Forever Skies News

[h3]Hello scientists![/h3]

We’re excited to share our roadmap for the rest of 2024 with you, now that the Airship Gardening update has been released and its follow-up patch, EA.1.5.1, here are the main updates for the rest of the year and some smaller content patches due in the next few months.

[h2]ROADMAP[/h2]



We have several large updates left to release this year. The Combat Update, the highly anticipated Co-op Update and the full release will also add additional content like the final story chapter and more. These updates will contain many additional features and improvements, just like the larger updates that have already been released. Exactly what features you can expect from each will be revealed at a later date.

Patch EA.1.5.1 was released a few days ago and now we look to the rest of the year. We’re committed to releasing one content update/patch every month until full release. The graphic above announces our next two planned content patches, currently named Fuelling & Storage Crafting (EA.1.5.2) and Friendly Insect (EA 1.5.3). There will be additional patches announced in the year, and these will be determined based on your feedback and suggestions.

As always, please note that the roadmap is subject to change and we will notify you if that should occur.

[h2]Far From Home 4th Birthday[/h2]



It’s a cliche to say, but the last 4 years have truly been a rollercoaster for us in the studio, and the last 12 months have been especially eventful.


When we launched Far From Home, we had 3 main goals:

1. To create a great work environment which will allow people to grow, be ambitious, and have a real impact on the projects and the studio itself.
   
2. To serve players. Our role is to listen, watch, analyze and bring the best possible experience for the gaming community.
   
3. To start a discussion about the future of the Earth and humankind. We believe that games can be a tool for enacting change in the world and with this in mind, we want to blend important topics with the joy of gaming.
   

We have continued to work towards these goals with what we have achieved in the last 12 months.



Of course, none of this would have been possible without you guys. So as always, we want to thank you for engaging with us, giving feedback and showing passion for Forever Skies and what we’re trying to achieve as a studio.

What we can promise is that we will continue to listen to your voice and work on making Forever Skies great! Cheers to you, our fantastic community. In addition, we wanted to reemphasize that Far From Home remains independent and is the sole publisher of Forever Skies and future titles!


That's all for now. Got any questions? Drop them in the comments.

Team Far From Home

[h3]Greetings scientists!
[/h3]
Introducing the Forever Skies Feature Upvotes board! A great platform for players to report bugs, request features and generally send us your feedback!

We've been listening closely to your feedback and ideas. We understand that you, our amazing community, are bursting with useful feedback and awesome ideas for what Forever Skies can become. Therefore we have decided to create a Feature Upvotes page to empower you to make Forever Skies as awesome as it can be.

[h2]How does it work?[/h2]

Visit the Feature Upvotes Page

Head to the website - https://forever-skies.featureupvote.com, this link will also be pinned in Discussions within the Community Hub, on our Discord and in other convenient places.

For now, The SEND FEEDBACK option in the pause menu will still take you to the original form, but this will be changed as soon as possible. We understand how vital it is for players to access this new feature via the game itself, and so we will replace this link soon. But for now, you can report bugs with either the original form or Feature Upvote.

When you access the board, this is what you will see. Be sure to read and follow the simple site rules we have laid out.



Cast Your Votes

Before sending your idea, peruse the submitted ideas and cast your votes for the features you'd love to see in Forever Skies. Somebody else might have already suggested the same thing and we want to avoid repeating cards, so upvote their card instead.

Submit Your Ideas

Have a cool concept, an ingenious gameplay mechanic, or an immersive storyline idea? Share it with us and the community! Describe your idea, provide details, and attach any supporting screens or tags to make your case. Report bugs in the same way!



Track Progress

Keep tabs on the most popular feature requests, see which ones are in development, and stay updated on their progress through the developer status’ and comments



Get Involved

Engage in discussions with the Forever Skies community, developers, and moderators. Collaborate to refine ideas and make them even more incredible.

By introducing the Feature Upvotes Page, we aim to foster a sense of community and collaboration in a better way than before. Your input is invaluable to us, and this platform ensures that not only can you see what you and other players want out of Forever Skies, it also gives you a visual on the popularity of your ideas and real dev input regarding the likeliness of your ideas making it into the game!



