Icarus News

This week’s update sees some love for Outpost mode, although these new features (such as Shields and Resource Packs) are also useful in every game mode.

• Added a fix to prevent prospectors falling through the terrain around crevasses in arctic biomes
  
• Exotic Resource spawning has changed. Now at least one Red Exotic Vein is always guaranteed on Prometheus
  
• Fixed an issue which was causing giant or tiny prospectors after interacting with the Terrenus mount
  
• SMPL3 Quests now grant some Ren as a reward
  
• SMPL3 Quests are now triggerable on Outposts
  

One part of the launch of our Icarus: New Frontiers expansion we’ve been pleasantly surprised about is the popularity of Outposts. Outposts are smaller custom maps with fewer threats and regenerating resources that are ideal for building bases in or simply a more chilled game experience. We added several new Outpost maps when we launched New Frontiers and are adding a new one, Arcticus, today.

To give you even more to do on Outposts, you can now do SMPL3 Quests from the Outpost game mode. As always, you can do them in Open World mode too.

Furthermore, SMPL3 Quests now provide anyone online at the time of completion a Ren reward, to spend in the orbital workshop. Prospectors will receive 10 Ren for easy, 20 Ren for medium and 30 Ren for hard quests.

This applies in both Open World and Outpost modes.


Want to get a head start on resource gathering?

The UDA have added UDA Resource Supply Drops to the Workshop, so you can buy a pack of resources with Ren and bring them down to the planet in your loadout with you or call them down using the Orbital Exchange Interface.

They’re perfect for getting resources sooner on Outposts, but are available in any game mode. Wood, Stone, Oxite, Sulfur, Silica, Platinum, Titanium and Coal Resource Supply Drops are available. They may be pricey, but provide quick access to resources if you have the Ren.


One of our Outposts we released wasn't ready in time for the New Frontiers launch but it has been finished and added this week, this time featuring the Tundra biome introduced in the Prometheus map.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2536390/Icarus_Arcticus_Outpost/

The Arcticus Outpost is a handcrafted 1x1km tundra map with lots of great spots for a base. Its scenic landscape of slopes gently downward into a large valley with deep crevasses and lightly snow-dusted forests. Looking up, you'll find an imposing mountain that overlooks the spacious valley below which is home to an impressive number of caves.

You can buy it as DLC separately or as part of the Outposts Bundle.

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


Higher tier shields that protect you during more challenging encounters are here.

The Carbon Fiber shield, available at Tier 3, is strong but agile. Its strength blocks up to 90% of enemy damage while still having a decent block radius (90%).

The large Composite Tactical Shield, available at Tier 4, has a wide block radius (200%) and the same strength as the Steel Shield (a 75% block percentage).


Some of this week’s changes prepare things for our next big free update, named Hypatia.

Hypatia will let you trigger Operations on Open World mode in every map. Operations in Prometheus' Open World mode have proven very popular, so we’re adding them to the Olympus and Styx maps. This is a big step that essentially combines the focus and rewards of Icarus' Missions with an Open World where you can keep your base permanently.

This week’s changes to the SMPL3 Quests being able to earn Ren and be triggered from any game mode allow us to start implementing Operations on every map.



We will soon have SMPL3 Quests, Operations and Missions available for every map. To keep things simple we’re introducing a single device (C0NT4CT) that you can upgrade to access each of them. As you upgrade C0NT4CT, it will become your one-stop shop for Operations and Quests and to access Missions from the surface too. You’ll only need one mission device instead of three.

[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/



New Content
[expand]

• Adding new UDA Resource Supply Packs in the workshop
  
• Adding ability to do SMPL3 Quests on Outposts
  
• Updated recipes and stats for all new shields, unlocked Composite and Carbon Fiber shields
  
• Update durability on new shields
  
• SMPL3 Missions can now reward Ren
  
• Added new SMPL3 Mission Complete popup that tells you how much Experience and Ren were earnt by completing the mission
  
• Set SMPL3 mission Ren rewards to 10/20/30 for easy/normal/hard difficulties
  
• Adjusting the Names and Weights on the UDA Resource Packs
  
• Added mission completion exp icon
  
• Adding Ren Reward UI element to the Dynamic Quest Selection Display
  
• SMPL3 Quests are triggerable on Outposts & Open Worlds but not Mission Mode
  
• Fixed SMPL3 mission Ren reward being scaled by mission difficulty twice
  

[/expand]

