Icarus News

Week Forty Five’s update focuses on new features and fixes for our Mounts system that we introduced in week forty two. The new Husbandry Tree will allow you to invest into your Mounts prowess, in either taming, raising or riding.

We’ve also included a bunch of rebalances, tweaks and improvements to the system, addressing interaction issues with beds and troughs and overall general behaviour.

We’ve also included information on three upcoming features and systems. Read into the future of Mounts, Open World Mode, and Narrative Mission Chains.





The new Husbandry Tree provides players with a way to become an expert in the Mounts' system, allowing you to either specialise into being the tamer, raiser or rider to support a team, or have a more ‘jack-of-all-trades' approach.

The left side of the tree focuses on the taming phase of the cycle, with talents focused on temperature tolerance, taming speed and providing juveniles immunity from attacking predators.

The middle of the tree provides talents focused on raising your Mounts and providing them baseline improvements. Talents in this branch focus on gathering, food and water consumption, Mount health and the amount predators will perceive them as a threat.

The right side of the tree provides talents that are centred on utilising your Mount for riding or as a pack animal. These feature stamina bonuses, reduced player oxygen/food/water requirements, carry weight and movement speed.





We’ve gathered a large amount of feedback on our Mounts since launch. This week, we’re incorporating some fixes, rebalances and features to address some issues and areas for improvement:

• We have increased the default carry weight capacity of the Buffalo mount and added extra capacity to the pack harness
  
• We have added a new ability to manually feed and give water to Mounts from items in your quick-bar. Hand-feeding Mounts will give them a short burst of health regeneration.
  
• We have improved the Mount/Juvenile ability to navigate towards troughs and beds
  
• Mounts no longer starve to death when at a distance from the player
  
• Mounts/Juveniles now take item nutrition value into account when eating, meaning they will consume lower quantities of high nutrition items such as watermelon, but will consume higher quantities of low nutrition items such as berries
  

Our first iteration of Mounts has been a success, and we’ve been encouraged by the positive feedback and constructive criticism we’ve received from the community. We have a lot of plans for this new system to come in the future, and wanted to talk about a couple of these.

The Husbandry tree releasing today is one of those features, and as we move towards multi-mission persistence in the future we aim to expand these opportunities for player choice with the addition of mount levelling and talents. We have also been experimenting with Mounts being able to pull different items and machines across different terrains that offer various uses, along with different types of saddles and attachments.

We’re also looking at other animals that can be raised into Mounts, particularly in the next DLC expansion. We wanted to give special mention to the Icarus modding community who quickly incorporated Bears as an available Mount in a download. While we don’t have current plans to make Bears an available Mount, we enjoyed watching some of the gameplay and wanted to compliment you on your work.





Last week we introduced our plans for our Open World Mode, our next large feature to be introduced in the future.

Our goal with this feature is to clearly define three different ways to enjoy Icarus, be it more traditional survival, our iconic instanced missions, or a more sandbox-esque peaceful building environment.

Open World Mode:

Open World Mode provides the ‘traditional survival’ experience, where you can access the entire map and choose your drop zones in a persistent, dangerous environment with respawning world bosses, weather impacts and no experience reduction.

Outposts:

Outposts will provide the ‘sandbox' experience, allowing you to create and build in a controlled environment where your creativity and ambition are able to run wild. This is designed to be a self-contained experience, giving you the space to innovate without consequence.

Missions:

Our Instanced Missions are the ‘bread and butter’ of Icarus, with self-contained stories and missions that play out over portions of the map and develop the narrative and future of this universe. We have no plans to stop developing and evolving them, as they are integral to Icarus and will always be the centre of our development.

Open World Mode and Outposts will both receive updates and improvements going forward with their own identities allowing both to evolve into their own designated features. Open World Mode has more unannounced features to come, and will launch with both Olympus and Styx as playable areas. As a result, the Olympus Outpost will be removed, but the smaller maps will stay and evolve with unique features in the future.

In the long-run, we are aiming to include the ability to trigger missions from your Open World Mode bases, but this will not be available in this first pass. Releasing this version, is the first step in our journey towards this goal.





We have been working on a few narrative missions which will form a chain to incorporate a new story from beginning to end with new characters and objectives. This allows us to form a more ‘campaign’ feel around a central story that spans multiple drops and we hope they will immerse our players deeper into the lore of Icarus.

These missions should also start providing more detail and insight into the various factions, characters, history and stories that surround the failed terraforming project and give players more engagement with the different elements of the universe.





New Content

• Added framework for Husbandry talent tree. - Renamed Construction talent group to Habitation
  
• Added base class for Spike Traps and cleaned up logic for Hedgehogs, basic Wood Hedgehog will now damage players, hedgehogs deal 50% damage to players
  
• Added ranks to Husbandry tree talents. - Renamed Husbandry tree talents from placeholder names to more accurate names
  
• Adding new Stats for Husbandry Talents
  
• Added stats to Husbandry talent points
  
• Updating Husbandy talents to include new stats
  
• Setting up modifiers for new taming aura's
  
• Setting up crafting cost reductions for saddles and taming equipment
  
• Adding new TamedCreatureModifiers Table for Determining the stat transfer between player and tamed creature / juvenile
  
• Setting up Virtual stats for new husbandry stats
  
• Hooking up Player States related to Riding Creatures (Oxygen, Food, Water Consumptions and Exposure Resistance)
  
• Adding new Stats for Player Husbandry Talent Tree
  
• Adding Missing Virtual Stats for Older Taming stats so we can work with the new system
  
• Updated stats on Husbandry talents to fix build validation error.
  
• Increased Buffalo Mount Health Regeneration
  
• Players will now be kicked out of the mount inventory screen if player/mount distance becomes too large. Mounts now use generic ragdoll behaviour shared with other NPCs
  
• Linked new stats to Husbandry talents.
  
• Updated Husbandry talent and related stat descriptions
  
• Creatures mounted by local player play audio when taking fall damage
  
• Players are now prompted with a dialog to set name when first claiming a tamed mount. Shifted 'open mount inventory' functionality into mount class instead of inside actionable
  
• Added first pass of Husbandry talent tree background
  
• Setup specific XP events for Moa, Juvenile Moa and Juvenile Buffalo.
  
• Enabled Juveniles to be counted towards baby animal kills and their respective parent creature type kills
  
• Adding Husbandry talent tree background asset
  
• Mounts and Juveniles will now have any player-owner driven stats applied to them when claimed, or when led by a new player in the case of juveniles. In the case of session reload, mounts and juveniles will wait for their most recent owning player to reconnect before reapplying relevant stats. Implemented following stats for use with husbandry talent tree: JuvenileFriendlyToPredators, TameSleepRequirement, IsJuvenile, IsMounted
  
• Tamed mount food/water is no longer reduced when their current level tile is unloaded
  
• Juvenile taming tooltip now switches temp requirement icon based on current environmental temperature. Fixed taming temperature virtual stat using the wrong base stats
  
• Added ability to feed and give water to mounts from currently equipped hotbar item. Nutritional value of food is now counted when mounts/juveniles go to eat, meaning it will take more than one item to completely satisfy hunger
  

Fixed

• Fix closed doors and windows sounding open after respawn. There is a potential issue with initialisation order, so try to set the open FMOD parameter again if it fails the first time on BeginPlay
  
• Optimization pass on Buildables textures. Consistency pass on texture settings and reducing 4k textures to save memory
  
• Optimized some assets with high triangle counts to improve performance
  
• Remove sequence reference from Cave diorama causing unnecessary asset loads, wasting memory
  
• Numerous texture optimizations and settings consistency pass to save memory
  
• Fix LOD settings on Dead Prospetor meshes (LOD3 was 5k triangles), should have 6 LODs with the final being
• Delete unused Tree meshes which have bad LODs and no materials
  
• Optimized and/or deleted unused assets in VFX/TRE folder to improve performance
  
• Add LODs to assets missing them or needing settings improved. Delete unused assets
  
• Fixed inaccurate collision on Scorpion Hedgehog mesh causing hits to fail often
  
• Add new option to Graphics Menu (Limit Poolsize To VRAM) which may help alleviate blurry textures on GPUs with not enough memory. Note: this is enabled by default and should only be disabled if you are having texture issues. Disabling it may cause issues/crashes
  
• Remove some of the many old variations of WIP HAB levels to allow easier cleanup of old otherwise unused assets. Deep chained asset references result in expensive assets being shipped unnecessarily, causing larger builds, bigger load times and more memory consumption
  
• Removed Prospect007 entry from Terrains DT to fix validation error
  
• Remove old levels which cause a ton of unnecessary references and make cleanup of old assets impossible
  
• Prevent graphics settings from being applied before the graphics subsystem is ready, reset the resolution scale when entering/exiting DLSS/FSR, ensure r.ScreenPercentage CVar calls are made with ECVF_SetByScalability priority so that the LegacyScreenPercentageDriver can make changes, this means that resolution scaling works correctly (when DLSS/FSR are switched off) and multiple combinations of settings are applied
  
• Move marker for this quest to a new serialization system ('MapSearchArea' vs 'LocationSearchArea'), reload the mission several times to ensure the marker now always shows up, this means that the map marker should always appear after reload on the station to station mission
  
• Accolade: Ravenous only tracks food consumed when consuming stack, wired PlayerTracker to consume food (of stack size 1) on right click 'consume', different code path from right click 'consume stack', this means players are awarded progress towards consumption accolades when comsuming single food items as well as stacks of food items
  
• STRANGE HARVEST: Fixed typo in quest description
  
• HOMESTEAD: Updated Rustic Statue objective to Rustic Icarus Statue, to better guide players to the correct statue to craft
  
• Added Sandworm boss to all Olympus Exploration missions (min 1, max 4)
  
• Styx has different Biomes from Olympus, so map accolades to atmospheres rather than biomes, this means that players correctly attain progress towards Biome accolades on Styx (Scorched Traveller, Forzen Traveller et al.)
  
