Icarus News

Hey Prospectors!

Beta Weekend Seven was the grand send-off we had hoped for, celebrating our fantastic community and all the contributions you’ve made to this game over the last few months.

Our Photo Competition, Building Competition and 3080 giveaway were all massive hits, absolutely exceeding our expectations in the number of entries but also the quality. We saw 1000+ entries into the photo competition alone, and it was incredibly hard to even narrow the entries down to our finalists.

But there has to be a winner, so without further ado, here are the winners in each category of our Photo competition.

Note: You can find all the other finalists further down this blog.

[h3]Best Environment Photo - the best beautiful but deadly with beautifully-lit scenery[/h3]

Winner: Bruce



[h3]Best Action Photo - captures a moment of intense gameplay frozen in time[/h3]

Winner: YorikY



[h3]Best Team Photo - showcase your teamwork or comradery[/h3]

Winner: JacobiOne



All 3 of our winners absolutely nailed the brief, and captured some incredible moments that we were blown away by. Congratulations to you all!

Our Building competition set some difficult challenges, but your entries proved nothing is too difficult for a dedicated prospector! Below are the talented winners of each category:

[h3]Best Skyscraper - not necessarily the tallest, but the build that gives the best sense of height[/h3]

Winner: DutchW



[h3]Most Impossible Build - the build that seemingly defies the laws of physics and gravity[/h3]

Winner: TR1D3NT



[h3]Best Geography - the build that best uses the terrain it is built on, in or around.[/h3]

Winner: Arrowgon



All the entries for both competitions were fantastic. It was truly difficult to pick a winner, and you guys have inspired us with your creativity.

Our last and biggest competition of the weekend was our NVIDIA partnered 3080 giveaway, and we’re delighted to announce our two winners now.



A big congratulations to Chitters and Argo_the_loli. Please check your email inboxes to get in touch with us!

We had over 200,000 entries in our giveaway, so thank you all for participating! Keep your eye out for more giveaways in the future.

With that, our Beta Weekends program has come to a close. It has been a massive success with hundreds of thousands of players, countless Feature Upvote tickets and a mindblowing number of bear maulings, berries harvested, shelters built and forests burnt down.

With 1.0 just over a week away, look out this week for a lot more information as we ramp up to bring Icarus to the masses. Your contribution has got us here, so thank you prospectors. You truly embody everything we dreamed the First Cohort would be.

[h3]The Finalists[/h3]

Best Environment:



Bateda



Dragon.DC



Ericpwn



Halidor



Neydara



Nutmag Dragoon



Rykar



Shadow Pigasus

Best Action:



BirdmanG



Mesesigi



Rykar



Supremealexius



Tycide



Wax

Best Team:



BLSmith2112



Dietcokeofevil



KashiDD



NakedVegas



PixelPimp



Sasskin



Sewayah

Best Skyscraper



DevBNG



Dietcokeofevil



IcarusWiki



Jeff The Maniac



Sasskin



Supremealexius

Most Impossible:



Ghostchips



Rochambeau



Satycron

Best Geography



CloudLicker



Horizonsman



index



Janne



JohnTheBob



maks030



Sativa Saraki



Supremealexius



Tim Taylor

- Shammgod

Icarus, the sci-fi survival game being developed by Dean Hall's Rocketwerkz studio, isn't going to make its expected November release. But it'll be close: The studio announced today that the new launch date has been set for December 4...
Read more.

[h2]Welcome back, Prospectors![/h2]

To celebrate the final Icarus Beta Weekend and your community creations and adventures we are running a series of competitions and giveaways.

They are the:

• Best Photo Competition
  
• Best Build Competition
  
• NVIDIA 3080 graphics card giveaway
  

To help you enter we have added a new Photo Mode and added NVIDIA’s RTX Global Illumination tech to make Icarus even more beautiful but deadly.

Entries close 12 noon PST / 8pm UTC on Tuesday 23 November.



ICARUS is a big and beautiful (but dangerous) world. And we want you to document it. The most breathtaking environments. Those heart stopping beastly encounters. And plenty of teamwork making your dreams work. Have at it!