Fixed
[expand]

• Adjusted Drac carry animation to better line up with the players hands, needs investigation as to why the legs no longer move with locomotion anims while being carried
  
• Adding saddle creak clink audio for riding saddled mount. Audio and event, no current implementation
  
• Update the current storm weather warning to show the current storm tier icon
  
• Added time on prospect to inventory screen, so players on persistant prospects can know their time on that prospect. Works for all game modes
  
• Fix creature vocalisations not playing for clients if AISetup row hasn't been set to a default in the creature character blueprint. Tweaked AIVocalisationComponent initialisation flow so that it works more reliably for both server and clients
  
• Fixed fishing in prometheus arctic (Adjusted the spawn config colour json to match the actual colours in the heightmap for prometheus arctic biome)
  
• Added Salt based Gunpowder recipe, requiring 1 salt, 1 charcoal and 1 spoiled plant
  
• Added refund for Inert Volatile Substance to grant 1 salt
  
• Added RefundOnly recipe set to be used to allow refunds but no crafts
  
• Applied correct textures for Acidic Gland material
  
• Fixed Frozen Ore using Fiber drop mesh
  
• Update names of Obsidian, Cold Steel and Miasmic Throwing Spears to be correctly named Javelin
  
• Added half pitch icons to clay brick half item icons
  
• Added data table validation function to throw a warning when colors in the spawn map are mismatched with the spawn zones colors
  
• Added Platinum and Titanium Deep Mining Ore Materials and Textures
  
• Adding biome specific grasslands rain event which automates based on intensity giving a better feel for storms and more appropriate for the biome
  
• Fix Caves Not Listed In Prometheus Bestiary
  
• Lowered Miasmic Arrow break chance to 10% from 20%
  
• Fixed Obsidian and Cold Steel Arrows break chance from 90% to 15/10%
  
• Added attachment slots to all Sledgehammers
  
• Quests now only call the event 'QuestAbandoned' when actually abandoned instead of also when quest ends normally.
  
• Mission 6 clean up (Both traitors, 3 cave icons, G15 device, 5 blood clues) all get deleted when their parent quest gets deleted.
  
• G15 camp and base now persist after mission is completed but destroy after you abandon the quest
  
• Level clean up of painted foliage ore (developer purple)
  
• Removed duplicate lava voxels from cave in Purple dev quad. Added new utility widget to aid in tracking down foliage instances that are placed in the same world location
  
• Removed more duplicate voxel foliage from Developer quads Blue, Green, Purple
  
• Fixed mounts not eating from food troughs with only Animal Feed in them
  
• Exotic node spawn locations no longer have to be authored in each D_ProspectList row; an absence of defined spawns will mean that all in-bounds meta spawn locations are selected from. In the case where all meta spawns are valid, at least one red exotic is guaranteed on Prometheus terrain
  
• Fix an editor utility that has broken the build
  
• Fix an issue where players would grow after mounting a horse
  
• Swapped Left and Right window icons for new building pieces, as they were flipped
  
• Fixed Larkwell Ballistic Bolt having 0 break chance
  
• Fixed Miasmic Throwing Knife showing as Titanium Throwing Knife
  
• Fixed a crash case when leaving a prospect via dropship
  
• Prevented voxel rebuilds of fully mined voxels during loading of map tiles
  
• Stone voxels that are fully mined are no longer saved as they can't be regenerated by a Thumper later
  
• Prevented retaining recorders triggering an async flush due to renaming
  
• Removed invalid pins in W_EditorUtility_QuickSelect to fix build validation
  
• Fixed issue with nav jump links for crevasses causing contained level to never get properly garbage collected
  
• Moved level garbage collection check from game state to game instance
  
• Temporarily disabled jump links on crevasses as it was causing the map tile to not be able to be garbage collected after unloading. This was then causing map tiles with cravasses to not be able to stream back in correctly if returned to, resulting instead in only the LoD for that map tile being shown (which has no collision)
  
• Adjusting Costs for UDA Resource Packs
  
• Adding new WorldStat IsOutpost for quick lookup
  
• Un-flipped weather icon of current weather event. Icon now correctly shows the same orientation as expected
  
• Prometheus: Fixed Exploration missions using Beachday weather pattern, now correctly use MidPeak to have varied weather
  