• Voyager Mission - Fixed Den item replenishment
  
• Strange Harvest: Fixed respawn on boss to ensure respawning on prospect reload
  
• Strange Harvest: Fixes issue preventing objective particles to appear
  
• Fixed Holdfast Outpost getting stuck on preparing geometry when crossing into the B4 tile by adding the missing level bounds actors which guarantee the correct levels are loaded
  
• Fixed weather timeline UI not updating correctly when mounted
  
• Fixed bug where talent tree view could break when trying to assign talent points while mounted
  
• Fixed bug where mounts and juveniles still wouldn't attempt to move to beds or water troughs if they were off navmesh
  
• Juvenile taming tooltip now switches temp requirement icon based on current environmental temperature. Fixed taming temperature virtual stat using the wrong base stats
  
• Fixed bug where talent tree view could break when trying to assign talent points while mounted
  
• Hand-feeding a mount will now apply a moderate amount of health regen, with the duration changing based on food's nutrition. Mounts can now be affected by warm and cozy buff
  
• Adding in all base AI setup for the Rock Dog, including all anim montages and placeholder stat values, still needs lava state hookup and lava based attacks to be completed
  
• Fixed Nurturing Presence aura not affecting juvenile taming speed. Fixed NPCs not being able to receive aura modifiers
  
• Fixing inherited collision on the wood gate that was stopping arrows, it is a door base BP which has the collision there to stop multiple doors being placed on top of eachother
  
• Fixed bug where cave modifier / visual effects wouldn't apply correctly when entering a cave while mounted
  
• Fixed bug where Juveniles/Mounts would stop short of their bed/trough when interacting with it. Juveniles and Mounts should hang back a little more when following player owner. Fixed bug where taming speed stat wasn't affecting the overall tame duration as expected; reworked the internal stats driving taming speed / duration
  
• Extended the level streaming distance on Holdfast Outpost to solve the preparing geometry screen appearing when crossing into the B4 tile
  
• Increased Buffalo mount carry weight limit to 300kg, Pack Harness adds an additional 300kg carry weight capacity
  
• Fixed juveniles not being ignored by hostile creatures when using the 'One With Nature' talent
  
• Implement audio cues when player manually feeds or waters mounts. Audio refs still to be added
  
• Adding sounds and events for mounts being manually fed / watered
  
• Fixed bug where player would consume held food item when hand-feeding mounts. Mounts and Juveniles will now reset the spoil timer on stacks of food left over after feeding from troughs
  
• Fixed bug where player wouldn't have their internal 'IsMounted' stat removed when dismounting from saddle
  
• Strange Harvest: Significantly increased tether distance on boss to prevent unintentional resetting
  
• Fixed bug where the 'Feed'/'Give Water' tooltip would show when looking at a mount with an invalid held item
  
• Adding feeding mount sounds to BP and correcting the buffalo mouth socket in data table
  
• Mounts and Juveniles will now receive a health regeneration boost after eating from food troughs (similar to hand feeding)
  
• Fixed typo in Enzyme Geyser description, havest to harvest
  
• Added footstep particles to mounts
  
• Improved modifier stacking behaviour, longest modifier durations will now always take priority. TamingSpeed aura modifier is no longer visible to players
  
• Fixed bug where mounts would start drowning if stood in water for too long
  

Future Content

• Added Brick Buildable tier assets and added to blueprints
  
• Added BLD_Stairs_Brick
  
• Added foliage type asstes for the lava groundcover foliage. LC_Groundcover_A, LC Groundcover_B, LC_GrassA
  
• Added on to Transition Cave on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Removed Tussocks and setup grass variations for Tundra Grass Layer
  
• Change Snow Tree foliage variations to be able to paint on AC_Snow
  
• Added SW_Bramble A, C, D, E, F, And G Foliage types, Blueprints, and added to FLOD Data table
  
• Fixed underground cave cliffs material to No RVT, Green Quad, Styx
  
• Added foliage types and BPs for several swamp plants, as well as the Toi Toi for Grasslands, along with all of their FLOD Data Table entries
  
• Adding Pbird Attack and death audio and FMOD events
  
• LC Ground Covers/Grass foliage setup
  
• Added tags/queries for sledgehammer harvesting, currently set up so the node can only take damage from sledgehammer hits
  
• Added sledgehammer breakable node class/functionality, with an example setup called BP_BreakableRockExample
  
• AC Bushes/Foliage (Harvestable) Foliage Setup
  
• Adding missing sledgehammer code files from previous commit
  
• Added Cliffs for Avalanched AC on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Create SM from IceBorer SK
  
• Tweak IceBorer constraints
  
• Point to correct mesh for Ice Borer meshable and delete old greybox assets
  
• Added Buttercups to GL_Grass and Foliage Setup
  
• TU Tussocks Foliage Setup and Proedural Foliage Spawner
  
• LC to SW Transition Cave Set Dressing, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Landscape Painting, Decal Pass and Cliff Placement, Green and Yellow Quad, DLC
  
• Adding Pbird data table entries and setup and distant idle audio
  
• Update Hitable row for Rock to reference new native C++ class
  
• Set Reeds as Foliage type for Swamp
  
• Manual AC Foliage Placement on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in arctic biome, Green and Yellow Quands, DLC
  
• Fixed up Needler assets. Added Carcass mat variation. Pointed SKs to their appropriate materials. Deleted SM. Optimized texture settings
  
• LC to SW Transition Cave Set Dressing, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Swamp Macros - LOD pass, material edits on 04-06, plus GL and TU variants. Tweaked LOD distances on all meshes to transition sooner
  
• Foliage Setup and Procedural Spawner for General SW_Dirt plants
  
• Grass/GroundCover Setup for SW_Dirt
  
• Foliage Setup and Procedural Spawner for Tree/Saplings on SW_Muddy
  
• Toggle Grassland option on DLC1 Landscape to use new foliage/ grass options on CF layers
  
• Foliage Setup for Shelf Mushrooms
  
• Tweak Mangrove/Cypress Saplings generation values to balance spawn amount on SW_Muddy
  
• Moved Large Scale Swamp Cliff Meshes Into the Persistant Level, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Remove E_Waterfall_Base_Foam_smallBurst emitter which is unused but contains errors and shows up in log in Steam build
  
• Adding S.Bird close and far idle audio
  
• SW Impassable meshes - added 01-06
  
• Prototyped Stalactites/Stalagmites placement solution
  
• Removed RVT option fo Cave entrance on CF_Cave_MED_01 to fix underground cave RVT problems
  
• Adding S.Bird Attack vocalisations and event
  
• SW Impassable meshes - added 07-08, material tweaks on all meshes
  
• Manual AC & TU Foliage Placement on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in arctic biome, Green Quand, DLC
  
• LC to SW Transition Cave Set Dressing, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding GL_TussockA and it's 3 variants, including foliage types
  
• Updated Brick Tier Buildable changes
  
• FT_D_TU_DirtDebris - decal created from Tundra grass terrain textures
  
• Moved Large Scale Swamp Cliff Meshes Into Purple Quad Level, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Small SW rocks - material parenting changes, duplicated meshes for Tundra and Grasslands
  
• Added inverted versions of selected cave stalagmites to create stalactites. Added foliage groups for these to allow them to be painted in the level. Tweaked material on Rock_Cave_Stalagmite_05 to match the others
  
• Med SW rocks - material parenting changes, duplicated meshes for Tundra and Grasslands
  
• Foliage Setup for ToiToi/GL Tussocks/Aspen Tree and Procedrual Spawners
  
• Setup Foliage for SW Internal Cliff Plants
  
• Tweaks to GL Foliage Instance Settings, Cull distance and shadows
  
• Adding S.Bird flinch and death sounds and events
  
• Added AC_TussocksA variants, including Foliage Types and BPs, and added them to the FLOD data table
  
• Manual AC & TU Foliage Placement on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in arctic biome and underwater dressing, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Adding S.Bird Nip jaw and nip vocalisations and event
  
• Swamp Rocks - FTs and associated BPs added for Lrg, med, sml rocks
  
• Grasslands Rocks - FTs and associated BPs added for Lrg, med, sml rocks
  
• tundra Rocks - FTs and associated BPs added for Lrg, med, sml rocks
  
• Volcanic Rocks - FTs and associated BPs added for Lrg, med, sml rocks
  
• Added 3 variants of bulbous flax plant for the lava biome with foliage types and blueprints
  
• Adding S.Bird Nip audio to event and all footstep notifiers. Also adding all data entry tables for creature so far
  
• Added bulbous Flax to the FLOD data table
  
• Updated Brick Tier Floor
  
• Swamp/GL/TU macros - polish on textures+materials
  
• Volcanic Rocks - voxel cache files for LRG, MED, SML rocks
  
• Swamp Rocks - voxel cache files for LRG, MED, SML rocks
  
• Adding S.Bird aggro vocals and more unique idle layers
  
• Tundra Rocks - voxel cache files for LRG, MED, SML rocks
  
• Grasslands Rocks - voxel cache files for LRG, MED, SML rocks
  
• Adding in base implemenation of opening wooden gate to use with the railings, all base assets and data table setups, currently is awarded to the player along side the wooden railing when it is unlocked, using the same cost processor recipe
  
• Adding data table entries for aggro event for S.Bird
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Manual AC & TU Foliage Placement on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in arctic biome and underwater dressing, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Added SW Impassable 09, plus GL variants of 1-9
  
• macro replacement with impassables, green quad (WIP)
  
• Adding S.Bird notifiers for movement sounds
  
• Added AC_Pine_SnowLite and AC_Fir_SnowLite, including foliage types and BPs, as well as Data Table entries
  
• Setup SW Rocks, Moss function tweak to fix moss inside voxels, Added rocks to SW_Dirt_Foliage Spawner
  
• Submitting first pass fortification implemenation, includes wall, spikes, walkway and stairs and all base data table setups as well as relevant blueprints the system uses our existing deployable socket and snapping features, so doesnt requiore a building grid
  
• SW Impassables - added 10-14, plus GL variants
  
• Fixed UV distortion of SW_MAC_05
  
• macro replacement with impassables, green quad (WIP2)
  
• Created PFS for GL/CF/SW and General Resources, changed AC_Stone Shader to not use RVT for TU use, Added DLC Layers to Resources
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Spawning SW Foliage on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in arctic biome and underwater dressing, Green Quand, DLC
  
• SM_Breakable_Scoria blueprint, mesh, material and textures
  
• Setting up Deployable to call down an exotic extraction ship for delivering exotics while on a prospect (this is preperation of the data decentralisation game flow
  
• Added Wood Railing Gate Icon to D_Itemable
  

We’re following on with the second of our Early Missions Revamps, this time addressing six more early Olympus missions.

STRANGE HARVEST, HEADSTONE and KILL LIST have received large scale improvements, focusing on mission flow and player experience. This incorporates new features added to the game since we first made these missions such as more creatures in the spawn pool.

AGRICULTURE, VOYAGER and FORSAKEN have received smaller updates to improve the player experience.

Also below is an insight into the next big features coming to Icarus. We’ll keep sharing details as we work towards bringing them into the game.





