decremented
  
• There is a 25% chance to get a seed when harvesting with your hand, 50% when using a sickle, and base 50% when growing as a crop
  
• Workshop seed packs now award seeds instead of the fruit/vege/plant
  
• Adding Correct Growth time to farming growth states and making sure decay time is increased by the player / crafted crop plot stats
  
• Adding more appropriate deploy sound for crop seeds
  
• Seeds are now one item that differ per stats
  
• Adding ability to override item itemables and deployables based on tags and stats
  
• Cleaned up old farming seed data and updated data tables
  
• Adding a new Tool Stone Shovel (T1), new Blueprint and Recipe
  
• Adding ability for shovels to spawn dirt mounds when using on dirt, mud or grass
  
• Seeds now act as deployables and can be placed in crop plots or dirt mounds
  
• Adding debuff on dirt mounds as they are grown in Impoverished Soil
  
• Fixing interactibles on crop plots & dirt mounds so you can remove plants from crop plots and destroy dirt mounds
  
• Player Talents Related to Farming are no longer crafted on crop plots but are now modifiers that are added to the crop plot at the moment of planting the seed
  
• Adding new stats for seed related planting and a new seed modification data tabl
  
• Fixed Issue where 2 seeds where being consumed when placing seeds in the crop plot
  
• Fixed issues where you could not remove a plat from a crop plot once placed
  
• Updating player Talents related to farming to display the modifier that will be applied when planting
  
• Adding Seed related craftable items - Berry Bar, Crackers, Animal Feed and Seed Oil, setting up their modifiers and icons
  
• Seed Oil can now be used to craft biofuel or cure leather currently
  
• Rebalanced new seed food modifiers and food/health/water on consumption
  
• Removed seed oil fuel from Wood Composter, as this does not make fuel typically
  
• Animal Feed can now be fed to mounts and placed in food troughs
  
• Fertalizer now requires to be placed in your hotbar and clicked to use
  
• Added new context icons for fertilise plants, water plants, give food and give water
  
• Crop Plots now properly convert themselves over to the new crop plots (seeded state included) and drop overflow bags with the items they had inside (plants / fertilizer etc)
  
• Adding Watering Can Item and Talent
  
• Adding Watering Can Mesh and setting up watering can to water multiple crop plots if able
  
• Updating Crop plot sounds so they now work just like the old crop plot
  
• Adding Watering Can Item Icon
  
• Added new 'Inspect' UMG to crop plots, allowing player to see detailed growth progress and modifier information.
  
• Fixed T3 & T4 Crop Plots not using correct Blueprint.
  
• Lowered crop plot tooltip height to fixed location.
  
• Fixed bug where calls to ServerPushClientDynamicWidget with bFocusCameraOnActor set to false wasn't actually skipping camera focus
  
• Added water/power connections to new crop plots
  
• Fixing issue where growth speed modifiers where not applying correct to the new crop plots, they now apply as intended
  
• Fixing issue where items harvested from crop plot would not have their correct maximum spoil time when harvested, it now had the correct values
  
• Adding Missed Item.Plant Tags on various growable items
  
• Splitting out Speed-gro and Green-thumb to apply 2 different modifiers and adjusting the talent modifier text for seed related talents so the modifier effectiveness matches the modifier effectiveness value displayed in game
  
• Fixing issue where reaping rewards where not applying to crops that where sickled in crop plots, and also fixed an issue where the new crop plots where doubling all rewards unintentially
  
• Fixing potential Crash when interacting with Dirt Mounds
  
• Reimporting seed icons so seed identifying images are larger
  
• Watering can now has a Maximum unit count of 5000 and each 'water' action uses 1000 (anything within range of the water even will be watered)
  
• Updated 'Crackers' modifier to be called 'Seed Cracker' matching item name
  
• Updated 'Seeded Bread' modifier to be called 'Seed Bread' matching item name
  
• Crop plot and Mounds soil now darkens when they have the wet modifier (parity with old crop plots)
  
• Fixing the new T2 Crop plot from using the wrong mesh, it was using an older one which did not support the watering texture swamp correctly
  
• Crop plots planted in sunlight provide 0% growth speed bonus, Crop plots in darkness recieve -50% growth speed modifier and crop plots in greenhouses recive a growth speed bonus based on the number of glass building pieces nearby making it parity with the old system
  
