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Surviving the Abyss News

Update 0.2.0 - Cloning & Crew Aggression

Hi folks, today we're pushing our latest major update live!
This update covers new features, user experience, bugs, new buildings and more. Look out for major updates on cloning plus our new crew aggression / prison system which is covered in more detail below.

We have a lot more planned for the future, but for now we at Rocket Flair wish everyone a happy holiday season, we're looking forward to all that'll come in new year!

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[h2]Changelog:[/h2]

Feature: Cloning & Cloning Modules


  • Multiple cloning labs can now operate independently. Can navigate between cloning labs in the cloning UI.
  • Added cloning lifespan module, increases attached cloning lab lifespans by 50%.
  • Added cloning uses module, increases the maximum number of clones that can be produced in a lab in a single batch.
  • Added cloning slots module, increases the number of genome slots available in the cloning lab.
  • Cloning now has 2 mutation effects: Lifespan & Aggression.



Feature: Aggression and Prisons



  • Added An Aggression Mutation System
  • Genomes have an aggression impact value that will give crew a chance to become aggressive
  • An aggression manager will check for these each day and turn some aggressive.
  • Aggressive Crew will cause injury to others around them based on the percentage of crew that are aggressive.
  • Added A Brig / Prison building
  • The Brig is used to sentence crew to jail time.
  • A sentence has a chance to cure crew of aggression based on the length of sentence and crew lifespan.
  • Aggressive crew leads to incidents on the base which appear as emergent events.



New Buildings:



  • Added new advanced Air Purifier building, tier 2 tech tree unlock.
  • Added Brig building.
  • Added Cloning Module: Uses.
  • Added Cloning Module: Lifespan.
  • Added Cloning Module: Slot.



Save/Load:
  • Fixed save / load issue with impact extractors, prevented some files from loading.
  • Fixed Issues Arising from Saving During Threat Attack.
  • Fixed Marine Restorator module stopping working after load.



Misc UX:
  • Activated specific invalid placement messages for various placement issues, such as placing in darkness, or placing a cloning lab module not attached to a cloning lab.
  • Refactored how the tooltip on event choice buttons displays the event outcomes to the player. Crew relations effects are displayed as -, --, --- or +, ++, +++
  • Changed air quality display in the o2 tooltip on the top HUD to say the correct names "Unsafe Air Quality" & "Dangerous Air Quality"
  • Mission Reward alerts UI slightly changed, title text sizes updated to match one another.
  • Rewards now also display on the outcome messages for any events that have them.
  • In the event full screen: replaced the header that says "message" with "SENDER: SENDERNAME".
  • when you hover crew in building slots, the crew hover panel now correctly displays lifespan for crew who have infinite lifespan as N/A
  • Fixed a bug where time would restart after using any menu even if left in paused mode
  • Clicking a pinned mission on the HUD will now open the mission log on that mission.
  • Increased the height of door preview (dotted blue line) so it does not clip through terrain.



Emergent Events:
  • Made early game start 10% faster and emergent events take 5% less time before checking for another to activate
  • Added O2Improvement event, made it's positive outcome a 10% permanent increase to basic o2 gen output.



Point of Interest (POI) Events:
  • Added outcome events for all POI's and new text to match. Updated text for all POI events.
  • Added tech tree breakthrough outcomes - halves the tech tree cost of any item that receives a breakthrough (currently only given as a reward for the Oil Rig POI exploration success).
  • Updated event outcomes for: Sunken Sub, Giant Coral, Giant Clam, Oil Rig, Sunken Plane.
  • Fixing bug where sub getting destroyed due to mission failure was returning the sub resources to the player.



Other Events:
  • Added new event chain and event trigger that fires when the player gets malnourished crew. Describes how to overcome malnourishment.
  • Added tutorial step for cloning modules.
  • Added Power Generator permanent power increase & fuel efficiency permanent increase outcomes for certain emergent events.
  • Updated superconductor event to give permanent +10% power to coal gens if copper is provided.



Vehicle Manufacturing:
  • Vehicle manufacturing buildings now operate independently and can produce simultaneously.



Misc Visual:



  • Hid shadow on the light tower so it doesn't appear as it turns on.
  • Added new school of rosefish.
  • Increased the intensity of the crew shader (yellow shader that displays the crew).
  • Fixed bug where crew lens would remain active after closing crew lens.
  • Fixed a bug where selecting a second building while one is already selected causes the crew from the original building to remain visible.
  • Fixed toggling the crew lens would remove all crew highlights even if the building was still selected.
  • Fixing issue where destroying residential buildings would cause crew to stay highlighted.