Here are the categories:

• Best Environment Photo - the best beautiful but deadly with beautifully-lit scenery
  
• Best Action Photo - captures a moment of intense gameplay frozen in time
  
• Best Team Photo - showcase your teamwork or comradery
  

The winner of each category will win:

• Icarus T-shirt
  
• Icarus mousepad
  
• Icarus Wings enamel pin
  
• USD$140 Steam Wallet funds (NZD$200)
  
• Icarus Supporters Edition key
  
• Logitech Pro Wired Gaming Mouse and Gaming Keyboard
  

How to enter:

• Put your best photo in the Icarus Discord channel #bw7-photo-competition or use the hashtag #icarusphoto on Twitter or Instagram
  
• The top 20 will be shortlisted then be voted on by the entire RocketWerkz Development team and gamerunner Dean Hall. The winners will be announced on Discord and Steam by Friday 26 November.
  

You knew this was coming. Since the very first prospectors dropped onto Icarus, you have been building some incredible things. From bridges over troubled waters to castles in the sky - your creativity knows no bounds. So now we’re going to reward you for it!

Here are the categories:

• Best Skyscraper - not necessarily the tallest, but the build that gives the best sense of height
  
• Most Impossible Build - the build that seemingly defies the laws of physics and gravity
  
• Best Geography - the build that best uses the terrain it is built on, in or around. Maybe a cave, island, cliff face or outcrop.
  

The winner of each category will win a:

• Icarus T-shirt
  
• Icarus mousepad
  
• Icarus Wings enamel pin
  
• USD$140 Steam Wallet funds (NZD$200)
  
• Icarus Supporters Edition key
  
• Logitech Pro Wired Gaming Mouse and Gaming Keyboard
  

How to enter:

• Submit a video or screenshot in the Icarus Discord channel #bw7-building-competition or using the hashtag #icarusbuild on Twitter or Instagram
  
• The top 20 will be shortlisted then be voted on by the entire RocketWerkz Development team and gamerunner Dean Hall. The winners will be announced on Discord and Steam by Friday 26 November.
  

[h2]Terms and Conditions:[/h2]
For the Best Photo Competition and the Best Build Competition:

• Entries close 12 noon PST / 8pm UTC on Tuesday 23 November 2021
  
• Only entries taken in Beta Weekend 7 will be considered
  
• Entries must be taken in-game with no external editing
  
• Only PNGs, JPGs, MP4s or MOV files will be accepted. Videos can also be submitted as YouTube links or Vimeo links as an alternative
  
• Entries can be taken using Icarus’ Photo Mode (press NumPad 9), Steam screenshots or other tools but must not include any branding
  
• Maximum of three entries per person for each Competition. Anyone who enters more than three times will only have their first three entries considered
  
• For the Best Photo Competition, each image is considered an entry
  
• For the Best Build Competition, each entry can be either a video or series of images but must be a singular building project. This can include multiple buildings in the same space, but not across multiple prospects
  
• There is one prize per winner. If multiple people contribute to a building submission, the person who submits the entry is deemed the entrant. It is on them to decide if/how prizes are distributed
  
• We reserve the right to publish and use your entries in Icarus promotions
  
• The judge’s decision (RocketWerkz Limited) is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Employees and contractors of RocketWerkz are not eligible to enter
  
• By submitting an entry you accept these Terms and Conditions
  

We bet you’re already planning what you’re going to create right now!



Not interested in creating any content? Just want a chance to enter to win some amazing prizes while dropping onto Icarus one last time before launch? Well we’ve got that covered, too. Thanks to NVIDIA, we’re giving away not one but two RTX 3080 GPUs to two lucky Icarus prospectors.

All you have to do... is ENTER HERE. There are 20 ways to enter and each one (such as following RocketWerkz and NVIDIA on social media) earns you another chance in the prize draw.

Icarus will be a live game with regular updates for a long time to come, so signing up to our social media is a great way to stay up-to-date with new features and content.

