PULSAR: Lost Colony News

Hey everyone!

Beta 30.4 is now out! This update contains more fixes and improvements. A few of the bigger ones include a fix to a warp-related collision bug and a warp-related networking issue that could result in a disconnect.


Changes
- Tweaked how the Final High Rollers table works. It should no longer remove the chips you have collected when sitting at the final table, making the game a little easier.

Fixes
- Fixed a few internal errors that were appearing due to the game analytics. It’s unclear if these were causing any noticeable bugs though.
- Fixed another issue related to ship collisions during warp.
-Fixed an issue with the Sylvassi Swordship, in which its atrium would accidentally be culled causing strange issues
-Fixed a bug that wouldn’t properly give achievements to non-host players when the achievement involved a game object being destroyed (Killing Sector Commanders, etc.)
-Fixed a bug in the High Rollers Station that would allow players to keep their “score” when moving between tables
- Fixed a bug on the Fluffy One ship that prevented players from tweaking the Engineering System Screen
- Fixed a placement issue with the Life Support system screen on the Outrider
- Fixed a networking issue that could sometimes cause a disconnect while syncing ship components during warp.
- Potentially fixed an internal issue related to the first artifact planet level

Additions (Lost Colony)
- New Screen: Containment Screen Log - This should help make the containment screen puzzle a little easier to understand for new players.
- New Screen: Security Door - Another screen to help new players better understand what to do in order to progress.
- New Log: Better explaining the lore behind the Lost Colony

Changes (Lost Colony)
- Updated the ending cutscene files. They should appear a bit sharper now.
- Changed the location of a few of the keycards in the Lost Colony after a few reports of players having trouble finding them.
- Tweaked the selection line visual in VR to always appear during the neural calibration sequence hopefully making it easier to select the desired option.

Fixes (Lost Colony)
- Fixed another level issue that could allow players to skip some of the Lost Colony content
- Fixed a VR issue related to the neural calibration sequence. The camera should no longer move, and the scale and placement of the visuals should be better.

Thank you for your time!

Best,
The Leafy Games Team

Hey everyone!

Beta 30.3 is now out! This is a hotfix focused on a few reported issues we wanted to get fixed quickly. The most critical is a fix for an ironman mode issue that can result in improperly losing saves.

Fixes
- Fixed ironman mode issue that caused false save deletions when the ship wasn’t actually destroyed
- Bounty Hunters should always be flagged and no longer cause reputation loss when attacked or destroyed

Additions (Lost Colony)
- Added an additional log page at the Lost Colony with a hint on how to complete the Free For All ending

Fixes (Lost Colony)
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to skip to the containment room through a hole in the level

Thank you for your time!

Best,
The Leafy Games Team

Hey everyone!

Beta 30.2 is now out! This update mostly contains more changes to help with clarity as well as addresses some of the bigger issues that have been reported regarding the new Lost Colony content.

Changes
- We’ve reverted an earlier change to how Neutral stores react to AOG rep. They no longer take any faction rep into consideration. The only exception being shopkeepers and the new general store in the Estate sector.

Fixes
- Fixed a few broken pickup items on the Bulb Tree Planet
- Fixed an issue involving exiting warp where the Ship’s Exterior would collide with it’s interior causing it to explode.
- Fixed an issue that could potentially create Bounty Hunters for factions you’re friendly with.
- We believe we have fixed an issue involving the Fluffy Biscuit Leaderboard not properly updating
- Fixed a few broken pickup items on the Bulb Tree Planet
- Fixed a missing collider on the Caustic Corsair Ship
- Fixed an issue with the ironman save system that prevented it from deleting the active save upon ship destruction. It could be loaded in-game before the game deleted it.
- Made tweaks to the ironman save system to help prevent any false deletions of save files on a game over, if anyone else has an issue like this in Beta 30.2, we’d love to see your player log! It should include more information about what might be happening. Instructions here: https://www.pulsarthegame.com/sending-an-output-log-file
- Fixed a minor issue with Viruses regarding destroyed ships

Additions (Lost Colony)
- Added an Alert UI to help guide non-captain players during the Neural Calibration sequence, it lists the number of errors and what to do to help the captain.