• PRO_Story_1: Updated weather to use MostlyMild, slightly more varied than Beachday (adds an extra +1 tier storm)
  
• PRO_Story_2: Updated weather to MidPeak instead of Beachday, to bridge the gap between mission 1 and 3
  
• MAGMATIC: Updated weather to Suprise_Mild, notably this adds a +2 tier storm
  

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand]

• Added lava hunter stone statue material, textures and static mesh
  
• Rotated a Cave in C1 to prevent players being stuck in the underwater animation and Fixed a Seam between the landscape and a Cave, Tecton
  
• Updated Equix trophy with mesh masks and improved Gfur LODs
  
• Updated blueback trophy with mesh masks and improved Gfur LODs
  
• Added art assets and blueprint for Drac trophy
  
• Added art assets and blueprint for Stonejaw trophy
  
• Added cliff meshes & blended in meshes in Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass and Fixed a Seam between cliffs and landscape, Purple Quad and Red Quad, Prometheus
  
• Small improvements and adjustments to spear and arrow impacts after velocity removal. Created generic throw event to be used if necessary to improve throw intensity. Not currently in use
  
• LC Macros - tweaks to snow materials, added mesh variants of macros with snow materials
  
• Added cliff meshes & blended in meshes in Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass and Fixed a Seam between cliffs and landscape, Purple Quad and Red Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding non-voxel versions of SML and MED LC rocks for Phase 3 prototyping and testing
  
• Added chala trophy to the project
  
• Added chamois trophy to the project
  
• Added roat trophy to the project
  
• Added cave worm trophy to the project
  
• Added pronghorn trophy to the project
  
• Ice Building Tier prototyping - added MA_BLD_ICE, WIP replacement textures for stone wall kit
  
• Submitting in progress developer assets
  
• Added cliff meshes & blended in meshes in Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad, Prometheus
  
• Log a hash of pak file detail on the title screen
  
• Updated naming of the proghorn trophy shaders to correct naming
  
• Change the way hashing is generated for meta pak details (use UTF-8 string encoding)
  
• Submitting in progress developer assets
  
• Added arid striker trophy to the project
  
• Added snow striker trophy to the project
  
• Added crocodile trophy to the project
  
• Added cliff meshes & blended in meshes in Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass, Added New NOVOX PFS, Adjusted The Rock Values and Cliff Pass, Red Quad, Prometheus
  
• Setting up and Adding Larkwell Armor Alpha (current stat setup is fall damage mitigation, stamina regen and overencumbrance penalty reduction, subject to change), feature locked out
  
• Adding Item Icons for the Larkwell Alpha Armor Set and adjusting talents
  
• Added DEP_T2_Communication_Device with animations
  
• Adding Workshop 'MXC Cot' adjusting stats and adding workshop talent and price, feature locked for now
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding Rustic / Raw Wood Lamp
  
• Adding Rustic Signs and their 3 variations, feature locked out for now
  
• Added brutalist living chair to the project
  
• added brown bear armor, BP for gfur, 1st and 3rd peson sk meshes, materials and textures
  
• Added Brutalist bed and brutalist base materials and textures to the project
  
• Adding Brown Bear Armor, Feature locking out for now
  
• Replaced brown bear armor 1st person arms with correct rig
  
• Added cliff meshes & blended in meshes in Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Adding Inaris Canteen, feature locking out
  
• Adding Chefs Backpack, Farmers Backpack, Explorers Backpack, Icebox Backpack, Medic Backpack and Tech Backpack Items and Workshop Talents, Feature Locking out
  
• Added Deep Mining Ore materials and textures for Oxite, Salt, Stone, Clay, Scoria, and Obsidian
  

[/expand]

Week Ninety Two is here and brings the Terrenus mount to Icarus. Slotting in between the existing mounts (Moa and Buffalo) in terms of utility, the Terrenus can be found across all three maps and tamed just like its predecessors.

We’ve also released the Bone Armor Set. This was originally set aside for a Twitch Drops campaign, but we decided to let everyone have it rather than keep it in reserve. We’ve also added DLSS 3 support for those playing with DX12.

On top of this, we have updates on Hypatia, some changes to modules and a performance improvement that was supposed to be included last week.

See the full details below.

• The Dynamic Nav Mesh was re-enabled. The lack of this was causing poor creature pathing and preventing Creature Deterrents from working.
  