• Updating Logic for adding and removing modifiers on crop plots for the Greenhouse / Sunlight / Darkness so that the modifiers only are added and removed when a change occurs and not everytime the check function runs
  
• Fixing issue where Evergreen Talent was not properly being calculated and applied with New Crop Plots, it now does and seeds planted while players have the talent will not decay
  
• Fixed bug where modifier tooltips in the Crop Plot inspection UMG would force refresh/close every second. IcarusActors now have an OnModifierStateUpdated delegate that is fired whenever a modifier state is added or removed to the Actor
  
• Fixed bug where clients couldn't see a crop's current growth progress when inspecting
  
• Adding Wooden Shovel Icon and fixing up recipes
  
• Setting up Workshop Crop plot and adding stats so it correctly tierified
  
• Setting up crop plots so they can only be harvested by sickles or hand, any other hits with weapon / tools will damage the crop plot
  
• Updating mounds so they have the inspection UI
  
• Seed Icons no longer glow which implying they had custom stats which they did not
  
• Fixing up Infertile Soil modifier as it was providing a buff to growth speed instead of a debuff
  
• Fixed a bug preventing animals from consuming food, both in hands and in trough
  
• Enabled Modifier on Animal Feed when feeding to animals
  
• Added hints to feeding mounts to raw food and Animal Feed
  
• Removed unnecessary D_CraftingModifications rows now that crop alterations have been removed
  
• Fixed bug where clients couldn't plant seeds in crop plot (was deploying dirt mounds instead)
  
• Removed all old crop-related alterations. Fixed bug where plants in crop plots wouldn't be visible until their growth state updated
  
• Removed durability from seeds, as this is no longer needed with the dirt mound implementation
  
• Hooked up stone shovel 3d model
  
• Update dirt mound name and flavor text presentation in-world
  
• Added collision to mushroom crops
  
• Fixed collision on Carrots and Corn crops
  
• Fixed Berry crops preview showing as Strawberries
  
• Added fiber seeds to most sources of fiber
  
• Renamed Cocoa Seed to Cocoa, to avoid confusion with the new Cocoa Seed
  
• Rebalanced seed yields from sickling wild plants and harvesting crop plots, now has a higher chance to gather seeds but reduced seeds per crop. This will allow more consistent entry point into farming and expansion of farming setups after the first seeds are acquired
  
• Adding slightly more generic sound for watering crop plots that can be used for both watering can and waterskins
  
• Farming plot upgrade code no longer transfers deployable alterations
  
• Adding more descriptions and flavor text to seed items
  
• Allowed watering can to use either left click or right click to water crop plots
  
• Adding descriptions and flavor text to seed items
  
• Adding crop plot unique deploy sound and data table entry for deploying all seeds
  
• Adding description and flavor text to watering can
  
• Improved collision on strawberry, carrot, reed flower, pumpkin and squash crops
  
• Adding positive audio for shovels digging dirt. Added T1 shovel event and data table entry
  
• Adding correct audio for dirt mounds being watered
  
• Creating Montages for 3rd person watering can animations and hooking them up so prospectors hold watering cans and pour correctly in third person
  
• Adding shovel sound on grass for both shovels
  
• Reimporting watercan animations to the corred 3rd person skeleton
  
• Adding in 3rd person animation set for the watering can ready for DT hookup
  
• Fixing Workshop Crop Plot so it now wets it soil correctly
  
• Fixing issue where the wooden shovel required the metal shovel recipe to craft
  
• Creating Montages for 1st person watering can animations and hooking them up so prospectors hold watering cans and pour correctly in first person
  
• Adding in watercan Equip, Idle and Pour anims for 1st Person
  
• Updated missions that use crop plots to be compatible with new crop plots
  
• Fixed crop plots unable to be watered by rain after having a water connection
  
• Added a list deploy count, to handle multiple options of classes (such as crop plots, but not crop mounds, which are the same base class)
  
• Fix fertilizer modifier typo
  
• Reorganized farming and consumables workshop screens, removed requirement of carrot before unlocking additional seeds
  
• Buffed the Larkwell Sickle to 175% harvesting yield
  
• Updated Seed Deployable text to show error messages and red preview when trying to plant a seed over an existing plant
  