STRANGE HARVEST: Bio-Research has received a welcome rework to improve the mission flow and player experience, using new systems and changes we created for Styx’s missions.

Players are now tasked to investigate toxins in the designated area and track down the original source, while previously the mission required players to collect bio-samples for the Sinotai faction.

The UDA will provide some poison paste to help you with your mission and a new dropship location closer to your objective.

The mission now provides new challenges and quests, so be careful to not take it for granted. Proper preparation is strongly advised.





HEADSTONE and KILL LIST have also been addressed, with improved player experience and UI across both while keeping the quest line consistent.

KILL LIST requires you to tackle a Wolf Pack and its Alpha Wolf Leader, so our focus has been on improving this phase of the mission.

• Wolf packs now spawn at clue locations, with their levels scaled more accurately to the selected difficulty
  
• Wolf packs anchored behaviors have been altered so the pack stays with 1000 meters of its spawn zone
  
• Map icons for interactable targets are added when players reach a clue location
  
• Quest clue locations have been reorganized so players won’t have to ‘backtrack’ away from the final target
  
• We’ve added map prompts for the quest objectives
  

We’ve streamlined HEADSTONE, which requires you to deploy and defend Uplink stations.

• The drop location has been moved closer to mission objectives
  
• Survey equipment is now contained within the dropship to streamline mission setup and remove the opportunity for unexpected collision issues with the care package
  
• AI now responds more aggressively to transmitters, and has been rebalanced with more creature variety in the spawn pool
  
• Mission items are now correctly tagged as quest items
  
• Transmitter Health and Progress are now displayed as quest steps
  
• Added more spawn points near Survey deployment locations for attacking creatures
  

Three other missions have also received small updates and improvements.

AGRICULTURE: Supply Stockpile’s mission requirements will now scale more accurately with the selected difficulty

VOYAGER: Recovery has received a fix for the den intractability and reload issues

FORSAKEN: Recovery will now identify items as quest items





The next large feature in the pipeline is Open World Mode. We get frequent community requests for more persistent base building and progression in Icarus like traditional open world survival games. At the same time we also want to retain Icarus' unique session-based mission structure. So, we’re looking to add another game mode.

Open World Mode will be a more traditional survival sandbox experience, giving you access to the entire Olympus or Styx map with no time limit and with all your progress persisting. Unlike Outposts mode, your character would earn experience and level up. You can drop into your own selected locations and return as often as you please, and engage with respawning world bosses while establishing your presence on the surface. You will still be able to play missions as a way to earn Exotics and permanent workshop items by jumping back to the main menu and launching them from there. More details to come in the following weeks.

Dedicated Servers have also made progress, with a range of technical issues and small edge cases complete, but a few outstanding gameplay impacts to be addressed. Large Scale internal and external testing is close.





Mission Revamps

• Scaled AGRICULTURE: Supply Stockpile mission objectives with selected difficulty. Slightly reduced hunting shipment requirements on normal difficulty
  
• Killlist mission - Mature Pack Wolfs now spawn at clue locations, their levels scale by selected difficulty
  
• Killlist mission - Adding new Mature Pack Wolf Epic Creature Spawn Config
  
• Killlist mission - Adding new Pack Wolf Anchored Behaviour with a distance of 1000 so it stays very close to its spawn zone
  
• Killlist mission - When reaching a clue location, a map icon appears to show the exact interact target
  
• Killlist mission - Shifting Quest Clue locations so the quest no longer requires back tracking when moving towards quest objectives
  
• Killlist mission - Slightly tweaked multiplayer scaling on follower wolves and Alpha wolf
  
• Killlist mission - Adding Map prompts to quest objectives
  
• Headstone Mission - Updating Drop Location so it is closer to the mission objectives
  
• Headstone Mission - Survey equipment is now contained on the players ship
  
• Headstone Mission - AI now get angry and charges at the transmitter
  
• Headstone Mission - Rebalanced AI which spawns and added more variety
  
• Headstone Mission - Fixed Map markers so they reload correctly mid mission
  
• Headstone Mission - Transmitter Health and Progress are now displayed as quest steps
  
• Headstone Mission - Mission items are now correctly tagged as quest items
  
• Headstone Mission - Replaced Crate with Supply pod when picking up transmitter
  
• Headstone Mission - Added Manual Spawn points near Survey Deployment locations
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Changed Drop Point Location to add variation to early mission drop point locations
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Changed Entire Mission Flow, players now investigate toxins within an area eventually tracking down the source
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Adding new Contaminated Bear Creature with Anchored Behaviour, includes new materials, fur and particles
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Adding 3 new mission items (Flora, Digested Biomatters and a Bioweapon sample)
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Adjusting all objective locations to reduce player travel distance and backtracking
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Updated quest logic to use new systems present in styx, decremented beta weekend quest systems, fixing search area and map icon reloading
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Adding new Delivery Quest Markers and Droppod / Crashed Ship Variations
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Updating Quest Objectives and Mission breifing
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Adding new Map Icon for Contaiminated Bear
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Adding Delivery Step to Quest for collected items
  
• Killlist Mission - Search area narrows down as you find each clue.
  
• Killlist Mission - Increased tether range on follower wolves
  
• Headstone Mission, fixed typo in quest step.
  
• Heastone Mission, ensured AI stop spawning if transmitter is disabled.
  
• Headstone Mission, fixed issues causing quest progress to be lost after completion.
  
• Headstone Mission, changed spawn location to be closer to mission objectives
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Adding Contaminated Bear Corpse and tooltip
  
• Strange Harvest Mission - Fixing Bioweapon not spawning in correct container & Delivery not checking correct container
  
• Updating reward from 50 -> 85 for Strange Harvest Mission
  
• Headstone Mission - Extending Creature Teathers to allow more nautral creature movements
  

Fixed

• Fixed rotation on railing snap position for glass floors which was causing railings to be at 90 degree angles
  
• Delete a bunch of unused DataTable content which is causing assets to be unnecessarily loaded (taking up memory resources and increasing build size) and clutter content
  
• Added text to clarify water requirement on crafting windows for cement mixer, biofuel composter and electric composter
  
• Fixed another bug with juvenile mounts disappearing when reloading a prospect; Freeze/Unfreeze functionality for IcarusNPCCharacters now stops all movement before freezing, and uses only the character capsule component for TerrainAnchor bounds
  
• Added water connections to Masonry and Electric Masonry benches which increases processing speed when satisfied
  
• Adjust Sandbanks LOD material roughness to fix inconsistency with base material
  
• Ensure that the activation of the thermal component stays in step with (graphical) light activation, this means that players get a temperature buff when wood rag torch is equipped in light slot (as well as in hand)
  
• Improve Scorpion Physics Asset to be more accurate by adding more smaller capsules to better encapsulate the mesh. Gaps between capsules meant projectiles could pass through without hit
  
• Adjust equation for mammoth and elephant stomp knockback velocity, this means that large mammoth boss and elephants should no longer be able to knock players out of the map [Bug] Hurled across map by Mammoth to out-of-bounds area and killed, losing all equipment - SurviveIcarus
  
• Mounts and Juveniles can now eat / drink from troughs that are off the navmesh
  
• Fixed an issue preventing Heavy Glass Windows from being reinforced using a water connection, slighly reduced heatlh of these so when reinfoced they have the same health as the wall itself
  
• Prevent graphics settings from being applied before the graphics subsystem is ready, this means that resolution scaling works correctly (when DLSS/FSR are switched off
  
• Fixed issue causing the water trough to be labelled as Storage and gaining the Expanded alteration.
  
• Added level scaling for Mammoths and Elephants, resulting in significantly increased health and minor increases to damage.
  
• Fixed instance of Juveniles getting destroyed upon prospect reload. Removed code that was automatically cleaning up 'stuck' NPCs if they hadn't moved from their original spawn location 15s after spawn
  
• Removed 'Set' ItemsStatic entries from ValidAmmoTypes DT accidentally added in during data update, allowing the Workshop consumable stacks to be fired directly from the weapon.
  
• Added DT Validation to prevent unwanted items being added in to ValidAmmoTypes DT
  
• Added recipe to craft Bone from Mammoth Tusks at the Cooking Station.
  
• Overflow bags generated when player respawns no longer simulate physics to prevent cases where they fall through the world
  
• Reduced threshold for tames to get hungry and thirsty.
  
• Fixed stat assignment on the Hunger modifier pointing to an incorrect stat.
  
• Revert sRGB setting on map textures which have not been brightened up via art pass, causing them to appear too dark
  

Future Content

• Updated CAC maps for IceCave Pillars, Ice Stalagtites and Stalagmites
  
• Added foliage type and blueprints for tundra bush assets
  
• Added Foliage type and Blueprints for Tundra Sapling assets. Updated FLod Data table with tundra foliage
  
• Decals painting and cliff placement in arctic Blue Quad , DLC
  
• Adding in WIP fur assets for the Bat dog for fur creation
  
• T2 Mission Communication Device - mesh, textures, materials added
  
• Painted Decals Volcanic Area & Added Cliffs to Base of Macros Volcanic Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Allowed the Shoot the Breeze talent to use the Material Processor as well as Mortar and Pestle
  
• T2 Mission Communication Device - added DM, minor revisions to mesh and textures
  
• Painted Decals Volcanic Area, Added Cliffs to Base of Macros Volcanic Area & Added on to Transition Cave on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Submitting Batdog, Batdog carcass, respective textures and fur
  
• Adding Pbird wing flaps sounds, events and anim notifiers
  
• Added Cliffs & Stalagmites to Transition Cave from SW to AC, Swapped Out RVT with NORVT on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Landscape Painting, Decal Pass and Cliff Placement, Green Quad, DLC
  
• LC to SW Transition Cave Set Dressing, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added Arrowhead Plant, Bog Flower, and Cypress Sapling as foliage types, BPs, and also added all to the FLOD Data Table
  

The next two weeks of updates are focused on improving and updating our early missions on Olympus. This week we’ve focused on the first two missions and a whole category - BEACHHEAD, LIVEWIRE and the Exploration Missions (minus SPIRIT WALK) - and re-introduced the Mammoth, alongside some key player experience and performance improvements.

These updates will benefit new Icarus players more than experienced prospectors who have already completed these missions, but are an important part of our ongoing focus of learning, optimizing and improving all aspects of the game. We’ve taken what we’ve learnt from 43 weekly updates so far and our latest Mission designs and applied them to these important first Missions.

Last week’s addition of Buffalo and Moa Mounts has proven popular. We’re taking on board lots of player feedback and will continue to improve this system in the coming weeks.