Misc Bugfixing:
  • Fixed: when an emergent event tag appears on a building that already has an objective tag, when it auto fires, it will force fire the objective tag instead of the emergent event tag.
  • New error handling for crew load, prevents critical failures on crew workplace assignment on load and logs the issue.
  • Changed tech tree power output increase and coal efficiency increase to be cumulative (need to do this for all similar effects)
  • Added Fully functional check on dock, will not allow crew transport until fully constructed.



Crew / Crew Navigation:
  • Fixed Bugs that would arise from crew not being able to reach destination
  • Fixed Destroying Submarine with crew inside deleting crew.
  • Fixed Destroying Docks causing UI breaking and crew objects never making it to their target location.
  • Fixed a critical bug where navigation would break if home dock is destroyed.
  • Fixed bug where unassigning many crew could end up causing the building to be unable to get crew auto assigned.
  • Fixed error when hub reached holding capacity after 200 crew.
  • Malnourish crew sorting priority update: Crew now eat in order of Hunger > Malnourishment, Malnourished crew will take priority on High Quality food if no crew are starving.



Resource Collection:
  • Fixed mining subs destroying resources if stockpile is full when they return.



UI:
  • Removed the elastic behaviour on the scroll view on the building construction menu.
  • Added the ability to unpin messages from the message log page.
  • Clicking 'Crew In Darkness' critical tag now takes player to the specific crew member.
  • Fixing drop down menus causing POI icons to display on top of any drop down menu.
  • Updated scroll speed for scenario editor.
  • Adding tooltip to the Efficiency area of selected building UI.
  • Clicking the Hub icon (which appears when you are far away from central hub) takes you back to the central hub.
  • Fixed the crew management panel not appearing when you click the crew item in the top HUD.
  • Added tooltip to cancel clone batch button.



Balancing:
  • Cloning Lab power usage decreased from 8 > 6.
  • Increased a variety of mid and late game tech tree costs as per new design.
  • Rebalance starting crew and starting power / o2 to reduce the initial period of the game where all resources need to be allocated to essentials (O2/Power/Food).
  • Updated Coal Extraction Point to now deplete similar to other resources and extract at 1/4 rate once depleted.



Audio:
  • Updated hover and click audio to feel more like interacting with an old computer interface.



Surviving the Abyss: Unstable Branch & Update 0.2.0 Preview

Hi everyone! Today we're pushing an early version of the next update live to a new unstable branch on Steam.

Unstable Branch


To access this branch, you can take the following steps:
  1. Fully exit and relaunch Steam (you should be prompted to log in again) if it is already open.
  2. Right click Surviving the Abyss in your Steam Library and select the Properties Window.
  3. Navigate to the Betas tab within the Properties Window.
  4. Enter 'unstabletesting' in the text box and click 'Check Code'
  5. Select the Unstable branch in the 'Beta Parcipitation' dropdown.
  6. Ensure the name of the game in your steam library is now followed by 'Unstable'


Important notes:
  • You may need to fully exit and restart Steam to ensure it updates. You should see the game download and update the new files once you have switched branch.
  • Make sure to change back to the normal branch if you want to play a more stable version of the game again.
  • This branch is unstable and may introduce new bugs, broken save files and unbalanced changes.


----------------------------

We're still working hard on the update, we're intending to release this fully at the end of next week. We'll be taking any feedback and bug reports into account over the next week as we finalise and prepare for this release!

----------------------------

Changelog:


Feature: Cloning & Cloning Modules




  • Multiple cloning labs can now operate independant. Can navigate between cloning labs in the cloning UI.
  • Added cloning lifespan module, increases attached cloning lab lifespans by 50%.
  • Added cloning uses module, increases the maximum number of clones that can be produced in a lab in a single batch.
  • Added cloning slots module, increases the number of genome slots available in the cloning lab.
  • Cloning now has 2 mutation effects: Lifespan & Aggression.


Feature: Aggression and Prisons



  • Added An Aggression Mutation System
  • Genomes have an aggression impact value that will give crew a chance to become aggressive
  • An aggression manager will check for these each day and turn some aggressive.
  • Aggressive Crew will cause injury to others around them based on the percentage of crew that are aggressive.
  • Added A Brig / Prison building
  • The Brig is used to sentence crew to jail time.
  • A sentence has a chance to cure crew of aggression based on the length of sentence and crew lifespan.
  • Aggressive crew leads to incidents on the base which appear as emergent events.


New Buildings:
  • Added new advanced Air Purifier building, tier 2 tech tree unlock - Model to be added.
  • Added Brig building - Model to be added.


Save/Load:
  • Fixed save / load issue with impact extractors, prevented some files from loading.
  • Fixed Issues Arising from Saving During Threat Attack.
  • Fixed Marine Restorator module stopping working after load.