[h3]**DISCLAIMER**[/h3] - It’s important to note, that this board's primary purpose is to give our devs a perfect understanding of what features our community want most and what the biggest issues are in the current build, it helps us prioritise our workload. However, if a card becomes popular and gets heavily upvoted, this does not guarantee that the feature will be implemented into the game. There are internal factors that must also be considered still such as the cost of time and funds to implement these ideas. Keep an eye on the status of cards and comments of the devs so you get the transparency you deserve from us.

We hope you enjoy using our Feature Upvote board!
Team Far From Home

Hello scientists!

We’re happy to announce that we’re part of the Earth Appreciation Festival happening right now on Steam.



To mark the start of Earth Day, we’ve teamed up with a collection of developers and publishers to bring together the Earth Appreciation Festival on Steam.

You’ll find a massive collection of discounted games that highlight the theme of creating a better Earth or the potential dire consequences of human inaction.

We’ve put together a special bundle for the event where you can get Forever Skies + our Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity item for 15% off. We’ve set it so that anyone who already owns Forever Skies can still get the charity item for a discount.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/40918/Help_the_Planet_Bundle/

100% of all revenue from the charity item is donated to Whale and Dolphin Conservation, an extremely hardworking organization helping to keep the world’s marine life protected.

Go check out the full event here!

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/appreciateearth2024


All the best!

- Team Far From Home

[h3]Hello Scientists![/h3]

We’ve got some big news about our studio floating around today and we wanted to take a moment here to fully explain what this means for us, our game, and for you as players.

Today we announced that Krafton Inc. will acquire a minority stake in our studio. So let's go through what this means exactly.

[h2]Why We’ve Partnered With Krafton and the likes of Subnautica and PUBG: Battlegrounds?
[/h2]

Firstly, Krafton Inc has an undisputed track record having invested in the likes of one of the most acclaimed survival games Subnautica, and one of the biggest coop hits, PUBG: Battlegrounds to name a few. This partnership potentially gives us unprecedented access to knowledge and expertise from studios we’ve admired for a long time. Rest assured, we’re not going to turn Forever Skies into a battle royal game, nor are we going clone Subnautica. But simply being able to talk to the people behind these monumental games to get insight and advice is fantastic for us.

This may also open the door for us to do possible cross-overs and partnerships with these titles and any others that Krafton works with. Nothing has been done in this direction right now, so we aren’t making any promises or subtle teases here. We’re simply saying this is something we can look into now, which is equally great for us.

[h2]Our Future is Firmly in our Hands[/h2]

The partnership with Krafton essentially secures our studio’s long-term future. In a time where every month we are all seeing studios both large and small mass laying off employees, canceling games, and overall scrambling to survive, it is a massive relief that this won’t be an issue for us.

While the sales of Forever Skies so far have been strong enough to keep the studio going, this partnership ensures a safety net that lets us fully focus on making Forever Skies the best it can be while also knowing we have the room to think about our next title in the years to come.

“Our funding for the completion of Forever Skies is secured, but eventually, we will need to
start looking ahead at what comes next for our team. The capital raised through Krafton will
make it significantly easier for us to plan out and build our next title to be something bigger
and even more ambitious.” - Andrzej Blumenfeld, CEO, Far From Home

[h2]Forever Skies Development Remains Unchanged[/h2]

Rest assured that any work on our next game will only happen after the completion of Forever Skies development while also making sure we have ample room to do meaningful post-full-launch support. Tomorrow we will be publishing our road map for the remainder of 2024 so you can see what we have planned next.

[h2]Far From Home Remains Independent[/h2]

The partnership with Krafton Inc. is shaped in such a way that Far From Home remains fully independent and in full creative control of Forever Skies and future titles. Krafton Inc is a minority shareholder so our team has the final say on key decisions based on the direction of the studio and our titles.

[h2]Thank You For Getting Us Here[/h2]

This is a monumental moment for our studio to say the least. We have secured our long future while still retaining full control of everything we decide to do. Krafton’s belief in our vision and desire to support our growth is a massive boost to us but we also know that had it not been for you, our players, who gave Forever Skies a chance since we launched in Early Access, none of this could have happened. So a big thank you to all of you for helping us and Forever Skies reach such new heights.