All Exploration Missions with the exception of SPIRIT WALK have been improved with added exotic locations and the removal of all boundary limits to promote more adventure, free-roaming and discovery.

All exploration missions will now have a total of ten exotic locations, the ones from SPIRIT WALK plus four more throughout the map. These grant 200-400 exotics each over three spawns in total.

SPIRIT WALK was intentionally left untouched to not impact the popular farming set up that many players had developed.

We’ve also removed the ‘out of bounds’ limitations for all exploration missions, and changed how completion is achieved. Missions will now be considered finished when the attached scans are completed, rather than when the player leaves the surface of the planet. This allows players to spend more time completing the ‘exploration’ element of the mission and spend time improving their character with the time they have left.





The Mammoth has returned to the arctic biomes of Icarus, after some much needed improvement and adjustment in its time away. We’ve also addressed a few long-standing issues worth mentioning.

The long-standing exposure issue has been fixed:

• Players do not immediately die due to prior weather exposure when respawned
  
• The storm exposure bar no longer stays full when players respawn, and will reset the exposure and shelter values when a player dies
  
• We’ve also addressed optimization through improving our textures setup, which should reduce RAM usage in-game for many players.
  
• And finally, we’ve added the ability to easily scale stockpile rewards by difficulty, providing more personalized and balanced missions.
  

There are many more fixes and improvements in the changelog below, so take a look at what we’ve been up to.





BEACHHEAD: RECON has been expanded upon and improved. Being the introductory mission to Icarus, we identified the need to make this educational and packed with valuable insights and guidance for new players. This includes two new quest steps which provide more direction into crafting, and prompts players to practice the process of mining and consuming Oxite.

We also aimed to provide a more peaceful and rewarding experience in this mission, updating spawn values and adding a small Ren payment to introduce players sooner to the mission reward system and workshop.





LIVEWIRE: TERRAIN SCAN has received a range of improvements and changes to improve the player experience and mission flow. Your first introduction to bears may now be friendlier, but only a little.

• The Radar is now collected from the Dropship, and will also respawn here
  
• The pool of enemies encountered has been expanded to add more variety, including bear cubs and boars
  
• The radar will now have a durability limit and can be destroyed, similar to the system in Styx missions
  
• Quest objectives now mention that creatures will be attacking to give players more time to prepare
  
• The number and frequency of enemy spawns now scales with the difficulty and number of players present in-game, to provide a more balanced experience
  
• The scanning process will now stop if the player moves outside the designated zone, and players are prompted to move closer to re-activate the process
  

New

• Livewire Mission Radar is now Collected & Respawns in Dropship
  
• Livewire Mission Adjusted enemies who spawn to add more variety and use new creatures (Bear Cubs, Boars etc)
  
• Livewire Mission Radar's now have durability and can now be destroyed as part of the quest (same as Styx Scanning Logic)
  
• Livewire Mission The quest objective now mentions that creatures will be attacking
  
• Livewire Mission the number and Frequency of Enemies now Spawn based on both difficulty and number of players present
  
• Livewire Mission If players move outside of the scanning zone the scanning stops and the players are prompted to move back into the scanning area
  
• Changed all exploration missions except Spirit Walk to have 10 total exotics locations, the ones from Spirit Walk plus 4 additional throughout the map, all granting 200-400 each, with 3 total spawns. Spirit Walk was unchanged to not impact that popular farming setup, happy extracting!
  
• Updating BEACHHEAD: RECON mission to include 2 new quest steps which help explain crafting, adding prompts to mention where to find oxite and the needing to consume it, updating spawn values to provide a more peaceful experience for learning, adding a small Ren Reward to introduce the mission reward system to players
  
• Removed out of bounds areas for all Exploration missions. - Exploration missions are now automatically completed when their attached scans are completed, players no longer need to enter and leave these missions for completion
  
• Adding Mammoth into Arctic Zone Spawn Pools
  

Fixed

• Remove unneeded Alpha channels on Voxel Albedo and RMA textures, halving file size, saving almost 0.5GB of memory use while playing. (Reducing RAM usage)
  
• Fixed a bug where the setting 'toggle sprint' would not work when riding a mount
  
• Updated Shengong 'Sui Shi' Pickaxe description to not indicate that is is easily repaired, as it is no different to any other workshop item
  
• Fixed and issue where the damage indicator wasn't facing the correct direction
  
• Storm exposure bar no longer stays full when the player respawns, Reseting the exposure and shelter values when a player dies, Disabled any shelter traces until respawn,
  
• WeatherActions no longer add modifiers to dead players, This means that players do not immediately die due to prior weather exposure when respawned
  
• Fix river audio sometimes cutting out around river spline intersection points. FMOD voices were being inappropriately culled by virtualisation when the proximity parameter applied a volume offset as different river audio components moved close to one another. Moved the volume offset to a submix channel so that FMOD ignores it in virtualisation calcs, and also tweaked the proximity curve to blend more smoothly around braided river intersections
  
• Added the ability to easily scale stockpile rewards by difficulty
  
• Added missing file changes to ValidAmmoTypes.cpp/h. Reconciled offline work
  

Future

• Submitting Batdog, Batdog carcass and respective textures
  
• Landscape Sculpting and Decal Pass, Blue Quad and Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Painted Decals Volcanic Area & Added Cliffs to Base of Macros Volcanic Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added Brick_Wall asset and added all required pieces to BP for testing
  
• Decals painting and cliff placement in swamp Yellow Quad transition, DLC
  
• Created GL_Cave_Small_02 and 03, created cave template assets for cave levels
  
• Added FTs for SW_Cypress variants, and added their FLOD descriptions
  
• Added Mesh Mask MF and added swith on BLD Shader, to add option for AO,Dirt,Edge Wear customization for Brick Tier
  
• Sledgehammer_Nodes Prototype for testing
  
• Corrected needler aggro bus routing
  
• Adding needler aggro event and fixing events where min max was not set to the same as the spacializer
  
• Added Run/Jump VFX for Mounts, duplicated Anims for Moa to add Notifies
  
• Scaled OPULENCE mission objectives with selected difficulty
  
• Scaled SPELUNKING mission objectives with selected difficulty
  
• Refreshing lake/river settings on Outpost 5 to fix generation errors
  
• Added ivy to the Mangrove_Var2 BP
  
• Decals painting in swamp and arctic/tundra, blend in between Green and Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Verified texture settings for all textures in the UI folder and used more optimized settings where possible
  
• Ensured UI TextureGroup is correctly assigned for more accurate profiling
  
• Converted to Pow2 format where possible for further memory reduction optimization
  
• Painted Decals Volcanic Area & Added Cliffs to Base of Macros Volcanic Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Landscape Sculpting and Decal Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Decals painting in swamp and arctic/tundra biome, added hollow trees in swamp and cliffs in tundra, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Refreshed the grass cache on Terrains 016/017 and Outposts 2/3/5
  
• Added SW_Blackberry_Bush, SW_Mushroom_Shelf_A, and CF_Aspen variants, and also added them to the FLOD Descriptions data table
  
• Added Foliage Types and BPs for CF_Aspen variants
  
• Added Foliage Types and BPs for SW_Mushroom_Shelf_A variants
  
• Added Foliage Types for SW_Blackberry_Bush variants
  
• added dead prospector static meshes, materials and textures
  
• Added ivy to Mangrove_Var4 BP
  
• Update all PROC map textures to use correct settings, optimizing memory footprint
  
• Updated BP with some ivy, but turning over to Joe to finish ivy placement
  
• Fixup redirectors for IceCool folder after move
  
• Decals painting in swamp and arctic/tundra biome, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Decal Pass, Green and Yellow Quad, Prometheus
  
• Painted Decals Volcanic Area & Added Cliffs to Base of Macros Volcanic Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Change paperdoll armor icons to use DXT5 compression and reduced resolution, reducing memory footprint from 24.5MB to 1.5MB
  
• Delete old unused static paperdoll texture, pre-rendertarget implementation
  
• Layed out swamp and tundra foliage in Cam's test level for review
  
• Added Foliage Types and Datatable descriptions for FT_CF_Aspen_Var1_A and FT_SW_Blackberry_Bush_01. Also added missing BP for SW_Mushroom_Shelf_A_Var1
  
• Added SW_Mushroom_Shelf_A with 6 variants
  
• Disable dithering pixel offset on by default on Seracs
  
• Added UV base layers to Master Rock Shader, Added textures, created MIs and set collision sets to Mangrove Hollow/Vine
  
• Icon Editor now has the option to specify an override mesh to display for situations where the item has no in world context eg. Clothing
  
• Landscape Painted Swamp Tile on Green on Purple/Green Quad, DLC Map
  
• Updated Textures for SW_Mangrove_FallenTrunk_Hollow variations
  
• Landscape painting and decal pass in swamp anbd arctic/tundra biome, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Landscape Painted Swamp, Painted Decals Volcanic & Added decals in Swamp to Volcanic areas in Volcanic on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added ivy to the BP for Mangrove_Var2
  
• Added a ValidAmmoTypes datatable and changed Firearmdata to use this data table instead of having an array of item static items. This allows us to create new bows and select 'All Arrows' instead of manually going through and hand selecting each arrow into an array whenever a new bow/gun/crossbow is introduced into the game
  
• Fix GOAP World Stats cheat duplicating content when toggled off and back on again by clearing children on Construct
  
• Added second material to vines for SW_Mangrove_FallenTrunk_Hollow_Var1, SW_Mangrove_FallenTrunk_Hollow_Var2 and SW_Mangrove_FallenTrunk_Hollow_Var5
  
• Added dev only Cured Leather crafting process for testing. - Allowed Platinum Weave to be crafted on an Advanced Armor Bench even if you don't have the bench unlocked
  
• Merged up consumable meta item tag changes from backend removal branch
  
• Flushed grass on Outpost 6,7 and Terrain 019 Blue & Yellow Quads
  
• Flushed Grass, Outpost 004
  
• Move lava river flow audio functions to C++ to improve runtime performance
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Riverbank Pass and Flushed Grass On Green and Red Quads, Prometheus
  
• Added the SPELUNKING mission
  
• Landscape Painted Swamp, Painted Decal in Volcanic & Added Mangrove Trees to Swamp/Approved Actors on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Moved IceCool to TRD folder
  
• Landscape painting and decal pass in swamp biome, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Added Grass to Tundra and Grasslands Layer, removed cliff blend to Tundra landscape
  

Mounts have arrived on Icarus. After much anticipation, you can now tame a furry or feathery friend and use them as a mode of transport or a pack animal to cart your goods. Choose between a Buffalo or the newly added Moa, an ancient, large, flightless bird native to New Zealand that xeno-biologists have brought back to life on Icarus.