Misc UX:
  • Activated specific invalid placement messages for various placement issues, such as placing in darkness, or placing a cloning lab module not attached to a cloning lab.
  • Refactored how the tooltip on event choice buttons displays the event outcomes to the player. Crew relations effects are displayed as -, --, --- or +, ++, +++
  • Changed air quality display in the o2 tooltip on the top HUD to say the correct names "Unsafe Air Quality" & "Dangerous Air Quality"
  • Mission Reward alerts UI slightly changed, title text sizes updated to match one another.
  • Rewards now also display on the outcome messages for any events that have them.
  • In the event full screen: replaced the header that says "message" with "SENDER: SENDERNAME".
  • when you hover crew in building slots, the crew hover panel now correctly displays lifespan for crew who have infinite lifespan as N/A
  • Fixed a bug where time would restart after using any menu even if left in paused mode
  • Clicking a pinned mission on the HUD will now open the mission log on that mission.
  • Increased the height of door preview (dotted blue line) so it does not clip through terrain.


Emergent Events:
  • Made early game start 10% faster and emergent events take 5% less time before checking for another to activate
  • Added O2Improvement event, made it's positive outcome a 10% permanent increase to basic o2 gen output.


Point of Interest (POI) Events:
  • Added outcome events for all POI's and new text to match. Updated text for all POI events.
  • Added tech tree breakthrough outcomes - halves the tech tree cost of any item that receives a breakthrough (currently only given as a reward for the Oil Rig POI exploration success).
  • Updated event outcomes for: Sunken Sub, Giant Coral, Giant Clam, Oil Rig, Sunken Plane.
  • Fixing bug where sub getting destroyed due to mission failure was returning the sub resources to the player.


Other Events:
  • Added new event chain and event trigger that fires when the player gets malnourished crew. Describes how to overcome malnourishment.
  • Added tutorial step for cloning modules.
  • Added Power Generator permanent power increase & fuel efficiency permanent increase outcomes for certain emergent events.
  • Updated superconductor event to give permanent +10% power to coal gens if copper is provided.


Vehicle Manufacturing:
  • Vehicle manufacturing buildings now operate independently and can produce simultaneously.


Misc Visual:
  • Hid shadow on the light tower so it doesn't appear as it turns on.
  • Added new school of rosefish.
  • Increased the intensity of the crew shader (yellow shader that displays the crew).
  • Fixed bug where crew lens would remain active after closing crew lens.
  • Fixed a bug where selecting a second building while one is already selected causes the crew from the original building to remain visible.
  • Fixed toggling the crew lens would remove all crew highlights even if the building was still selected.
  • Fixing issue where destroying residential buildings would cause crew to stay highlighted.


Misc Bugfixing:
  • Fixed: when an emergent event tag appears on a building that already has an objective tag, when it auto fires, it will force fire the objective tag instead of the emergent event tag.
  • New error handling for crew load, prevents critical failures on crew workplace assignment on load and logs the issue.
  • Changed tech tree power output increase and coal efficiency increase to be cumulative (need to do this for all similar effects)
  • Added Fully functional check on dock, will not allow crew transport until fully constructed.


Crew / Crew Navigation:
  • Fixed Bugs that would arise from crew not being able to reach destination
  • Fixed Destroying Submarine with crew inside deleting crew.
  • Fixed Destroying Docks causing UI breaking and crew objects never making it to their target location.
  • Fixed a critical bug where navigation would break if home dock is destroyed.
  • Fixed bug where unassigning many crew could end up causing the building to be unable to get crew auto assigned.
  • Fixed error when hub reached holding capacity after 200 crew.
  • Malnourish crew sorting priority update: Crew now eat in order of Hunger > Malnourishment, Malnourished crew will take priority on High Quality food if no crew are starving.


Resource Collection:
  • Fixed mining subs destroying resources if stockpile is full when they return.


UI:
  • Removed the elastic behaviour on the scroll view on the building construction menu.
  • Added the ability to unpin messages from the message log page.
  • Clicking 'Crew In Darkness' critical tag now takes player to the specific crew member.
  • Fixing drop down menus causing POI icons to display on top of any drop down menu.
  • Updated scroll speed for scenario editor.
  • Adding tooltip to the Efficiency area of selected building UI.
  • Clicking the Hub icon (which appears when you are far away from central hub) takes you back to the central hub.
  • Fixed the crew management panel not appearing when you click the crew item in the top HUD.
  • Added tooltip to cancel clone batch button.


Balancing:
  • Cloning Lab power usage decreased from 8 > 6.
  • Increased a variety of mid and late game tech tree costs as per new design.
  • Rebalance starting crew and starting power / o2 to reduce the initial period of the game where all resources need to be allocated to essentials (O2/Power/Food).
  • Updated Coal Extraction Point to now deplete similar to other resources and extract at 1/4 rate once depleted.