• Fixed a case where players would not get mission rewards if they weren't present for the start of a mission after they had previously completed one on the same prospect (i.e. open world).
  
• Wind turbines can now be placed closer together
  
• Prospectors are now prevented getting sprains or broken legs from falling if their fall resistance is capped
  
• Improved the mission complete popup to include the name of the mission that the reward is for, whether the mission is the current one or a previous one, and are now showing the actual reward
  

We had hoped to run a Twitch Drops campaign alongside the release of New Frontiers in which we were going to provide the Bone Armor Set you may have seen devs playing with on streams. Unfortunately, we ran into some issues with timely approvals so have decided we would release this week to everyone for free as a way to say thanks for the New Frontiers reception and support.

If you have been enjoying Icarus and New Frontiers please consider leaving a review on Steam, you can leave a review on the base game and any DLC separately. It really does make a massive difference and helps the studio out.

This week's biggest feature is our new mount, the Terrenus. This is a horse-like creature that spawns on all three maps, Olympus, Styx and Prometheus in the forest or grasslands biomes. This is the first of several new mounts which will make their way into the game.

This mount slots in between the Moa and the Buffalo in terms of utility. It has 10% more speed than the Moa currently has, so as a result we have increased the Moa movement speed by 38%. The Buffalo’s speed has also been increased by 8% to balance out the changes.

The Terrenus can be equipped with a standard saddle, and just like the Moa and Buffalo, requires you to nurture a foal and raise it for you to be able to use it as a mount.




Last week's update included a change with the module system, which now grant diminishing returns when stacked in your envirosuit. This was supposed to be paired with a buff to some modules but this was accidentally left out. We’re now including those buffs this week.

Modules aim to massively increase the diversity of builds, but not provide a way to get buffs which break the game's balance. Buffing modules without diminishing returns would cause these game breaking numbers, but implementing diminishing returns without the buffs would cause what happened in the last week, a massive nerf that many players noticed.

We have now buffed the modules to their correct values to match the diminishing returns. Here are a couple of examples:

Movement Speed Module Stacking

Old modules, with flat stacking

5%

10%

15%

20%

New modules, with diminishing returns

10%

15%

18%

20%

Fall resistance Module Stacking

Old modules, with flat stacking

25%

50%

75%

New modules, with diminishing returns

40%

60%

70%

This will mean that modules will provide better rewards for less investments in modules, but these will slowly become less valuable as you stack more and more. However, you are still able to get close to the old level if you wish in most cases.



Working with our friends at NVIDIA we have added support for DLSS 3.0. Powered by AI rendering technology and dedicated Tensor Core AI processors on GeForce RTX GPUs, DLSS speeds up frame rates while still providing image quality similar to native resolution. If you are running Icarus in Direct X 12 mode and have an RTX enabled NVIDIA card, turn on Frame Generation in the Graphics Settings to take advantage of the performance boost.



Now that we’ve completed New Frontiers and have addressed some of the larger bugs and balance fixes that players have requested, we’re jumping back into putting the majority of our effort towards the free Hypatia update.

We’ve already selected the base set of missions we are planning on converting to operations, and work is beginning next week on these. You can see us testing the initial converted operations in our Twitch streams over the coming weeks.

We are also working on adjusting the mission requirements for some of the Prometheus missions and adjusting the mission flow. This will include centralizing all the mission launch interactions with one device that you upgrade, rather than three separate devices for each tier of operation. More information on this next week.

Next week for sale in the workshop will be a collection of UDA Resource Supply Packs. These can be unlocked for Ren and will allow for the delivery of some planetary resources directly to you thanks to the Orbital Exchange Interface.

In addition SMPL3 missions will be available on Outposts and will also grant you a small amount of Ren upon completion.

[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]

• Adjusting Default Terranus Names
  
• fixing weighting of the Horse saddle to better follow spine bones
  
• Matching horse gravel footsteps with moa and buffalo. Added more texture to vary surfaces
  
• Adding Horse and Juvenile Spawning On Oly, Styx and Pro
  
• Adding audio for mounting saddled creatures
  
• Added text for the Terranus to bestiary, itemable
  
• Fixing normal horse being resized in two different places which caused it to be a different size to the horse mount
  
• Set up for remaining mount footstep VFX
  
• Fixing Horse audio not replicating to clients by adding the horse to the behavior dropdown in the NPC BP
  
• Adding Terranus name to Experience Events and Stats, removing feature level lock from bestiary data
  
• Adding in variant mesh for the Horse Juvenile creature to further provide visual difference between the two
  
• Duplicating Horse Idle anims and montages so unique vocalisations can be added for Horse and Juvi
  
• Updates to Horse, Horse Mount, and Horse Juvenile locomotion BSs to mitigate foot sliding.
  