• Sickles now cannot damage crop plots at any stage of the farming process
  
• Fixing issue with the workshop crop plot where the growth speed modifier was not be applied correctly
  
• Updated crop plot related talents to clarify that they now benefit when you plant the seeds, rather than when you craft the crop plot
  
• Updated Fertilized modifier to clarify that it increases the duration of fertilizer modifiers
  
• Fixed Watering Can being unable to be used when there is just enough for a single use
  
• Add destroy audio cue to crop mound
  
• Added a check in 'GetSeedRow' to return early if there is no seed type. This stops the UI from displaying 'Missing' when seeds are an ingredient in a recipe
  

Adding correct audio for dirt mounds being watered[/expand]

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
[expand]

• Correctly hide the rewards UI from open world mission completion screen (or any other time there are no rewards) and hooked up base text to be translated by default
  
• Hooked up translation for medals and ribbons accolades section text
  
• Adjusting fridge sound location and also adding any missing or incorrect cupboard open / close sounds and adjusted locations to be better or correct
  
• Update workshop UI tooltip to communicate that scroll wheel now pans the view rather than zooms
  
• Add more hardware info and tags to sentry reports
  
• Update a number of typos throughout the project
  
• Added to the description for Exotics to mention using the Orbital Exchange Interface to send them to orbit
  
• Fix an issue with stat replication for stats that use modifier effectiveness
  
• Re saving fridge socket fix that was not committed correctly. Also reducing some excessively long audio events that play beyond the end of the sound
  
• Fixed issue where all unlocked missions would show the completion check mark regardless of whether or not the mission was actually complete
  
• Fixed mounts being able to be fed any food item, returned to only consumable plants and animal feed
  
• Added availability indicators for outposts that are locked by DLC
  
• Fixed availability indicators showing on the mission select screen
  

[/expand]

[h3]Future Content[/h3]
[expand]

• Adding in gas fly idle audio, event and BP implementation. Replacing all Gasfly projectile explosion sounds with a version with less 'fast whiz' pre explosion because that made them feel too fast
  
• Replaced Old GL, AC, SW & LC Outside/Cave Pro Foilage Voxel with New GL, AC, SW & LC Outside/Cave Pro Foilage Voxel on Prometheus
  
• Added icons for creature carcasses and industrial round table icon
  
• Added new red exotic icon
  
• Fine tune to acid rain eq and intensity to better match visuals in WL. Also reducing boombastic slightly
  
• Added Rockdog statue mesh, material and textures
  
• BLD Wood Interior rework - added APEX meshes for floors, ramps, walls, stairs
  
• Remove landmine activation step from outpost spawning logic, as this is now handled by the landmines automatically
  
• Fix race condition with departing pods and requesting new pods
  
• Fixed a number of typos or references to internal names throughout the bestiary, stats, item descriptions and dialogue
  
• Cleaned up cpp shield blocking code to put shared code into functions
  
• When a player leaves the game their waypoint marker is now correctly cleaned up for all other players
  
• Small adjustments to lava fly timing of vocal and explosion and vocal chance
  
• Fix infrasonic relay device does not close UI when not powered
  
• Updated PRO_STORY_1 to work with new cropplots
  
• BLD Wood Interior rework - added APEX meshes for Angled Walls, Half Pitch Walls, DMs for beams
  
• Replaced Old LC Cave Pro Foilage Voxel with New LC Cave Pro Foilage Voxel In Pro Cave Templates
  
• Adding the correct sounds for the meta crate. Wood crate sounds were originally added in by mistake. Hooking up missiong animations into BP so it plays the audio correctly
  
• Iron BLD rework - added APEX meshes for walls
  
• Fixed bug where placing multiple T3 and T4 communicators could duplicate mission assets
  
• Adding sound to communicator on / off / loop when the mission 5 is activated. No BP implementation yet
  
• Replaced Old AC Cave Pro Foilage Voxel with New AC Cave Pro Foilage Voxel In Pro Cave Templates
  
• Replaced Old GL Cave Pro Foilage Voxel with New GL Cave Pro Foilage Voxel In Pro Cave Templates
  
• Adding static to newly separated out dialogue lines for mission 6
  
• Replaced Old SW Cave Pro Foilage Voxel with New SW Cave Pro Foilage Voxel In Pro Cave Templates
  