We hope this post and our desire to be upfront clears up any concerns and if you have further questions, do leave them in the comments.

- The Far From Home Team

[h3]Greetings scientists,[/h3]

Patch EA.1.5.1 (Build #28037) has been beta-tested for nearly two weeks, and is now live on our main branch!

This patch is made up of content that wasn’t quite ready in time for the Airship Gardening update (EA.1.5.0) at the end of March. With so much content going into the last update, some assets had to be temporarily cut due to time constraints. But that's not the case anymore, here they are!



[h2]Seven New Cockpit Styles Added[/h2]

A lot of players tell us that they love customizing their Airship and want more modules to play around and experiment with.

You also keep telling us you want stairs…



The new Bloom Cockpit Range is definitely worth checking out with their unique 2-floor design, complete with stairs. They’re available in 1-wide, 2-wide and 3-wide variants. They don’t even need to be used as a cockpit, as they also make a nice open and spacious room for your airship base. Instead, why not choose from some of the other new cockpit modules?



You asked for it, we heard you…introducing the Inverted cockpit range! For those of you who prefer a more traditional airship cockpit design, an inverted variant can now be unlocked in the game. As before, they are available in 1, 2 and 3-wide (we have also added a 3-wide normal cockpit too)

Now there are even more options to make your Airship base uniquelly yours. We won’t be stopping here either, as more modules are currently in development.

[h2]Water Pipe Sockets[/h2]



Now players can pass water through walls using Pipe Sockets. These now automatically unlock when players scan the Water Pipes at the Infected Garden location. Water Generators can now only be placed outside (as intended) and using the new Sockets, water can travel from the Generator outside, into your Airship Garden room on the inside. It also means your Airship can have more than one garden room, without having to create two separate Gardening systems.



[h2]New Localization: Portuguese - Brazil[/h2]



Portuguese - Brazil is the latest language to be added. We will not stop here, there are still languages we plan to localize Forever Skies into. Please let us know which ones you would like to see.

[h2]Visual Improvements[/h2]

We continue to make small improvements to the visuals and audio of the game which we hope will lead to a better experience overall for players.



We have added an animation for when players consume a Booster in-game. It’s only a small thing, but we hope it adds to the experience.



Another visual improvement we made was to the model and animation of the Ship Workstation. The old model has always been a placeholder in our minds, we believe the updated model is to the correct standard now. What do you think about these changes?

[h2]SFX Improvements[/h2]

We have made some audio improvements with EA.1.5.1 too. Probably the most noticeable improvement are BREATHING NOISES!

Yes, our scientist now sounds a lot less…robotic…when they are out of breath, which is a much-needed change. Other audio additions with this patch include SFX for the Distiller, ambient sounds in the Underdust - Suburbs, sounds added to the “Discovering Noah cutscene” and more.

Here are the full patch notes for EA.1.5.1

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[h3]NEW CONTENT:[/h3]

Devices:

• Pipe Sockets study recipe added after scanning Pipes (should be present in Research Station if Pipes were scanned already)
  

Airship:

• Large Cockpit
  
• Small Cockpit - Inverted
  
• Cockpit - Inverted
  
• Large Cockpit - Inverted
  
• Small Bloom Two-Deck Cockpit
  
• Bloom Two-Deck Cockpit
  
• Large Bloom Two-Deck Cockpit
  
• Reducing Balloons option
  

Player:

• Booster usage animation
  

Other:

• Brazilian Portuguese localization added
  
• Medical Reagent printing animation added
  
• “Mods detected” main menu notification added
  

CHANGED:

• HUD - critical stamina level animation will now play when stamina was depleted to 30%
  
• Spoiling timers for stacked items logic changed - while splitting stacks, the timer stays on split items and resets on an initial stack
  
• Ship Workstation device model and animations changed
  
• Aircutter knife now uses power and needs recharging
  
• Water Condenser Membrane has to be collected and thus recycled for a small amount of Synthetics when it’s done with condensing 5 stacks of water
  
• Flashlight quick move from Charger places it in its dedicated slot instead of empty inventory slot
  