Mounts require you to seek out a juvenile version and capture it before raising it as your own. Craft new equipment such as saddles, food troughs and bedding to care for it and take it on your missions.

Have a read of what to expect with Mounts, and get in to test out our first version of this system.





Before you can take your Mount on your adventures, you’ll need to capture and tame one.

Mounts begin as Juveniles, found with their mothers and occasionally other fully-grown adults, that need to be captured by exterminating their current parents, then taking them home with you to form the connection required for them to become loyal.

Finding a Juvenile is trickier than coming across their adult counterparts, so you’ll have to keep an eye out for them.

Make sure to exterminate any other adults in the area, as the Juvenile might run to them to seek a new parent when left defenseless. You’ll also have to protect Juveniles from nearby predators that prey on orphans.

The process to tame a Juvenile and raise it to adulthood should take roughly 15 minutes. Once you have engaged with the Juvenile, you’ll need to look after it until it is domesticated by meeting its needs (food, temperature, sleep, weather exposure). To help do this you can craft a pen to keep it close, a food trough, an animal bed and shelter.





The Moa and Buffalo are available to tame as Mounts from this week.

Each animal has its own benefits and limitations, but you can tame multiple mounts and choose whichever is the best for the task at hand.



Buffalo

The Buffalo trades speed for raw power and stamina, and offers the unique benefit a harness with extra storage space. While it can be ridden, using it like a ‘pack horse’ makes it incredibly valuable when mining ore, establishing new bases across the map and carting resources long distances that would otherwise have to be left behind.

While it’s not a combat Mount, the Buffalo’s headbutt attack is always available in a tight spot although it doesn’t deal a huge amount of damage.



Moa

Moa are a more agile creature and provide nimble movement at the expense of stamina and attack options. Moa are designed to be ridden and used as a form of transport, and while they do have limited storage when equipped with a saddle, they don’t offer expandable storage like the Buffalo does.

Their speed boost will allow you to evade danger, traverse landscapes and complete long missions faster. Using the Moa for its strengths will make it a valuable partner in your Icarus adventures.



Both the Moa and Buffalo are versatile creatures, and will be able to trek across any landscape, just like their owners. When tamed properly, they’ll be very obedient and can be commanded to be docile or aggressive, will swim through rivers and lakes with their owner on their back, and will follow you or stay put if commanded.

Your Mount can also be named whatever you wish by clicking on their name in the UI, but be careful not to form too much of an attachment as, in this initial version of the system, they will have to be left behind on the surface after a mission. With future content, Mounts may become a familiar friend as they persist alongside your base.



To equip your new Mounts, you’ll need the right gear. Saddles, Harnesses, Bedding and Food Troughs can be crafted in-game and are necessary to raise your Juvenile into a usable Mount, ride it or use it as a pack animal.

The Moa and Buffalo Saddles are crafted at the Textiles Bench in Tier 2, and predominantly require Cured Leather as the core ingredient. The harness for the Buffalo is crafted on the Advanced Textiles Bench at Tier 3 and require Platinum Weave also.

The Food Trough is crafted on the Crafting Bench at Tier 2 and requires standard wood, sticks and iron nails. You can fill this with raw vegetables or a hay mix to feed your Mounts.

Bedding can be crafted on the Tier 2 Textiles Bench also, requiring fiber and fur. Make sure to place the bed near a source of warmth to help your Juvenile grow into a fully fledged Mount.





We have big plans for where Mounts will take us in future with Mount persistence, Mount levels, a Talent tree, as well as being able to buff them in different ways with different foods. Travelling by Mount lends itself well to a new Open World mode which we have been working on. Everything going according to plan, we will share more plans about that over the next month.

As for the Data Decentralization, we are still working on some gameplay changes and are making a few more alterations to the prospect and character saving format. Specifically, this is going to allow greater control over players' loadouts, workshop inventory and what items can persist between drops, which allows us to look at the possibility of bringing some planetary resources back to station to take on another drop.





Next week we as a studio are going to be undergoing a gaming Research and Development experiment for most of the week, playing some games, gathering data and running through various scenarios so that we can learn from them and incorporate ideas in our future projects. One of our founder Dean ‘Rocket’ Hall’s mantra is that “Games are Played not Made”, so we need to take time to research and study games together as a team. Don’t worry, we will still have an update prepared for you all next week with a revamp of some early missions and the reintroduction of creature to both Olympus and Styx that was long thought extinct.





New Content

• Juvenile creatures undergoing taming process are now valid targets for other NPCs hostile to player
  
• Juvenile animals now use their own custom BTs instead of using existing GOAP behaviours when taming process starts.
  
• Improved feel of juvenile follow behaviour. Added ability to specify delayed secondary montage sections in base BTTask_PlayMontage.
  
• Added temporary health bar UI when riding mount
  
• Added version 2 of the feeding trough as well as proxy meshs for hay, seeds, and veggies to fill it
  
• Parent NPCs now have child set as ProtectedActor by default if GOAP behaviour requires it. Moa are no longer fully aggressive, will only attack player if they near the moa or it's child
  
• Added weight component to mount base, mounts can now affect building stability when standing on pieces
  
• Added functionality to detect when GOAP NPCs are falling out of the world and clean them up correctly in this case
  
• Add combat music setup for M creature
  
• Added mount bed asset to the project
  
• Juveniles and Mounts will now freeze movement / AI when the world tile they're standing on is unloaded
  
• Adjusted geo on Mount Bed asset to accommodate placement on non flat ground
  
• Buffalo mount is no longer able to mine voxels
  
• Added maximum limit of 30 characters for tamed mount name
  
• Implement talents for unlocking animal bed, food trough and saddles.
  
• Balance recipes and weight for animal bed, food trough and saddles.
  
• Prepare future saddles data
  
• Added juvenile moa and juvenile buffalo carcass items
  
• Adding in new section to Moa idle montage and decreased the anim section weighting that contains the vocalization to cut down on the repitition, added in new entry for juvenile idle so that the audio can be tweaked to differentiate it from the adult
  
• SM_ITM_Saddle_Buffalo mesh, textures and material
  
• SM_ITM_Saddle_Moa mesh, textures and material
  
• Adding teenage M creature idle nip vocalisation to animation
  
• Fixed bug where juveniles could be automatically cleaned up by the global spawn manager when their parent died. PossessedPlayers EQS Query Context now includes mounted players
  
• Juvenile taming progress is now serialised correctly. Mounts and Juveniles now have their D_AISetup row initialised correctly on reload.
  
• Added new generic NPC recorder component that records AISetup row and survival values
  
• A server-wide chat message is now displayed whenever a juvenile undergoing taming is killed
  
• Mounts can now drink from water troughs and lakes. Added new water trough item. Removed developer-only feature flag from mount/juvenile related assets. Mounts will now only search for food in food troughs instead of using the same query as Kea (all containers with food)
  
• Added new inventory type
  
• Moved saddles to T3 at Advanced Textiles Bench. This slight additional investment will make mounts feel less required by all players.
  
• Renamed Basic Pack Saddle to Basic Pack Harness, to better differentiate ridable tames
  
• Adding audio for Juve Buff to differentiate it between the main buff
  
• Adding in full pass weighted skeletal mesh saddles for the Moa and Buffalo with physics asset setups to allow for anim dynamics
  
• Added processor recipe and talent unlock for the water trough as part of the domestication loop, currently using the same cost values as the food trough and in the same section of the blueprint tree
  
• Added proper pass mess for the food trough in the deployable and deployable preview, updated water trough BP to the same and swapped out the animal bedding BP mesh to the proper pass mesh
  
• Adding M creature aggro vocals in and data table entries
  
• Adding in Buffalo Pack harness mesh, previously called the saddle bag, and setup physics assets for anim dynamics, created copy pose anim bp and hooked up the assets to the D_Saddles data table, added in stat to D_ItemsStatic to enable for cargo use only so players can't ride on it
  
• Added flavour text for weekly patch items
  
• Added descriptions for weekly patch items
  
• Mounts now act like normal NPCs when killed (ragdoll -> freeze -> replaced with corpse).
  
• Players can no longer ride saddles if they're tagged as cargo-only.
  
• Shifted base ragdoll logic from BP_IcarusNPCGOAPCharacter to IcarusNPCCharacter. Adjusted IcarusNPCCharacter data validation to ignore socket requirements for NPCs without SkeletalMeshes
  
• Adding in M creature stomp sound and notify
  
• Adding Buff jump event, adjustments to velocity differences in footsteps and landing impacts
  
• Applied mount inventory design concept to UMG_MountInterface, added UMG_MountCommands widget, redid UMG_MountInventory and separated saddle from it into its own widget
  
• Added version of the Food trough to use as a water trough, slightly tweaked the mesh and hue shifted the interior boards to push away visually from the food trough, hooked up int he BP_Water_Trough mesh entry
  
• Added IsValid check to prevent warnings on getting the players state from the player seated on the mount
  
• Adding M creature specific whoosh attack sound, adjustments and general fine tunes to overall experience and spawn rates and small volume tweaks and spacializer improvements
  
• More general mount improvements. Tweaks to jump timing and better velocity transitions. other small mount improvements
  
• Added Gfur to the Mount Bed BP. Adjusted Mount Bed mesh and LODs to minimise crashing
  
• Resaved Trough DM with different material ID name to fix warning on startup
  
• Player can no longer 'claim' an unclaimed mount if they already have one, enforcing a limit of one active, alive tame per player.
  
