Space Trash Scavenger News

Greetings Scavengers,

For myself (who coded it) and Sarah (who did the art) making Space Trash Scavenger has been quite a journey over the last four years, and I wanted to take the chance to again thank everyone who helped test the game out during development. It has been really appreciated!

Also, a big thank you to everyone who has left us a positive review on Steam. This really makes a big difference to a two person indie team like us. If you want to support us as a developer, please do think about dropping us a review if you like the game.

And if you want to discuss anything, give feedback, or help in the future, consider dropping by our discord.



So what's new in the build? Mainly this update brings more optimisations, some bug fixes and some improvements to balance.

The optimisation is quite significant if you have a large rig with a lot of power sources. In these cases especially, but just generally overall you will have improved performance. There is also a nice fix to enemy AI that was causing Entity to become deactivated and unresponsive after piloting your rig. This is now resolved, so the world may be a little more dangerous out there now! (thanks DocHorrible for your help here!).

I've also balanced the stock goals and targets for a few other quests for smoother progression and perhaps a bit less of a grindy feel at points. Finally, there are several other fixes to labelling, recipes and other misc things.

Build 1.51
-Optimisation on power network and UI optimisation which greatly improves performance on large rigs
-Add Q.A. team to credits
-update bug in world ui canvas when jumping sectors
-Correct blueprint reward text for scientist 2 npc encounter
-Reduce stock goals targets in some instances
-Correct sensor2 labelling to assembler
-Correct misc wording
-Fix delay when starting fabrication if crafting multiple items
-Fix algae as fabrication blueprint in error in tutorial
-Balance goal in Max10000000 quest 2
-Balance Sensor 2 price
-Fixed bug where some indoor Entity would behave strangely, experience excess gravity and stop firing at players after piloting rig

Thanks again,

Al and Sarah
(SquarePlay Games)

Hi all,

Based on your feedback in the forums and discord, I have made a hotfix with some balance improvements and fixes.

Build 1.3:
-Further increase in lithium spawn amounts and sources (now found in mushrooms).
-Increased phosphorous spawn.
-Reduce lithium requirment in thruster 3.
-Reduce crop watered sound volume.
-Fixed nanolattice tooltip to show produced by Chemforge correctly.
-Entity no longer picked up by conveyors.
-Reduce stack trace on debug for smaller logs and better performance.

For those interested to help test the game for more advanced changes to the build, I have a beta branch on Steam. I am currently testing the next build 1.4 there which has following changes:

Build 1.4:
-reasonably significant optimisation on power network and UI optimisation which should further improve performance especially on larger rigs

Thanks

Al.

Just a note, you should disable g-sync while playing, if you have that running, at least on some systems, for better performance.

Build 1.2:
-fixed tool tip recipe for autoseller to match actual recipe

Greetings Scavengers,

I wanted to give a fuller explanation and an update to the most recent hotfix. I've seen some reports and bad reviews based on poor performance which are very unfortunate and I want to address. I want to have the game run as well as I can. It honestly surprised me because the game has been testing pretty well for a year in Early Access.

I can only apologise for these issues, I totally understand the frustration to have unexpected frame drops in a new game which looks like it should be fine.

The fix
After some testing i think I can now be sure the problem was related to a bug that crept in in final 1.0 update. After 4 years work it's unfortunate that this happened, but that is game dev and sometimes issues like this can crop up at launch.

The upshot of the error was the game was set to a very high render scale. Additionally there seemed to be some sort of issue in how the setting is implemented in the unity URP render pipeline, somehow causing max GPU usage. This actually was creating a big additional hit on performance, almost doubling intended GPU load, and causing GPU fans to roar, for minimal benefit.

In this build I have fixed that, setting a reasonable value in line with the development (and actually, I removed this setting both to help with testing and because it was not useful). For reference the last hotfix was not effectively doing this in existing installs.

With the update you can expect roughly twice the performance across the board for new players, including on Deck. This graph (thanks Fank!) shows the change, with the line settling at the new performance with this change implemented.



To 4k or not 4k?
I want to emphasize that this game is a low poly indie game, designed for 1920x1080 resolutions or their aspect equivalent.

Unlike like some AAA games like say Cyberpunk, it's not aiming to be a graphical powerhouse and does not benefit much from higher resolution. It's not really necessary to put it above this default resolutions. By all means you can, but on some (and I do mean older) systems you may experience worse performance. Because of this I added a note in the graphics options.

For those few users who for are experiencing low FPS (I mean very low < 40) I strongly suggest you go to Options > Graphics and set the resolution to 1920x1080 or aspect ratio equivalent.

But in most modern rigs, this really shouldn't be necessary.

Reference values
For some information I gathered some reference values, this is just baseline test at spawn.

Many of these values are from people commenting in Discord:

• 3070Ti - 1920x1080 - 180 fps, capped by monitor vsync
  
• 3070Ti - 2560x1440 - maxes out at around 120 fps
  
• 3080 - 1440p, AA off, MSAA 2x, Shadow res 1020, shadow dist 0.1 - user limits at 60 to preserve gpu lifespan but reaches around 120 uncapped
  
• 3090 Founders - Ultrawide 5140x1440 (32:9) - 120fps capped, 143.7 FPS avg uncapped
  
• Steam Deck - 720p - 48 to 60 fps
  

More Settings Than Most Indies Games?
I also wanted to highlight that you can change many graphical settings, either for better performance or for you own visual preferences. Improvements are slight, but on very low spec systems this may help.

• Vsync On (caps your FPS to your monitor refresh rate). If you toggle it off you can manually cap your fps if its running too fast. An unchecked max fps can set your GPU fans.
  
• Antialiasing - toggle FXAA, SMAA or off
  
• MSAA quality - 2x 4x 8x off
  
• Shadow resolution - set lower for better performance
  
• Shadow draw distance - reduce for better performance
  

There is also the option to select a low texture build when you run open the game on Steam. For older systems or potentially the Steam Deck if you select the Lower Spec option, you will get even more benefit, considering this build uses half the VRAM as the main build, again not often offered to players.

Al

Build 1.1 Changelog:
-fix render scale to intended and tested values and remove slider
-add resolution notes

Greetings Scavengers,

I've got a hotfix to address a few things that have come up since launch. Please do let me know anything you find in discord.

I've seen a few reports of poor performance so made a change to address this, as well as some other balances.

If you have low FPS try going into Options > Graphics and reducing Render Scale to around 0.5. There may be an error in how this setting is implemented. The change is not really visually perceptible and should improve your FPS on lower spec systems or laptops. In addition, when you open the game in Steam, you are presented with a choice of two builds, do try running the Lower Spec build with reduced texture memory as well if you have any problems.

You should also check you have your latest GPU drivers installed and updated. I worked hard to include other graphical options too, so I suggest checking them out too. For example, you can toggle ambient occlusion, and alter or disable anti aliasing.

It's also worth keeping in mind, it should be said this game is not really a 4k game. It is a fairly low poly indie game, and unless you have a recent card, you could think about playing at 1080p which you can also set in Options > Graphics. It was designed to be played at this resolution, and if you do have any performance issues, you will lose absolutely nothing from the experience by playing at this if you are on an older machine.

Thanks to everyone who has supported the game so far! I really appreciate those positive reviews, it lets us know there are people who are enjoying it and that we did something worthwhile over the past four years development.

Cheers,

Al.

Hotfix 1.02 change log:

-Render scale default balanced to give better guarentee of performance.
-Better balance for later stage stock items. Reduced lithium requirement and other ingredients for smoother progression.
-Reduced stock goals at later stages for smoother progression.