Changes (Lost Colony)
- Tweaked the error generation rate on the Containment Screen, it’s speed should not scale as high when playing with more human players
- Changed the size of the numbers in the Neural Calibration sequence, as well as how they scale based on resolution to increase readability at certain screen resolutions
- Incorrect options are eliminated faster when fixing / clearing errors during the Neural Calibration sequence
- Removed the final “Layer” to the neural calibration sequence making it slightly easier to complete
- Made a special case for the scenario when a single captain (no crew at all) tries to perform the Neural Calibration sequence, they’ll have around 50% more time before the “layer” reverts.
- Tweaked the lighting for the screens connected to the containment system, the previous lights were blowing out the name of certain screens making the process of finding a specific screen much harder
- Tweaked when the Grand Warp Gate appears in the game. It now appears immediately rather than waiting for the player crew to acquire at least 1 Data Fragment


Fixes (Lost Colony)
- Fixed a minor visual issue on the Lost Colony
- Fixed an issue that could prevent the Grand Warp Gate from properly appearing
- Fixed a save issue that wouldn’t properly store the contents of the “Hatch” in the final room of the Lost Colony
-Fixed an internal issue relating AI bots and the Neural Calibration sequence


Thank you for your time!

Best,
The Leafy Games Team

Hey everyone!

Beta 30.1 is now out! It is focused on fixing bugs reported by the community. This hotfix should also help with the reported issues involving the HOTAS bindings. We still plan to do more, but we figured it was worth getting a fix out for this sooner rather than later.

Changes
-Updated a locked door in the Lost Colony to make it clearer how to open it
-Tweaked the security containment screen to allow for the Ultramagnetized Enclosure property to be toggled from either the screen or the lever next to it. It wasn’t very clear that the lever was related to this property which led to some confusion

Fixes
-Starting a new game in offline mode should no longer cause an endless loading loop
-Fixed a mission bug that could cause duplicate missions when reloading in certain situations
-Fixed an issue with HOTAS-style controllers that caused their axis-based input to be ignored
-Fixed an issue preventing the new Military-Grade Shield Boosting program from appearing in general shops and the program shop
-Fixed an internal error causing minor performance issues during the Lost Colony sequence
-Fixed an issue with missiles that could cause them to incorrectly deal damage to distant targets

Thank you for your time!

Best,
The Leafy Games Team

Hey everyone!

Devlog 88: https://youtu.be/RSHZntKJYvk

Beta 30 is now out! This update adds the Lost Colony, which is the ending sequence of the game! Once your crew collects four data fragments, you will be able to use the Grand Warp Gate to reach the Lost Colony itself. Make sure you’re prepared; once you warp, there’s no going back.

In addition to the Lost Colony, we’ve also added a boost ability for piloting. This allows for a short burst of thrust for both maneuvering and directional thrusters, helping pilots dodge incoming projectiles or obstacles. You can access this by double-tapping the desired input for thrust.

We really appreciate your patience with us on this update. We ended up doing a few iterations on the ending sequences in order to improve them, and we also ran into some considerable snags with a new game mode that this update adds. It’s been a challenging update, but we hope you all enjoy it and we look forward to getting your feedback! Just to let you know, there has been some speculation that this is the last beta update, but that is not the case. We still have a bit more planned before version 1.0. We discuss this in a bit more detail in Devlog #88. As always, a big thanks to everyone’s reports and suggestions!

Below you’ll see two lists of release notes. The lower list contains possible spoilers, so read at your own risk!

***Non Spoiler Notes***

Additions
-The Lost Colony - Ending Sequence - This piece of content will allow players to finish a run of the game.
-New Sector - Grand Warp Gate
-Ship boosting system that allows pilots to trigger a burst of speed to help in combat
-New Program: Military-Grade Shield Boosting
-New Cutscene: Intro - This cutscene plays when the game starts and sets up the story of the game.
-New Mission: Find the Lost Colony
- Added General Store to The Estate sector
- Added the Lost Colony transmission - This message will appear on the hailing screen when you start a new game and acts as an inciting incident for the galaxy
-New Game System: Ship Unlocks - Certain ship classes are now locked behind progress milestones (such as gaining a certain number of levels in a specific faction or completing the Lost Colony mission line)
-New basic turret slot for the Fluffy One starship - The control station is by the main turret, near the bridge. The new control station on the bottom floor near biscuit storage now controls the turret on the underside of the ship (which now starts as an empty slot).
-Added a way to view start ship components from the start game menu