• Mounts will now store whatever they had in their cargo / saddle inventories into their corpse when killed
  
• Add Moa to Conifer SpawnZones on Oly and Styx. Add to Desert for Styx
  
• Add OLY prefix to Olympus AISpawnZones and delete unused entries
  
• Add DT validation to detect unused AISpawnZone rows
  
• General improvements to both buffalo and moa mount audio based on playtest. Adjusted swimming audio to be more appropriate for buffalo etc
  
• Added Camera FreeLook support while riding mounts, currently functions the same as Player Third Person FreeLook
  
• Can now CTRL-Click items between mount saddle and cargo inventories
  
• Mounts can no longer sprint while jumping
  
• Items contained within mount cargo inventory are now dropped as overflow when removing equipped saddle
  
• Can no longer equip unsupported saddles on mounts. Added new IInventoryModerator interface that lets actors implementing it add additional logic when checking item/slot validity. Renamed pack harness item to make it obvious that it's for Buffalo only
  
• Juveniles can no longer trigger a killcam. Shifted generation of aim-assist target component to BP NPC GOAP Character
  
• When initially led by a player, juvenile mounts will now start with low hunger and sleep, to prevent taming progress from starting until player has returned to their base/camp
  
• Removed one mount per player limit
  
• Fixed moa & juvenile moa swimming above the surface of the water
  
• Amount of camera lag on mount saddle spring arm is now reduced when player is looking backwards
  
• Adding moa bones assets for after the skinned and harvested state which were previously missing and assigned to the Moa and Mount_Moa corpse BP's
  
• Audio implementation for creature vs creature hit sounds, audio still to be added. Implemented SpawnHitEffects event in mount base so we get visual hit effects when a mount damages an NPC
  
• More improvements to moa behaviors. Adding sit vocal and other small tweaks
  
• Add icons for AnimalBed, Food and Water Troughs and Saddles
  
• Remove unnecessary defines for ITEM_Missing icon itemable entries
  
• Refactor mount audio state update function to be more robust. Add Relaxing audio state when mount is in Lying Down movement state
  
• Renamed Basic Buffalo Pack Harness to Buffalo Pack Harness
  
• Moved Basic Riding Saddle to T2.
  
• Set PM for Saddle material
  
• Add/tweak LODs for saddles
  
• Add StaticMesh versions of saddles for world context dropping
  
• Update Meshable entries for Saddles and Water Trough to point to new meshes and correct BPs
  
• Increasing mount moa and buffalo stamina base regen delay and delay from empty, decreased both mounts base stamina regen flat rate slightly, greatly increased both mount base health and slightly increased buffalo base stamina, doubled the time from 15min to 30min to domesticate both juvenile creatures
  
• Adjustments and improvements to moa mount footstep blend layers for other surfaces and also adding relax idle event with lower more gentle layers
  
• Add support for Water Trough to fill when raining and not sheltered
  
• Disable shadow casting on water plane mesh
  
• Players can now only place raw fruit/veggies in the animal food trough
  
• Upping juvenile spawn chance to 75% when their parent type spawns
  
• Increasing the buffalo turn rate while sprinting to make it feel a bit more in line with the momentum
  
• Added default D_AISetup rows to both juvenile character BPs
  
• Added a local controller check to ToggleThirdPerson to fix possible desync when the client switches to third person
  
• Adding relaxing state audio for laying down for moa mount, adjustment to vocal sit timing, also adding gore sounds for creatures damaging creatures
  
• Can now activate/deactivate current light slot item when mounted
  
• Add default AI_Setup row to Moa BP
  
• Added Mount and Taming icons for UI. Added a button that swaps icons on toggle
  
• Adding modifier states to use for tame hunger and thirst levels to effect heath and stamina regen values as well as movespeed and regen delays
  
• ITM_Saddle for Moa, Buffalo and Harness textures update
  
• Extended functionality of new IconSwap button UMG. First integration of mount 'Commands' UMG with AI behaviours. UMG_Titlebar text now scales to fit if parent slot is too small
  
• Enabled Moa skinning rewards. - Added skinning event descriptions for juvenile Moa and Buffalo
  
• Added ability to fill water skins/canteens from water troughs
  
• Add unique Baby versions for Moa and Buffalo loot which is about half of adult
  
• Update Moa loot to be White meat instead of Gamey
  
• Reducing base time to domesticate both moa and buffalo to 20 min
  
• Adding medium distant moa idle sounds for better blending between close medium and far distances. Removing old unused assets
  
• Adding more appropriate deploy sound for the animal troughs
  
• General finessing to audio spawn rates of moas and distancing tweaking
  
• Adding in a lock to creature attack while sprinting, similar to the jump, this helps with the buffalo slide attack as well as provides another talent unlock opportunity
  
• Update descriptions on new Mounts related content, Troughs, Saddles, etc to be more descript
  
• Add Itemable descriptions for Komodo BearCub, Buffalo and Moa carcasses
  
• Shifted mount behaviour toggles into inventory screen. Added text to display current mount behaviour on commands panel. Mounts set to aggressive behaviour will now consider anyone who recently attacked their owner a valid, hostile target
  
• Removed developer-only lock on new commands panel in mount interface. Commands panel in mount interface is now hidden if you're not the owner
  
• Adding in a simple danger avoidance on the mount movement behavior tree, initial implementation
  
• Adding weight bar to mount display
  

Fixed

• Fixed bug where Kea wouldn't ignore food containers that were over the maximum distance when looking to eat
  
• Fixed bug where map icons wouldn't appear if player wasn't possessing their player character
  
• Fixed a bug where the 'Multiplayer Ghost Buildings' setting would be turned off but you could still see deployable ghosts from other players
  
• Fixed bug where juveniles wouldn't eat unless they were also tired
  
• Remove obsolete Beta Weekend UI assets from project
  
• Remove FTUE UMG content from Space Main Menu in order to not load assets not needed
  
• Remove hardcoded references to deleted string table entries for BW4 Satellites mission
  
• Fixed a bug where the multiplayer ghost settings being turned off would still show other players placement helpers
  
• Fixed a bug where if the player mounted a creature and was at a distance that the name UI over their head would dissapear, when coming back into range, the name would be visible but it would not be correct and instead show 'Test Human'
  
• Fixed bug where clients (and server) couldn't see current juvenile 'parent' in tool tip text
  
• Fixed a bug where when going into a cave while riding a mount wont cause the caveworms to reveal themselves
  
• Changed Accolade Ribbon texture compression to DXT1 to reduce memory consumption by ~75MB
  
• Set Texture Compression on Item Icons to be DXT5 in order to reduce memory consumption by around 250MB
  
• Fixed a bug where the player would be in first person perspective, mount onto a creature and then on dismount would always be in third person perspective
  
• Player Food/Water/Oxygen reset to 20% on revive, even if it was higher before, ensure player is receives the greater of previous values, or 20% of max food/water/oxygen on revive
  
• Add DT Validation for Talents DT to flag any rows with no Talent Tree defined as invalid. Deleted several entries that matched this criteria
  
• Fixed issue where players didn't get the prompt to cancel current taming operation. Fixed juvenile moa not animating.
  
• Fixed issue where juveniles would only eat from unsheltered food troughs.
  
• Lowered capsule size of Moa/Buffalo Juveniles and Moa Mount to ensure they can freely navigate through single doors and other small spaces.
  
• Fixed Buffalo LookAt snapping after finishing current montage.
  
• Tweaked location and size of juvenile/mount head blocker collision
  
• Fixed bug where player could be left in mid air if mount they were riding on was improperly destroyed (without going though ActorState damage path)
  
• Creatures placed on the skinning bench do not get ragdoll physics when loading game, increase both settle time and minimum velocity when corpses are placed on skinning bench, add physics shapes to edges of skinning bench to prevent corpses from falling off during settle
  
• Fixed a bug where hopping off a mount would do the setup for placing the players map icon allowing a single player to have many icons stacked ontop of each other and causing a heavier icon shadow every time you dismount
  
• Fixed missing 'NOT' operator when checking whether or not a player can ride on a cargo saddle
  
• Fixed a bug where when picking a carcass up, a button would pop up to 'place' the carcass. This button has been removed to reduce confusion
  
• Update Visual Map textures for T016/T017/T019 to use DXT1 compression which reduces memory consumption by 90% (80MB per map)
  
• Delete old (2020) unused PROC textures for Olympus
  
• Fixed issue where juveniles were slowly getting thirsty without a way of drinking, Juveniles no longer lose water over time. Fixed leather curtain doors incorrectly affecting navigation, NPCs should now be able to navigate correctly though.
  
• Fixed Buffalo Juvenile not having a correctly scaled cloth affector
  
• Fixed several mount interface UI display issues
  
• Fix splash sound sometimes not playing when player jumps into water
  
• Remove debug information from IcarusSplineNet showing in Debug builds by gating it behind a Bool in the BP
  
• Fixed game crash by adding 'Allow CPU Access' to new Animal Bed fur mesh
  
• Updates and improvements to mount audio. Fine tuned moa / buffalo footsteps, swimming volumes and general finessing of the mounting experience
  
• Remove Development feature level requirement from mount AI audio data. Remove threat audio configuration from juvenile buffalo audio data
  
• Fixed Buffalo mount using wrong collision profile for it's cloth affector component
  
• Fixed bug where mount cargo inventory UI would become invisible when re-opening the mount interface. Added temporary UI in Mount cargo inventory to suggest player equips saddle to access cargo. Hid 'Talents' tab in mount interface
  
• Added missing herbivore food tag query data
  
• Mount behaviour actions UI is now hidden behind developer feature level. Collapsed WIP survival value indicators on on-HUD mount health bar
  
• Fixed a bug that due to an oversight on removing the deployable component, the player could no longer harvest bones from a corpse. Added query for animal corpse instead of using deployable tag that fixes this
  
• Mount survival UMG health bar is now scaled 50%
  
• Corrected bus routing for mounts and also adding needler death vocals and event
  
• Fix creature death fall audio not playing on clients. Changes in how we instantiate NPC ActorState component meant it could be null when creature audio component initialised, so now am waiting until the ActorState is valid before binding to death events
  
• Fixed issue with juvenile tames where they'd get destroyed if there were no players nearby
  
• Fixed bug where cargo items wouldn't get ejected properly when removing equipped saddle; Mount item overflow location wasn't getting updated after initial spawn
  
• Replaced mount command icons and slightly adjusted spacing between buttons in MountCommands. Slightly adjusted animation in ToggleButton_IconSwap
  
• Shifted head collider for Moa to hopefully fix issue where they spawn underground
  
• Fixed a bug where the animal highlight talent wouldn't highlight juvenile animals
  
• Corrected timing for juvi moa nip idle vocal
  
• Remove ITEM_Missing icon defines
  
• Updating Mount UI, placed inside a border
  
• Mount Sprint speed is now displayed in stat list and attack information has been removed
  
• Fixing Mount UI Stats so they corretly show the Mount stats and not the players
  
• Reduced maximum distance mounts will travel to drink from nearby water bodies
  
• Adjusted commands layout, temporarily removed button animation. Slightly adjusted MountInterface Layout
  
• Changed mount/juvenile follow behaviour to allow movement off navmesh
  
• Tweaked CritHead spheres on Buffalo and Scorpions to make sure they encapsulate desired area
  
• Mounts set to 'Passive' combat mode will attempt to run from nearby hostile actors.
  