• Mission 1 now provides correct crop plot
  
• Adding a separate audio event for the gas death explosion to the projectile explosion for better conntrol over intensity and volume. Reducing volume for death explode
  
• Added Lighting to Illuminate the Central Space of Mission 2 Cave on Prometheus
  
• Extended amount of time overlaps on slug trail are active
  
• Added loot bags to gas flyers. Reduced amount of meat gas flyers drop
  
• VFX polish for Gas Flyer projectile explosion
  
• VFX polish for Gas Flyer Idle
  
• Adjusted blueprint behavior of mission 5 communicator to not play start sound when interracted with and its already playing and to stop when power is interrupted
  
• Updated foliage type and blueprints for bulbous Flax, Flax, Ponga, Bramble_A, Bramble_E and hanging cliff foliage to the new SM assets
  
• Added IK to Lava Broodling. Improved Lava Hunter IK. Lava Hunter spawns are no longer flammable
  
• Adding blueprint logic for mission 5 communicator to play when powered up
  
• Adding mission 6 scanner device audio and event. Also adding correct crop sound for all seeds planted
  
• Removed hunting setups from existing creatures. This was a little used system that was only applicable to a small subset of creatures and not applicable to most of the gameplay
  
• Fixed bug where predator birds could get into a permanent state of circling corpses
  
• Configured Prometheus region voxel distribution
  
• Updated colors of Prometheus resource voxels in editor
  
• Moved Lighting Plane & Added Cave Light to Illuminate the Central Space of Mission 2 Cave on Prometheus
  
• Removing spacizlizer from custom static event playing that interrupts sol. It's a 2d event so this just meant it didnt' play which left an awkward silence between interactions
  
• PRO_Story_5: Update landmine distribution, add outer defensive platforms and hedgehogs
  
• Iron BLD rework - added DMs for beams
  
• Added destructible mesh for T3 anvil bench to project
  
• Adding first pass trail particles to Dreadwing dive
  
• Audio and BP implementation for M6 scanner. BP imp to be adjusted for turning off
  
• Fixed Acidic Glands being included on many creatures instead of Crystalized Miasma, some creatures drop both
  
• Reduced the number of creatures that drop Pyritic items
  
• Added specific loot setups for broodlings
  
• Updated swamp slug to grant purple exotics, rather than red exotics (as that is exclusive to lava)
  
• Added art assets for DEP_Bench_Anvil_T3 to the project
  
• Iron BLD rework - added APEX meshes for floors, ramps, roofs, angled walls, halfpitch walls
  
• Replaced LC Cave Voxel in GL part Transition cave with GL Cave Voxel in Purple Quad on Prometheus
  
• Updated GasFlyer loot bag to it's own blueprint
  
• Updated GasFlyer loot to include a small amount of oxite instead of meat
  
• Fixed GasFlyer blueprint XP event to correctly link to the GasFlyer kill XP
  
• Added mission failure state to mission history entries
  
• Added mission failure system event
  
• Handled a case with mission rewards that could be caused by a player being entered onto the list before a mission has started who then leaves the session and rejoins after the first mission starts, causing them to end up with an incorrect last mission id. This could then cause that player to not receive rewards for that mission as the host thinks that the player is currently on an invalid mission
  
• Added Gas Flyer loot sack with materials and textures
  
• Adding click audio for prospect select UI
  
• Fixing mission 6 scanner audio to play one shot instead of loop. Fixed caves being silent by removing the cave gain within event. Update BP for mission 5 scanner to play on server. Adding occlusion to lava fly
  
• Changed open world mission retry lockout timer to be permanent until individual mission timers have been setup, will be done for Hypatia
  
• Update outpost selection to mention there are fewer enemies, not no enemies
  
• Fixed bug where disarming landmine would cause it to explode
  
• Updated collision on T3 anvil bench and added assets to collections
  
• Added Saddle basic options for Normie_Horse, Wooly_Zebra and Swamp Bird
  
• Trail particle polish for dreadwing dive
  
• NPCs can now track the locations where their movement was recently blocked - used to better select new move locations.
  
• Made improvements to AI fallback point selection in cases where movement is blocked for whatever reason.
  
