Aloft News

Ahoy, Sky Sailors!

We are happy to announce that Aloft is participating in the Earth Appreciation Festival on Steam.
Here at Astrolabe Interactive, we deeply value the preservation of environments and coexistence with nature. That is why in Aloft, we encourage our players to actively improve the world around them, by eliminating invasive fungal corruption and restoring ecosystems by planting trees, diverse flora, and, most recently, introducing critters!

To celebrate the occasion, you can purchase Aloft with a 20% off discount.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1660080/Aloft/

This Earth Day, April 22nd, you might see some of your favourite content creators streaming live to raise awareness for the Cool Earth initiative whose mission focuses on protecting rainforests and tackling climate change, while also supporting the well-being and livelihood of the people in those communities.

This is our Earth, and we appreciate it greatly. 💙

See you in the clouds!

[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3] [hr][/hr]

• Fixed a collider issue on Elder Trees that caused players to get stuck in the branches
  
• Fixed a terrain piece that was missing colliders in Red Cliffs
  
• Fixed an issue where players could rejoin a multiplayer session after being banned
  
• Fixed an issue where animals failed to load in properly when Personal Homes were spawned
  
• Fixed an issue that caused dropped animals to disappear
  
• Fixed an issue that caused cooking plates to disappear
  
• Fixed an issue where the “Ordered one of each” achievement would not trigger
  
• Fixed an issue that caused error logs on dedicated servers

[h3]NEW CONTENT[/h3] [hr][/hr]

• Added new critter: firefly
  
  • Fireflies will only spawn on newly discovered islands
    
• Added an animation in 1st person when luring birds with feed
  
• Added 24 critter stands & trellis building pieces

[h3]SMALL CHANGES[/h3] [hr][/hr]

• Dropping flying insects will place them in the air instead of on the ground
  
• Resized a lot of critters (small adjustments)
  
• Vivariums and the pigment pool automatically till the grass underneath
  
• Storage chests and baskets now have the option to quick drop (only items already present in the storage can be dropped)
  
• Reduced the intensity of the ripple VFX when standing still in water
  
• Increased the hitbox of gatherable planks
  
• Flower and rock vivariums can now hold a stack of critters, instead of 1. Stacks may only be composed of one critter type

[h3]BALANCING[/h3] [hr][/hr]

• Vivariums can now accommodate critters from every biome. They still require to be of the correct type (ex. butterflies can only be put inside a flower vivarium)
  
• Queen bee larvae are now twice as common in natural bee nests
  
• Corruption cores won’t spawn monsters indefinitely

[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3] [hr][/hr]

• Bee nests on the leviathan no longer clip into the tree’s collider
  
• Pressing [TAB] and picking up an animal will no longer cause a soft lock
  
• Item pouches can now be interacted through other colliders
  
• Can no longer overwrite a custom island file by creating a new one with the same name
  
• LODs on the rope bundle prop now maintains detail further away, preventing final LOD from disappearing
  
• Islands marked as too heavy can no longer be sailed
  
• Shared Homes now trigger the “At Home” condition and the home theme song
  
• Invasive plants should now only be present on unhealthy islands
  
• The Stormchaser input will no longer accept input from the prior menu
  
• Planting tree seeds won’t have a missing texture on the previewed model
  
• Moonlight Moths are now functional when equipped in the hotbar
  
• Fixed an issue where habitats from Fallen Heights and Red Cliffs wouldn’t be detected properly
  
• Going back to the main menu will now re-initialize the input type properly (controller vs keyboard/mouse)
  
• The character animation will no longer trigger the default state by accident as much
  
• Stone stairs should now align properly with one another
  
• Replaced incorrect materials on upper pond of Fallen Heights and Red Cliffs pond habitats and vivariums
  
• Tree vivariums now properly display birds and bats depending on which type of critter is placed in them
  
• Fixed an issue where a player couldn’t join a session
  
• Fixed an issue where players would see different terrain pieces on the same island in a multiplayer session

[h3]AUDIO[/h3] [hr][/hr]

• Added audio for the firefly
  
• Fixed some music-related issues

[h3]USER INTERFACE[/h3] [hr][/hr]