• Fixed Horse GOAP not being able to move.
  
• Switched Horse BPs over to new bespoke idle montage.
  
• Horse GOAP can now attack forward and backwards.
  
• Fixed Horse juvenile / mount never completing their eating action.
  
• Horse no longer immediately halts when completing it's move order (unless attacking).
  
• Reduced Horse Mount's turn rate.
  
• Horse Juvenile now uses updated mesh
  
• Unlocking Bone Armor for all players to have as the twitch drop's campaign fell through
  
• Fixed build validation by removing old anim ref.
  
• Reduced attack range of horse mount, shifted attack source location forwards.
  
• Fixed incorrectly positioned head blocking collider on horse mount
  
• Fixed Mount Horse inventory preview character not copying owner's skin.
  
• Slowed down juvenile horse.
  
• Horse mounts can now attack
  
• Tidy up of BP for audio when mounting saddles
  
• Renamed Terrenus
  
• Added Bestiary trait to Terrenus
  
• Adjusted collider size on horse mount to allow moving through doorframes.
  
• Horse/Horse Mount mesh is now scaled to preferred size instead of default root scale
  
• Increased Horse Mount's damage, gave it its own damage curve asset
  
• Increased Terrenus Max Stamina (300 -> 350)
  
• Increased Terrenus Weight Capacity (100 -> 200)
  
• Adding horse attack sounds, aggro event, stomp and anim notifys and data table entrys
  
• Lots of small improvements and adjustments to the horse mount audio.
  
• Adjusted attack volume and stomp volume.
  
• Vocal spacial to be more directional and added jump whoosh to animation, less nieghs in jump idle animation so it doesn't become annoying
  
• Lots of small improvements and adjustments to the horse mount audio. Adjusted attack volume and stomp volume.
  
• Merging in changes from NvidiaDLSS branch, adding support for DLSS3 / Frame Generation
  
• Renaming 'Terranus' -> 'Terrenus'
  
• Added terranus bestiary image
  
• DLSS-G should no longer activate until settings UI has been closed when enabling on prospect
  
• Reduced aggression range of Horse. Attacking while mounted on horse should now play correct attack montage (forward attack instead of rear). Increased Horse health, mass, and melee damage. Increased follow speed of juvenile horses. Adjusted location of Horse's head blocker collider
  
• Fixed misname in Terrenus Bestiary and Carcass items
  
• Fixed bug where horse would flicker between swimming and not swimming when submerged in water, causing glitchy looking swimming animations. Disabled overlaps on BP_Mount_Base's head collider. Fixed bug where FloatableComponent wasn't correctly keeping track of multiple overlaps with the same WaterBody
  
• Removed some DLSS-related dlls from gitdependencies xml as version in p4 depot is newer
  
• Disabled r.ShaderDevelopmentMode by default
  
• Shaved Juvenile Horses legs
  
• Disabled debug traces on seatbase
  
• Added a small offset to seat exit collision checking to hopefully fix issue where players on dedicated servers can't dismount when standing on building floors
  
• Adjusting vocalisation attack notify timing for horse on main attack
  
• Hooked up new horse/zebra idle and turn-in-place montages
  

[/expand]

Fixed
[expand]

• Added a small offset to seat exit collision checking to hopefully fix issue where players on dedicated servers can't dismount when standing on building floors
  
• Fixed a bug where when missions cleanup it calls abandon on every quest and subquest. Now only calls if you press the abandon button
  
• DLSS Frame Generation no longer shows 'ON' in settings menu if it was turned on previously and is no longer supported
  
• Adding GL biome option to Niagara Dynamic Input Script, pass over Niagara systems effected by this change
  
• Fixing assets, related to change 115406
  
• Fixed fallback selection for localized animal swarms in volcanic areas selecting Hyena ocassionally
  
• Fixed typo in Miasma modifier
  
• Adding unique audio for picking up arrows. Adding event, audio and data table entrys
  
• Fixed a bug where if you had more than 6 ingredients in a recipe, the UI would overflow onto the 'craft' button
  
• Adding new metal spear impact event and removing unused velocity behavior from arrows and spears and fine tuning events to be appropriate without unused volume automation curves.
  