• Preternatural Branches on Infected Greenhouse Towers play a sound alert whenever the player gets too close to them
  
• Pipe Water Generator can now only be placed outside as originally intended (players use Pipe Sockets to bring water from the outside)
  
• Pipes visuals improved - when the connection is right, LED arrows will light too
  
• Garden Pots and Cooking Pot do not need bottles anymore - adding water doesn’t lock bottle inside those devices
  
• Database - Infected Gnarls and Infected Roots descriptions split into Active and Neutralized entries
  
• Fabricator - Boosters tab renamed to Health
  
• First Aid Kit moved to the Health tab in Fabricator
  
• Additional sprinklers chained in serial connections sprays water quicker
  
• Devices with item slots, e.g. Virus Sample Analyzer now only allow you to put one item inside instead of stack
  
• Lift storage boxes quick move and sorting options added
  
• Distiller SFX added
  
• Underdust - Suburbs ambient sounds added and improved
  
• Underdust - Suburbs paths and POIs visibility improved
  
• Overgrown Tower paths visibility improved
  
• Oxygen supply refilled after Underdust: Tunnels cutscene, this encourages players to explore further without having to rush back for oxygen
  
• Fixed bug that would allow Energy values to rise above the maximum value while sleeping
  
• Fixed rare bug blocking using keypads while Airship Builder menu was opened and closed
  
• Noah’s body cutscene sounds added
  
• Detecting mod files being used and including such info in crash reports
  
• Added missing translations
  

FIXED:

• Database - Health entry updated with current HUD changes
  
• Database - Coffee Nut description fixed - it can’t be eaten raw without any threat
  
• Studies - Wrecked Big Gardening Pot can now be found on both Greenhouse Tower and Overgrown Tower locations
  
• Studies - Hardened Creepers could be found on Underdust: Suburbs location only
  
• Distiller device cannot be damaged and shouldn’t show 0% health status anymore
  
• Pipe Water Generator collisions restored
  
• Pipe Water Membrane now shouldn’t change to regular Water Condenser Membrane upon Pipe Water Generator pickup or after loading a save
  
• Pipes change their color when Water Tank runs empty
  
• Rare issue where airship didn’t react to Rudder interactions and couldn’t fly unless player left and returned aboard fixed
  
• Fixed - Few paints with broken textures on certain airship modules
  
• Glass Shards from Greenhouse Tower locations saves properly after cut down
  
• Broken Crate shows its broken state mesh until it’s repaired
  
• Fixed issue where stackable items removed from devices with a resource slot, e.g. Virus Sample Analyzer, couldn’t stack anymore
  
• Fixed issue where stackable items transferred from devices with a resource slot, e.g. Virus Sample Analyzer, ended with losing whole stack of those items when inventory was full already
  
• Missing Moth Swarm sounds restored
  
• Reverb sometimes heard in open spaces fixed
  
• SFX volumes remixed in places to address volume spike issues
  
• Performance issues improved
  
• The player character should now sound less robotic
  
• Friendly Insect highlights when it can be scanned
  
• Poster “Automatic Irrigation System” highlights when it can be scanned
  
• Numerous smaller fixes for the pipe building
  

KNOWN ISSUES:

• Playing hand animation while interacting with Rudder or Deck Extractor while having a tool equipped
  
• Player model detaching from the camera while using Deck Extractor, sometimes leading to the player falling off their Airship AKA death.
  
• If you aim the crossbow and crouch, your character’s walk and run speed will be intensely slowed down
  
• Mydriasis Inhibitor missing on Infected Garden locations, despite the item being shown in the Studies menu
  
• Fertilizer in the Small Pot never ends, and the icon shows 6/5 units inside the bottle
  
• Shift+Clicking on an item in a toolbar while being in a Fabricator/Upgrade Station/Ship Workstation/Distiller menu will result in losing the item
  
• Cooking Station’s water capacity exceeds the limit of 20
  
• Pipes are not showing the connection to the device and the water flow (despite it being already established and working) after saving and loading the game
  
• Big Gardening Pot doesn’t have a “Remove Plant” function
  

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Thats all for now, we will have more news to share with you next week!
Team Far From Home