Good luck, prospectors! We can’t wait to see the kind of impressive content you create and can’t wait to see you drop onto Icarus: First Cohort in December.

Until then, happy prospecting!

- Shammgod

Welcome back, Prospectors!

The final Icarus Beta Weekend is upon us and what a journey it has been! We're going to send you off towards Icarus v1.0 with a bang, and we'd like to thank you all for being such a fantastic team of beta testers.

This Beta Weekend we are adding a major new graphics feature - NVIDIA’s RTX Global Illumination. We have a strategic partnership with NVIDIA and our busy developers have been working closely with them for the last few months to optimize Icarus’ graphics and to apply Global Illumination in ways never done before in an open-world game.

To ensure the best possible experience, make sure you have your drivers updated to the latest version available on the NVIDIA website.

Naturally we want to show off these gorgeous graphics, so we’ve added a Photo Mode for you to use and enter a series of competitions this Beta Weekend. They are the:

• Best Photo Competition
  
• Best Build Competition
  
• NVIDIA 3080 graphics card giveaway
  

Click here for details of the prizes and how to enter!

[h2]Ray Traced Global Illumination[/h2]



Icarus will be one of the first games in the world to use Ray Traced Global Illumination in an open-world setting.

RTX Global Illumination (RTXGI) creates dynamic, realistic rendering for games by computing diffuse lighting with ray tracing. It more realistically models how light is bounced off of surfaces (indirect light) rather than being limited to just the light that hits a surface directly from a light source (direct light). This provides infinite bounce lighting and soft shadow occlusion, showing how light and colors bounce off nearby surfaces.

What this means for Icarus is you’ll be able to see more detail in the undergrowth shaded by trees, better lighting in caves, forest fires that reflect off soon-to-be-burnt cabins, beautiful dropship takeoffs and more detail at nighttime. Shadows will have more detail in them and fewer dark patches. The lighting will change as bases are built or trees are chopped.



In the past, Global Illumination has typically been used in static or indoor scenes. An open-world like Icarus is different.

Previously most Global Illumination has been baked or precomputed and stored in light maps or irradiance probes for a fixed level or room. Icarus, however, features large outdoor environments that can even change as a forest is chopped down or a base built. Icarus uses a new RTXGI feature called Infinite Scrolling Volumes, which uses ray tracing to constantly update the Global Illumination lighting volume around the player as they move through Icarus’ world. This effectively provides an “infinite” volume of global illumination for the player without needing a huge amount of memory to store an infinite number of lighting probes.

Icarus will be the first published game to use NVIDIA’s RTXGI Infinite Scrolling Volumes. If you have a NVIDIA RTX card we’d love you to try it out this Beta Weekend. Check the Settings menu to see if your PC can use it.

[h2]Photo mode[/h2]

A game as beautiful as ICARUS wouldn’t be complete without a photo mode and we’re going to make sure you put it to good use.

• Hit 8 on your keyboard’s Number Pad to enter Photo Mode
  
• Hit 9 on your keyboard’s Number Pad to toggle the game UI on/off
  
• You can change these key bindings in the Settings menu.
  
• Photos will be saved into your /photos folder
  

For the artist in you, photo mode features a bunch of post-processing options such as Depth of Field, Bloom, Colour Correction, Vignettes and Motion Blur. You’ll be able to adjust Field of View, Exposure, move the camera a short distance, and save your favourite settings as presets.

[h2]NVIDIA DLSS[/h2]

For those of you with NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards, Icarus takes advantage of NVIDIA DLSS to boost performance. Utilizing AI rendering technology and the dedicated Tensor Core AI processors found exclusively on GeForce RTX GPUs, DLSS provides maximum performance and uncompromised image quality.

[h2]Icarus on GeForce NOW[/h2]

If you lack a GeForce RTX desktop or laptop, or are away from your gaming system, you can also play Icarus this Beta weekend with GeForce NOW, NVIDIA’s cloud gaming service.

That means you can play at 1080p and 60 FPS across all of your devices - from lower-spec PCs, to Mac, Chromebook, Android mobile, Android TV, iPhone and even iPad. Although you won’t be able to save Icarus Photo Mode pics to your local harddrive.