Audio:
  • Updated hover and click audio to feel more like interacting with an old computer interface.

Surviving the Abyss: Roadmap for Early-Access

Hi folks, we wanted to provide some much needed clarity on our plans for early access through to 1.0. We are planning to release 3 larger updates and numerous patches into Q2 2024.

The first of these updates involves major changes to the cloning system. Which we'll cover in a bit more detail below. Following that update, we have 2 more planned, but also want to remain flexible to the desires are requests of players throughout early-access. We're only listing the broad strokes below.

Please be aware this is our current set of goals, but we're open to adjusting our path going forward based on the community feedback.



2023:
Major Update #1
Multiple Cloning Labs: previously a single cloning lab was sufficient to last well into the late game. This change will allow you to create independent batches of clones in multiple locations, and considerably rebalances the system to match.
Modular Cloning Labs: the Cloning Lab is getting a major nerf by default. However, a range of new modules will be added which are attached directly to the doorways of cloning labs. You will unlock, mix and match modules to enhance the functionality of your labs, focusing on certain upgrades for specific labs.
Modules can increase the number of slots available within the genetic sequence, increase the chances of specialists being created in a particular lab and more.

Q1 2024:
Major Update #2
UV modules: previously UV mode was a single unlockable upgrade that applied to all Light Towers and Outposts. We intend to add UV modules which are attached directly to individual Lights and Outposts and must be installed throughout the base. This change is intended to place more meaning and pressure on UV mode and expansion, and bring the threat of the anomaly into the later stages of the game.
Anomaly and Anomalous Biomes: we have a number of updates in mind for the Anomaly as part of this release, including work on biomes with new forms of danger. We don't want to give away everything on this aspect right now!

Q2 2024:
Major Update #3
End game: Considerable expansion of the main narrative, including changes to the existing mission format. Addition of a range of new late game missions, and end game content. We'll be going into more detail closer to release.
Expanded Emergent Event System: We intend to expand the range and content of emergent events considerably. In addition we plan to update the event system to add chains of emergent events, with follow up events occurring depending on the decisions you make.
We're also trying to leave room to be flexible and address additional requests and new design throughout early-access.

------------------------------

Patches & Minor Updates:
We also plan to release numerous minor updates and patches during this period.
We intend to put a serious focus on user experience enhancements and bug fixing.
We are also aiming to enhance the tutorial and first time user experience.

Visual Updates:
We aim to enhance the visual experience with reworked biomes, additional environmental content, points of interest and more. This will be an ongoing process throughout the early-access period!

________________________

This isn't an exhaustive list, and there are other aspects of the game we, and the community want to improve and iterate on, including power, research, wildlife capture and more. We'll be updating the community with any changes we make, and continuing to take feedback onboard.
Us at Paradox Arc and RocketFlair all want to extend our thanks to everyone who's engaged with the game so far.

Development Update: 1.0 & Beyond

Hey everyone,

We know that it has been a little while since our last post, so we wanted to address that. The TL;DR is that we’re moving forward with a 1.0 plan!

Over the past few months, we have been monitoring the game and making some difficult decisions about the future development of Surviving the Abyss. That is to say, what is the best for everyone involved and how do we make sure that vision is met?

First, we had to face some hard facts. We are proud of the work on Surviving the Abyss but the reality is that it has not been as successful as we had hoped. While that may seem like a negative point, we are still happy with the quality of the game and the reception from players.

So what is next, you may be asking? Well, the simple answer to that is that we (Paradox Arc and Rocket Flair) are committed to bringing the game to a 1.0 release. Nobody wants abandonware that is left in Early Access with no further updates, and we want to be upfront with you all on that. Unless there is an extraordinary circumstance, we will cease major development of the game after 1.0 and let it exist as it is after this point with support from Paradox as we do for any of the games in our legacy portfolio.

It is never an easy decision to bring a game to a close, but in the interest of doing the right thing for the players that play Surviving the Abyss bringing it to 1.0 and closing it in a stable and enjoyable state with a clear understanding of our future plans—or lack thereof—is the right thing to do.

Thanks for your support of our project. We’ll have more news of content updates for the 1.0 release very soon!

-Surviving the Abyss team

Update 0.1.6.1 Patch Notes

Hi everyone! In today's patch we've fixed several bugs that have been brought to our attention. This include fixes to Objectives and Anomaly.
As always please continue to submit bugs and feedback here & Discord.
[h3]Bug Fixes:[/h3]
  • Fixed Unlock UV mode objective.
  • Fix for Outpost objective not always completing.
  • Fix for the Anomaly attack not appearing.

[h3]Quality of Life:[/h3]
  • Fixed some tooltips getting stuck on in Tech Tree.
  • Changed colours on fauna captured notification.
  • Fixed spacing for building function text on the building selection menu.