• Fixed bug where mount status effects weren't displaying properly in the inventory screen
  
• Mounts will no longer attempt to run from hostiles when following player
  
• Code Fixes and Cleanup for Mount Character Class
  
• Water and food trough deployables no longer block navigation
  
• Fixed collision on concrete, aluminium, thatch and wood stairs to allow mounts to climb them properly
  

Future Content

• Enable footstep and other movement systems to work with lava lakes:
  
• Add Lava physical material and surface type, and add corresponding data to D_Surfaces and FMOD surface types
  
• Update lakes to set physics volume PM override using their material's PM if it's non-default, and apply Lava PM to lava materials
  
• Update ground surface checks etc. to handle water objects with non-water surfaces
  
• Assigning proper texture groups to various DLC foliage
  
• Fixed warning that was being displayed because it didn't detect the keyword 'new' in the directory or name
  
• Added Rocks to Geothermal Lake, Replace Macros with IMP & Landscape Painted LC Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Landscape painting, cliff placement, and frozen lakes placement, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Initial setup to provide some lava flow parameters to lava river audio:
  
• Add a step to WT_RiverSpline content baking which finds lava flow point actors which overlap spline points, extracts relevant data and passes it to the generated river actors
  
• Add runtime functionality to river audio components to calculate lava flow values from the cached data
  
• This approach is a necessary workaround since we can't access the actual values calculated by the lava flow points at runtime or sample the RVT from BP
  
• Added BPs for SW_Mangrove_Var2, SW_Mangrove_Var3, and SW_Mangrove_Var4
  
• Adding more foliage to test scene
  
• Ice Waterfall Top - meshes, textures, material added
  
• Ice Waterfall Bottom - 3x meshes, textures, material added
  
• Reimported APEX_BLD_Wall_Triangle_L/R meshes to fix warning msgs about bad normals
  
• Testing texture setting optimization by removing a set of icons from the UI texturegroup to see if they're still fully loaded automatically
  
• Added RVT option for Lava Lake Material
  
• Update lava river flow audio values to transition more smoothly by lerping in weight when approaching boundaries of flow zones
  
• Added Deffered decals material for snow transtions to help frozen river to waterfall blend
  
• D_LC_ErosionRockBlend - edited material to increase displacement
  
• Adding Clay Brick Buildings & Depoloyables Datatable Setup, Blueprints, Recipes and Talents
  
• Fixing Various Building Tag queries which where returning true when the should not have been (For example Aluminium was thought it was Stone)
  
• Adding Iron Sledgehammer item to datatables
  
• Adding new stats for Shattering Damage and Shattering Yield
  
• Changes to the quality of code as per the code review: ICRST-CR-208
  
• Changed TextureGroup back to UI on test icon set as test (CL 101272) failed
  
• Adding Iron Sledgehammer Talent and Recipe
  
• Fixing Misaligned Masonary Bench on T2 Blueprint Tree
  
• Adding Shattering Damage and Yeild to the Iron Sledgehammer
  
• Adding T2/T3/T4 Mission Communication Devices Data table Setup, including Recipes, Talents, Account Flags
  
• LavaFlow mesh import adjustment on Z value
  
• Finished Adding Rocks to Geothermal Lakes, Finished Replace Macros with IMP & Painted Decals Around Lava Lakes on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Swamp Macros - LOD pass, material edits on 01, plus GL and TU variants
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Landscape painting, cliff placement, and decal pass in arctic biome, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Set FrozenLake to be a BP to allow vertex painting
  
• Adding Neelder Attack audio and event
  
• Adding needler flinch audio and event
  
• LavaFlow mesh - reimported with Z value adjustment (fixed bad import)
  
• Updated Prospect images to use DXT1 compression to save memory. Fix source file locations/names
  
• Add calls to a footstep receiver interface when the player stands on an actor. Enables us to add custom footstep sweeteners on specific world objects
  
• Fix generation issues on WT_GeothermalSpline
  
• Added spline rotation function to single mesh splines on WT_RiverbankSpline tool to improve general mesh placement
  
• Swamp Macros - LOD pass, material edits on 02, plus GL and TU variants
  
• Landscape painting, cliff placement, and decal pass in arctic biome, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• added larkwell armor textures, materials and mesh pack
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added CustomPrimitiveData variable for Snow Height on Tundra Rocks
  
• moved larkwell mesh pack to it's correct folder
  
• Swamp Macros - LOD pass, material edits on 03, plus GL and TU variants
  
• Improve CF Grass LOD settings to prevent billboard meshes being loaded so close to camera
  
• Adding in a new moa sprint jump animation to be unlocked by a talent later on
  

Every few weeks we do a Community Feedback update, where we gather up the feedback you have submitted via Feature Upvote and our Discord community. This includes both some performance and UI improvements.

This week we also add a new mission, OPULENCE: Stockpile, and talk a bit about our future plans including mounts (next week!).





This week brings a new mission, OPULENCE: Stockpile. A wealthy client plans to come see the surface and you’re on preparation duty. You’ll be tasked to seek out some hard-to-find resources, so plan your routes carefully. This is a more upbeat mission than other contracts, so try enjoy the tranquility.

OPULENCE: Stockpile

// OPERATOR: ACS
// BIOME: Verdant Terraces, Styx
// BACKGROUND: The ACS has been contacted by a wealthy individual with a special request
// MISSION: Stock a supply ship in preparation for the clients visit to the surface
// TERMS: Prospectors that meet client requirements will be well rewarded





A range of small but valuable improvements have been made this week.

• We’ve completed a large number of texture optimizations to reduce the amount stored in memory at runtime. We expect this should have a positive influence on performance with a significant reduction in the texture pool
  
• Deployables can now be rotated before they are placed
  
• You can now place signs on chests which can be colored and named to your liking. Choose between a text field where you can enter your own name or labels, or one of our in-game icons
  
• Glass Jars can no longer be filled with water and used as a drinking vessel but can now stack in your inventory for easier transport on longer treks
• When highlighting building tiles with the repair tool the weather effects no longer pass through as they did before
  
• Crop plots now can be snapped to floors in the building mode
  

Many of the UI improvements this week come directly from your feedback. Keep using the Feature Upvote website, as our dev team do read it and it allows us to identify the which fixes we can implement quickly that generate the most value for our community.

• When placing deployables you can now see if they are sheltered or not in the location of choosing
  
• Chatbox will now scroll to the bottom as we have addressed a bug that was impacting this
  
• When deploying from your inventory, the menu will now close as it should
  

We balance delivering updates every week with working on bigger updates and new features.

Next week, we’re excited to bring you version 1.0 of our Mounts system. We are releasing two tamable creatures, a powerful Buffalo and a fast-footed Moa (a giant flightless bird). Players will be required to find a juvenile version of either of these two creatures and kill the rest of their pack and any predators before leading them back to a safe location.

To tame them you will need to nurture them with food, shelter and warmth for a small period of time before they are ready to be used as a Mount. Craft a saddle and other necessary items then test out your new ride. The saddle also acts as a storage unit as you venture across the map. Be wary, as your new furry friend could become dinner for one of Icarus' more violent foes. More details next week.

We are also in the closing stages of testing the many gameplay effects of Data Decentralization and Dedicated Servers to make sure all of the savefile changes are working as intended. We plan on rolling out a branch on Steam with this version of the game in the coming weeks for you to test and give feedback on.

Another common request from our community is for more forms of persistence, we which hear and actively discuss. The Dedicated Servers will allow us to shake up new ways of playing such as more Outpost features and open-world exploration.





New Content

• Added the OPULENCE mission
  
• Minor tweaks to OPULENCE mission descriptions and requirements
  
• Updated quest objectives for OPULENCE to clarify requirements
  
• Added new sign variant that can be placed on walls and deployables. Sign text can now switch between several font colours, and small words will scale up to fit available space
• Added option to display item icons on wooden signs
  
• Added localized text to sign UMG
  
• Fix texture setting on new small wood sign albedo
  
• Fixed deployable sign icon scroll bar stuttering due to invalid data
  
• Add icon for new Wall Sign deployable variant
  
• Slightly increased mission requirements for OPULENCE. - Lowered ren reward for OPULENCE
  

Fixed

• Move FOV setting to Display
  
• Remove hidden and unused Equipment FOV setting
  
• Move Lightning Effects setting to Gameplay
  
• Rename Disable Lightning Effects to Show Lightning Effects and inverted default value
  
• Updates to BPs to support Settings changes
  
• Consistency pass on Beam meshes. All beams now use Capsule collision. Horizontal beams have their Walkable Slope increased to prevent player getting caught on them. Tweaked LOD settings
• Optimized Extermination Sandworm Clue mesh. Fixup redirectors
  
• Fixed Inaris Envirosuits missing LODs
  
• Add LODs to Black Wolf Knife, tweaked ballistic PA, changed PM from Wood to Bone
  
• Add LODs to Arms Armor meshes
  
• Fixed issue where fireplace chimney wouldn't show smoke particle effects when active for clients. Fixed up instances where client initialisation was happening on IcarusBeginPlay (which would never run). ADeployable now has functions that are called when FoundationActor and AttachedDeployableActors are updated
  
• Fixed assets which had null material references
  
• Tweaked AssetInfo tool Material checking logic
  
• Changed DM for Recovery Crashed Ship Defense BP to more optimized version. Delete old version
  
• The various rare meat types are now correctly affected by PrimeMeatDropChance_% stat
  
• Reimported Styx visual map textures at correct resolution (1024px, was 2049) which allows for streaming to work and reduced further down to 512px to save memory. Should result in ~1GB memory saving
  
• Fixed modifier text descriptions on many food items to reflect the provided buffs, notably coconuts pointed out on Discord, thanks!
  