• There is no longer placeholder text in landing pad menu
  
• All homes (personal or shared) from any player will have an home icon tracker
  
• Knowledge Stones now correctly display the vivariums and habitats texts when hovered
  
• The description for frogs have been updated to better reflect what biome they are native to
  
• The blur behind the landing pad menu should scale to any aspect ratios
  
• Localisation has been fixed on the animal bell sign
  
• Vivariums have been moved to the storage section of the build catalogue
  
• Removed the birdhouse warning pop up
  
• Fixed issue with the “back” button of the landing pad menu not scaling properly to ultrawide resolutions

Ahoy, Sky Sailors! 👋

As you may know, we just recently released Aloft's first content update Critters & Wonders. It also brought a handful of new and highly requested features alongside a whole bunch of quality of life fixes! 🐸

Needless to say, this is the perfect time to try Aloft. And to make it even better, we are putting Aloft on sale for the first time as a part of the Steam Spring Sale! You can now get Aloft for yourself or for a friend with 20% off! 💙

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1660080/Aloft/

But wait, we're not done yet!

We are collaborating with our friends at Far From Home to bring you the Aloft & Forever Skies bundle where you can get both games with a nice 31% off until March 20th. If you own one of the games, you will still get the other with a discount.

In case you didn't know, while they may have different aesthetics, Forever Skies and Aloft cover a lot of common ground with their themes of saving the ecosystem and working towards a healthier environment & better future. In Forever Skies, you are tasked with scavenging resources and surviving to find a cure for humanity. It's a fun co-op survival crafting game that you can play with up to 3 players!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/51364/Aloft__Forever_Skies/

See you in the skies and have a great spring season! ☀️

[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3] [hr][/hr]

• Melee swing wont trigger leap attacks by default
  
• The leviathan will snap to the right position when flying out of bounds
  
• Fixed snapping issues with wood shingle roof inverted triangle piece
  
• Fixed an issue where the keyboard of UI elements was displaced
  
• Removed the place-holder firefly geo until we have the proper rig
  
• Replaced the plant diversity icons (Emerald Isles and some for Fallen Heights)
  
• Removed unused empty “in construction” states from Trellis construction pieces within the Island Creator
  
• Fixed issue with Opal beam having placeholder material when placed in the Island Creator
  
• The vivariums and habitats can now be unlocked properly
  
• The variants of the Emerald Isle perched tree vivarium are now behaving correctly
  
• Potential Fix: Players can sometimes get stuck in an Infinite loading screen when creating Multiplayer Sessions

[h3]CHANGES THAT WILL ONLY APPLY TO A NEW WORLD[/h3] [hr][/hr]

• Amended: New exploration challenges have a chance to spawn on all medium to large Emerald Isle islands.
  
  • Rare resource spawns and animals have been added as challenge rewards
• Fixed an issue where starting cluster chests would appear outside of the starting cluster (which led to disappointing loot)

[h3]KNOWN ISSUES[/h3] [hr][/hr] MAJOR

• Reishi and animals disappearing from player’s Personal Homes
  
• Crashes / file corruption
  
• Potential memory leak that persists through sessions
  
• Some actions are not triggering the Steam achievement

MINOR

• Unlocking the Red Cliffs Habitats also unlocks the Red Cliffs Vivariums
  
• Bats don’t spawn properly. They can be found on terrain instead of their normal habitat
  
• The order in which you unlock the vivariums in a preexisting game doesn’t align correctly with player progression
  
• The difference between what the habitats and vivariums do is not clear enough

[h3]UPCOMING ANIMATION IMPROVEMENTS[/h3] [hr][/hr] List of animations that will come in future patches:

• Bird and bat eating in your hands
  
• Critter interaction in hands (1x per critter)
  
• Critters idle in their habitats (bird house, burrow, etc)
  
• Bat idle on ground
  
• Many idle breaks (bird, jerboa, bat, bugs)
  
• Movement animations while holding critter (jump, run, slide, etc)
  
• Bat wings visual fix
  
• Bird Feed holding position fix
  
• General animation polish