• Added correct spear impacts to ballistic impact events etc
  
• Initial refactor for mount movement VFX propagation, Effects now play off appropriate socket location. Requires setup in mount BP and footstep notify. Initial Setup for Buffalo, Moa, Swamp_Bird and Swamp_Bird
  
• Processors now attempt to stack items on inventory overflow (prevents composters from causing performance issues)
  
• Mounts no longer attempt to drink from lava lakes. Mounts no longer navigate to middle of water bodies when drinking
  
• Module Stacking is now set to Ceil instead of round, favouring the player, this means that a dimishing return value of 1.2 rounds up to 2
  
• Buffed Movement Speed Module (5% -> 10%) making it achieve the same if not higher values when stacked with diminishing returns
  
• Buffed Fall Damage Module (25% -> 40%) taking into account dimishing returns on stacking
  
• Buffed Consumption Module (10% -> 15%)
  
• Buffed Inventory Slot Increase Modules (2 -> 3), (5 ->6). These do not have diminishing returns when stacking
  
• Buffed Carry Weight Module (5% -> 15%) taking into account dimishing returns on stacking
  
• Debuffed Fishing Module (25% -> 10%) as the Fish Caught Quality was too high, chance to catch unique was unchanged at 200%
  
• Debuffed Taming Module (Stamina 100% -> 50%) speed was unchanged
  
• Agent bodies and communicator in Prometh mission 4 now clean up once mission is completed
  
• Updating Equippable Data so the Diminishing Returns on Modules etc is off by default
  
• MAGMATIC: Updated rewards to grant red exotics instead of purple exotics
  
• SHADOWED: Rebalanced spawn rates of creatures, notably first and third zones have reduced creature count
  
• DISPATCH: Reduced difficulty of creatures in the defense phase
  
• Hid log spam about invalid voxels being skipped during level streaming
  
• Removed unecessary voxel warning message during build cooking
  
• Removed error message from dedicated server lobby start up caused by trying to resolve active prospect while in lobby
  
• Fixed a case where players would not get mission rewards if they weren't present for the start of a mission after they had previously completed one on the same prospect (i.e. open world)
  
• Improved the mission complete popup to include the name of the mission that the reward is for, whether the mission is the current one or a previous one, and are now showing the actual awarded resource values as they were previously calculated separately
  
• Reducing the Wind Turbine Collision Range to be 2 tiles instead of 4
  
• When highlighting the wind turbine all collision areas will show from all turbines
  
• The Icebox, Refrigirator and Deep Freeze can now store Ice
  
• The Arctic Head Armor not longer requires Arctic Pelts but instead requires one Polar Bear Head
  
• Fixed Navmesh not being active in game.
  
• Removed invalid loading screen video
  
• At capped Fall damage resistance, prevented prospectors from getting sprains or broken legs from falling
  
• Fixing Blueprint / Workshop Talent trees from unintentially displaying 1% for all their item stats
  
• Reducing the Wind Turbine Collision Range to be be slightly smaller again
  
• Fixed issue that was preventing voxels from finding their save data quickly. Has now been changed to cache by the voxels location as the names were still unstable
  
• Removed recorder fast paths for GUID and actor name path due to stability issues
  
• Updated Obsidian Pickaxe to enable gathering of all ores
  
• Updated Obsidian tools to use Obsidian rather than Shaped Obsidian
  
• Obsidian tools now correctly use shaped obsidian again
  
• Heavy Obsidian armor now uses raw obsidian to repair as intended
  
• Refridgerator can now store Ice as intended
  
• Potential fix for voxel material streaming crash
  
• Fix an issue with partially mined breakable rocks on save/load
  

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand]

• Adding Niagara system for testing creature footstep VFX
  
• Added cliff meshes & blended in cave entrances in Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Ashlands, Red Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added equix trophy art assets and blueprint to the project
  
• Added blueback trophy art assets and blueprint to the project
  
• Added cliff meshes & blended in cave entrances in Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass and Fixed a Seam in Macro Impassable, Purple Quad and Red Quad, Prometheus
  

[/expand]

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]