• Deployables that support custom rotations can now be temporarily set down while colliding so that the player can orient them into a valid position before placing
• Glass Jar is now stackable, can only be used for creating other food items, removed ability to fill with water and drink from
• Converted the chat window to use the optimized widget list system to handle a large amount of chat history
  
• Fixed the chat window not fully scrolling down when a new message or notification appeared
  
• Fixed bug where highlighting building pieces with the repair tool would cause weather effects to pass through; added a new custom stencil value to be used in cases where we want to highlight a building that needs to also render to the shelter stencil SceneCapture
• Miscellaneous texture fixups and optimizations
  
• Added new on-screen warning text that shows when trying to place a deployable that requires shelter in an unsheltered location. This warning can be disabled in the settings menu
• Optimization of numerous expensive textures, Pow2 format where applicable
  
• Add support for socket snapping to floor buildable pieces for Crop Plots. Note: snapping can be temporarily disabled by Right Clicking during placement
• Fixing issue where players had access to the the DLC mission talent tree as it was assigned the wrong archetype and not feature locked, this was causing some prospects near the end of the Olympus Mission tree to disappear at various zoom levels
• Further texture optimizations and settings fixups to reduce memory consumption
  
• Ignore collision when deploying crop plots that are snapping
  
• Fixed issue with sign icons not saving to database correctly, signs no longer reload blank if they were previously displaying an item icon
  
• Fixed an issue causing stockpile ships to be invisible until landed
  
• Increased ALCAZAR and decreased BALLISTIC difficulty ratings, this is purely a visual change
  
• Fixed a bug where in an inventory if you right click and hit "deploy" on an item (e.g. Crafting Bench) it would show both the inventory and the placing ghost. Now the inventory automatically closes on button press.

Future Content

• Updated UI to show correct 'Lead/Stop Leading' text when interacting with juveniles being tamed. Juveniles don't walk as far away anymore. Juvenile current action is aborted when new leader is assigned. Added melee damage to Moa. Fixed bug where multiple temporary tames would spawn from one host. Decreased juvenile movement braking speed
  
• Edited GL_Cave_Med_03, created cave template assets for cave levels
  
• Ice Cave Pass, Arctic Lake Pass and Tundra Landscape Painting, Blue Quad, Prometheus
  
• Cliff Pass in Grasslands, Sculpted Landscape, Volcano Crater Pass in GL & Transition Cave GL to LC on Green/Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Adding M Creature Eating sounds
  
• Adding in more M Creature audio layers. Footstep anims, jump and various movement sounds to new anims
  
• Adding RDog Roar sounds and event. Close and distant
  
• CAVE_AC_Entrance Var2 and Var3 mesh, materials and textures
  
• Added 3 variations of Groundcover_A for the lava biome
  
• Submitting Fish04 - Piranha - mesh and textures
  
• Submitting Fish05 - Speedy - mesh and textures
  
• Submitting Fish06 - Glow Fish - mesh and textures
  
• Edited GL_Cave_Med_01 and 02 assets materials, created cave template assets for cave levels
  
• Orphaned juveniles no longer see nearby player tames as valid parents
  
• Can now interact with juvenile creatures to cancel current taming progress
  
• LC Macros 2nd pass - reduced tri count from 40ish to 25K, improved UVs + textures, custom LODs
  
• Grasslands to Swamp Transition Finished, Transition Cave GL to LC Finished, Lave Lakes Added & Material Updated on Green/Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Ice Cave Pass, Arctic Lake Pass and Tundra Landscape Painting, Blue Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding Rdog data table setup and sockets
  
• Adding in all Rdog footstep notifiers
  
• Adding Rdog unique footstep sound and event
  
• Added server-wide chat message when mount dies
  
• Adjustments to the M creature non mountable jump land volumes
  
• Updates to M creature mounted footstep audio
  
• Adjusting M creature footstep jump for the Mount. Also some vocal EQ balances and vlume adjustments
  
• Adding in more M creature vocalisations and movements to animations etc
  
• Adding more M Creature movement sounds. Land sound and adjusting volumes accordingly of footstep event. Re saving Ai table
  
• Whitelist audio-specific environmental actors for world generation, enabling sound designers to position certain types of sound-emitting objects in world independently of environmental features
  
• Add Jump footstep types to creature audio data and implementation. Enables creatures to play surface-specific jump sounds
  
• Added Lava Lake material and setup on datatable
  
• Adding in fur mast override for the buffalo and moa mount saddle setup in D_Saddles to cull the fur from clipping through the saddle when equipped, adding in a base Jump anim asset for the buffalo for proof of concept implementation
  
• Juvenile creatures now require sleep. Juvenile creatures no longer require shelter. Fixed Juvenile creatures not wanting to eat or sleep without a nearby parent. Fixed mount stamina bar not working for clients. Mount jump and attack now consume stamina. Added Moa saddle. Can no longer ride a mount if holding a focus-locked item (e.g. deer carcass). Fixed bug where first-person rotation limits could be applied when riding a mount. Mounts are now always network-relevant
  
• Remove EffectedByWeather from Animal Bed
  
• Set Deployable_NoInteract to remove interaction from Animal Bed
  
• Remove unncessary name field from Deployables which don't use Radial options
  
• Fixed juvenile taming tooltip not replicating correctly for clients. Fixed juvenile tame's current leader not being replicated to clients
  
• Fix Animal Bed and Trough Meshables and create icons for several missing items
  
• Update to Frozen shaders, added NORVT blend, setup on River tool and tweaks on MIs
  
• Add LODs to PredatorBird, delete SM version, fixed texture settings
  
• Fixed missing LODs on Larkwell Envirosuit assets
  
• Add LODs to SwampBird, Fixed texture settings, Add PM define
  
• added LODs for the T3 cloth pack
  
• Add LODs to Saddle SK meshes
  
• Adding LODs to SwampQuad SK, delete SM version, fix texture settings
  
• 'Lead Creature' tooltip for juveniles now displays which player the creature is currently following (if valid)
  
• Audio implementation for geothermal pool BPs. Uses an overlap-controlled audio component as an emitter, but dynamically overrides the audio attenuation distances based on the pool instance's water plane size so that we can automatically handle different pool shapes and scaling. Extended OverlapAudioComponent functionality to enable attenuation overrides and deferred initialization so that this would work
  
• Add LODs to Baby Moa. Set Flesh PM, Fixed texture setting, fixup redirectors
  
• Add LODs to Moa, add PMs to materials, fixed texture settings
  
• Refactored the river audio proximity parameter setting function (which is used to offset audio volume stacking when there are a bunch of rivers close together) into a generic audio density subsystem which runs more efficiently and can be reused for other systems where the proximity or density of similar audio emitters is relevant
  
• Add LODs to RockDog. created Carcass material, removed carcass settings from base material and added Flesh PMs, fixed texture settings
  
• Apply physical materials to Terrain_019 landscape layers so we can perform surface checking queries on the landscape for footstep audio etc. First pass, may need some tweaks once landscape painting is done
  
• Adding events for Teenage M creature idle, flinch and footsteps
  
• Adding Teenage M creature data table entries and nip idle event
  
• Adding in base Needler assets, skeletal mesh and all base anims for implementation, awaiting material and texture for final checkin
  
• Transition Cave GL to LC Lights Added, Lave MF Updated & Artic Cliff Pass on Green Quad, DLC Map
  
• Ice Cave Pass, Arctic Lake Pass, Added Updated Ice Material For Ice Cave Floors, Blue Quad, Prometheus
  
• Testing LC ground cover in test scene
  
• Test Level Updates
  
• Fixed bug where player wasn't able to dismount tame if they weren't standing on world landscape
  
• Fixed mounts being able to jump while swimming. Improved mount sprint and jump action latency for clients
  
• Add biome audio data definitions for new Terrain_019 biomes
  
• Fixed engine python install scripts for new computers
  
• Artic Cliff Pass, Underwater Cave, Cave Templates & Mo Hideout on Green Quad, DLC Map
  
• Ice Cave Pass, Arctic River Pass and Landscape Sculpting, Blue Quad, Prometheus
  
• Volcanic Impassables - 01 added, plus LOD6 CAC and normal maps for macros
  
• Submitting Needler and Needler carcass - and respective textures
  
• Adding Clay, Scoria, Super Cooled Ice, Obsidian, Tomatoes, Potatoes, Clay Bricks, and Shaped Obsidian Resource Items
  
• Adding Potatoes and Tomatoes growth states, rewards and seed rows
  
• Added 9 variations of LC_Groundcover_B foliage assets to the project
  
• LC Impassables - added 02-06 + required mats, assigned 01 to Vista group
  
• Adding Cre Swamp-quad idle close and distant layers and event
  
• Added Point Lights to the approved world actors list for lighting up lava in caves
  
• Set all LC rocks to have no navigation to fix generation issues
  
• Adding S Quad Cre Idle breath slosh, death and flinch sounds and events
  
• Update Lava Materials and added new textures and controllers
  
• Added Sulfur Pool Material to Water Setup Datatable
  
• Added riverbanks Lava Lake 1 & Geothermal Pool on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Landscape sculpting and blending of frozen river, painted cracks and snow, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Adding in S Quad Cre footsteps and event
  
• Fixed tranq arrows sometimes duplicating the resulting mount character when temporary taming process completes
  
• Fixed out of date function library build validation error
  
• Adding foliage to test scene
  
• Ice Waterfall Top - prototype mesh added
  
• Adding new Exotic Resource Type (Unstable & Stable) and Setting up New Currency and Deposit Nodes
  
• Adding Ice Borer Item and hooked up its functionaility so it extracts super-cooled ice from ice nodes
  
• Adding Talent and Recipe for Ice Borer Item
  
• Adding S Quad Cre Flee sounds and event
  
• Adding more foliage to test scene
  
• Add audio utility to copy creature footstep anim notifies between anim sequences
  
• Add file missing from previous audio utility commit
  
• Added 2 new generic mission icons and art. - Updated HIGHRISE art and icon
  
• Added new editor tool called WT_FrozenRiver for placing down frozen rivers in the new map
  
• Adding Exotic Seed Item, Farming Setup and Growth Stages
  
• Adding new Exotic Processing Device, talents, recipes for processing exotics
  
• Removed headers in IcarusPlayerCharacter that were causing the build to fail
  
• Fixed shield related data table validation failure
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added Riverbanks Lava Lake 2 & Finished Geothermal Pool on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added option for single side on River side spline tool
  
• Added WordPos option and PixelOffset blend on Seracs Shader
  
• Adding all Cre S Quad footstep notifiers, data table setups
  
• WIP commit of Icewaterfall_Bottom mesh and textures
  
• Improving moa jump animation feel and adding in Buffalo Jump for use on the mount, added in check to see if mount in the animnotify to disbale scaling the capsule on Icarus Mount characters
  
• Implemented wooden shield item along with shield functionality
  
• checking in fur_set_01
  
• Removed headers in IcarusPlayerCharacter that were causing the build to fail
  
• Fixed shield related data table validation failure
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added Riverbanks Lava Lake 2 & Finished Geothermal Pool on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added option for single side on River side spline tool
  
• Added WordPos option and PixelOffset blend on Seracs Shader
  
• Adding all Cre S Quad footstep notifiers, data table setups
  
• WIP commit of Icewaterfall_Bottom mesh and textures