• Removed strong points from heads of the different broodlings.
  
• Increased broodling step height/angle.
  
• Enabled jump behaviour on broodlings.
  
• Can now configure how long it takes for a move order to become a blocking failure on a per-NPC basis.
  
• MoveToActor and MoveToVector BTs no longer project their 'MoveDirectlyToward' target location to navigation (was failing in some cases)
  
• Dreadwing dive vfx culling setup
  
• Small adjustment to the gasfly death explosion audio
  
• Update dynamic missions to have fallback creature selection
  
• Lava Broodlings now have less health and melee damage.
  
• More fine tunes for hail when sheltered
  
• Fixed dynamic quest decals appearing as error materials
  
• Added a more granular version of the dynamic quest location, used for spawning decals currently
  
• Fix cave volume coverage and entrance positioning for PRO_Story_6 cave
  
• LavaHunter crit colliders are now hidden in game
  
• Fixed issue where certain weather effects would not follow camera correctly when using Photo Mode
  
• Adjustments to orbital strike ducking intensity
  
• Fixed capitilization of Group 15 in dialogue
  
• Added Outpost 8 drop zones and respawn points, added additional respawn points to Outpost 7
  
• Lava Hunter Arena, Redesigned Traversable Area in Purple Quad on Prometheus
  
• Expose prospect forecast updated to UI
  
• Adjustments to slime trail material
  
• added batdog statue stone material, static mesh and textures
  
• Fixed some log errors that occured when predator birds skinned corpses
  
• Predator Birds now have a higher location tolerance when diving corpses, should prevent them from getting into situations where they aren't able to reach their target corpse. IcarusCharacters can now specify overrides to the Radius/Height multipliers used internally during pathfinding
  
• Adjustments and fine tunes to dialogue events. shortened longer gaps of silence to allow event to be slightly shorter which works better in the event
  
• Polish pass on music and dialogue behaviour for PRO_Story6_Evidence quest
  
• Speeding up mission 5 dialogue to allow room for the event to happen after the dialogue has been spoken
  
• Added new alteration icons
  
• Adding click sound when prospect is clicked on
  
• Added ITM_WateringCan
  
• Added ITM_Backpack_Farmer
  
• Fixed swamp bird carcass not using correct Gfur setup
  
• Added ITM_Backpack_Medic
  
• Lava Hunter now emerges from ground correctly when spawned (starts dormant). Fixed bug in CircleFlight BTTask when circle target actor was destroyed during task
  
• Pre VFX pass on slug slime trail. Spline mesh will no longer cast shadows. Still requires work to deal with displacement tearing between spline mesh sections
  
• Adding more audible at a distance whistle layer for pred birds during their swoop attacks
  
• Adding slime surface, PM and data table entries and fmod setup adjustments
  
• Fixed Floating Rocks in Tecton Outpost
  
• Adding event for footstep slime. Also adding slime surface param in fmod
  
• Lava Hunter Arena, Set Dressing in Purple Quad on Prometheus
  
• Updating mission communicator overlay for priority missions
  
• Final tweaks to slug slime trail material, adding height map and re-enabling shadows
  
• Added new borders for Dynamic mission board UI
  
• Added height texture map to be used on the slug slime trail
  
• Updating mission 6 scanner to continuously loop to avoid feeling like there was something wrong with the scanner. Updated BP logic
  
• Story4: Populate crates with relevant resources
  
• Add the ability to switch off mission complete sounds for specific quest steps. Apply to Story6 subquests where the audio cue is unnecessary and interfering with music or dialogue
  
• Fixes for Mo dialogue, lowering backround noise
  
• Added SK, material, textures for ITM_Shovel_T1
  
• (New Frontiers) Added one-off consumable character level boosts. The prompt for this is shown on the difficulty warning popup when selecting either a Styx or Prometheus level (mission or open world) if your character is less than the level that you would be boosted to (Level 10 for Syx, 20 for Prometheus). This boost will bring the character up to the specified level and be consumed. You are given one boost per map for your account. This is designed for new players to be able to jump into these maps at an appropriate level, or help level a second character
  
• Added a checkbox to hide the difficulty warning message when selecting Styx and Prometheus missions or open world. This can also be toggled on/off in the User Interface section of the Gameplay settings
  

[/expand]