Give PC gaming a try with a free membership. Or, join one of the premium memberships for an enhanced experience including priority access to servers, RTX ON, and extended session lengths. Learn more at geforcenow.com.



[h2]Missions[/h2]

Returning this Beta Weekend are all your old-favorite missions from the original Arctic, Desert and Mission Beta Weekends, but with the benefits of optimization and balance changes we have made since.

This includes:

• ICEBREAKER: Extermination
  
• BROKEN ARROW: Recovery
  
• BLACKSAND: Terrain Scan
  
• BEACHHEAD: Recon
  
• LIVEWIRE: Terrain Scan
  
• DARK HARVEST: Bio-Research
  
• FIELD TEST: Recovery
  
• KILL LIST: Extermination
  
• HEADSTONE: Geo-Survey
  

[h2]AMA with our Gamerunner, Dean (Rocket)[/h2]

As requested, we will be hosting an AMA (Ask me Anything) in our Discord during Beta Weekend Seven with our Gamerunner, Dean and hosted by Shammgod. You can leave your questions to be considered in the Discord channel #bw7-ama, and join us live in the Discord Stages 'AMA' channel at:

• 2:00pm PST 20th November
  
• 10:00pm UTC 20th November
  
• 11:00am NZT 21st November
  

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

Because this post is coming out earlier in the week than usual, patch notes will be added here later when we have finalised them.



[h2]Final Details[/h2]

Your characters from the last Beta Weekend will be available and the Level Cap will once again be 30. Tier 4 technology is still locked on the planetary tech tree but will be available at launch.

The ‘fog-of-war’ map is available and the playing area will vary for each mission and prospect.

Beta Weekend Seven will begin at:

• 5pm Fri 19 November PST
  
• 1am Sat 20 November UTC
  
• 2pm Sat 20 November NZT
  

- Shammgod

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hey Prospectors!

Your first attempt at our missions system was not only successful, it was incredible to watch. From exterminating alpha wolves, to setting up laser systems, you established yourselves as names to remember amongst the First Cohort.

We gathered a ton of great feedback, insight and data from your sessions and Feature Upvote submissions, so thank you all.

Make sure you keep sharing all your photos, videos and art with us by posting it in #screenshots in Discord, or tagging us with #surviveicarus on social media.



Credit: BossLady

[h2]Lots of missions, even more content[/h2]

This week provided an array of missions that took you around Icarus, with new technology, bosses and more. We wanted to share just a few of our favourites here:

RIP this Bears ankles - SlothOcelot

There's a new Alpha in this neighborhood - Porcupineflair

[h2]Beta Weekend Seven sneak peek[/h2]

Beta Weekend Seven is going to be a different experience than prior weekends. Instead of testing out new core features or systems, instead we’ll be hosting some community events and giveaways to celebrate you, the players, for your effort over the last six Beta Weekends.

We’ll be bringing back classic missions you’ve already experienced, but with all the tweaks and improvements we’ve delivered over the last three months in place.

We’ll also be hosting competitions for our most creative prospectors and a massive giveaway for community members. Our new Photo Mode tool will come in handy for showcasing your builds and vistas.

While this is all happening, our team will be putting the final touches on the game. We’re really pleased that so many players have reported better optimization and stability each Beta Weekend. We’re under a month away from launch and we couldn’t be more excited.

[h2]Screenshots[/h2]

If you want to get a picturesque shot, remember to press 9 on your Number Pad to hide the UI, and post them in #screenshots in our Discord.



Credit: Foosh



Credit: OhGr



Credit: EmPossible



Credit: Mae



Credit: BirdmanG



Credit: DogVivor

[h3]Get ready for Beta Weekend #7[/h3]

Read about how our Beta Weekends work here

Beta Weekend #7 begins on:

• 5pm Friday 19th November PST
  
• 1am Saturday 20th November UTC
  
• 1pm Saturday 20th November NZT
  

Helpful links:
Discord Twitter

- Shammgod