Changes
-Some ships now require certain achievements or conditions to unlock and start a game with
-Updated AI priorities for EngBot and PiBot to better handle cloaked ships
-Emer. Shield Boosting Program - Reduced charge rate boost (from 45 to 15)
-Resetting the galaxy after a ship death now allows you to select a different ship or change the galaxy settings in-game
-Edited mission objective text of nearly all missions to make it more consistent. Some missions also had objectives and rewards tweaked.
-Nukes should now be able to damage DSOs (damageable space objects)
-AI Pilots should have the ability to use the new ship boosting system, to dodge projectiles and use during the ship races
-We’ve drastically changed the size of the Roland's exterior. We’re interested to get feedback on how this feels, as we pushed it pretty far.
-Tweaked screen placement: Lowered the ship comms screens on the Interceptor to account for the name of the dialogue actor
-Tweaked screen placement: Added a cloned comms screen near the captain’s chair on the Stargazer
-Tweaked the default AI priorities for Engbot and Pibot allowing them to better manage power while cloaked.
-Tweaked the Sylvassi Cypher Lab planet texture
-Improved the lighting in the ant colony caves
-Tweaked the exit hole on the crashed Roland to help players find it
-Tweaked the look of the start game menu


Fixes
-Fixed an issue with the join game menu that could prevent a player from joining a crew with an available slot. It would also sometimes allow players to join a full crew.
-Fixed EngBot power allocation issue in which they could get stuck in a cooling loop, constantly cooling off the reactor when it didn’t need to be cooled
-Removed some languages from the profanity filter that were causing too many false positives
-Fixed some issues with the starmap that could cause the ship to invisibly collide and act strange while the starmap was open
-Fixed some warp timing issues that could cause desync in ship location between players
-Fixed a missing material issue in the AOG Hideout sector
-Fixed a broken teleporter location on one of the cave planets
-Fixed an issue with shop inventories not properly displaying during a galaxy reset or reload
-Removed Super Inertia thrusters from the traders in the racing sectors - These ship components aren’t really meant to be used by player ships
-Fixed save loading issue where bot and player talents would inadvertently reset
-Fixed a minor lighting issue with one of the random space obstacles
-Fixed a minor visual bug found on Mueva 7
-Fixed a mission bug that would inadvertently lower chaos level
-Added credit rewards to the W.D. Forsaken Flagship missions
-Fixed an issue that may slightly improve performance across the game



***Potential Spoiler Notes***

Additions
-New Sector: The Lost Colony
-New “Sector”: Warp
-New Mission: Investigate the Lost Colony
-New Space Enemy: Warp Guardian
-New Enemy: Domesticated Crawler
-New Enemy: “Ghosts”
-New Enemy Ship Ability: Phase Transporter - Teleporter can bypass quantum shields.
-New Game System: Quantum Reflection
-Relic Hunters: New challenging space encounters with deadly ships hunting you for your data fragments. The more data fragments your crew holds, the more likely relic hunters will spawn
-New readable logs and screens at the Lost Colony
-New Screen: Biology Research - Found at the Lost Colony
-New Screen: Life Support - Found at the Lost Colony
-New Screen: Power - Found at the Lost Colony
-New Screen: Computer - Found at the Lost Colony
-New Screen: Security - Found at the Lost Colony
-New Screen: Water - Found at the Lost Colony
-New Screen: Material Research - Found at the Lost Colony
-New Screen: Coolant - Found at the Lost Colony
-New Screen: Containment Screen - Found at the Lost Colony
-New Screen Effect: Broken
-New Game System: Neural Calibration
-New Inventory Item: Poison Capsule
-New Inventory Item: Facility Keycard
-New Inventory Item: Lower Facilities keycard
-New Inventory Item: Storage Room Keycard
-Game Endings: There are seven different game endings available. Certain ones depend on which faction you start as.
-New Cutscenes: Each ending has a unique cutscene
-5 New music tracks related to the Lost Colony
-New Achievement: Unexpected Guest - discover the Warp Guardian
-New Achievement: Colony Found - Find the Lost Colony
-New Achievement: Together We Survive - Colonial Union ending completed
-New Achievement: Progress Above All - W.D. Corporation ending completed
-New Achievement: Never Trust A Gentleman - Alliance of Gentlemen ending completed
-New Achievement: Eat Biscuits Feel Butter - Fluffy Biscuit Co. ending completed
-New Achievement: Intergalactic Overlords - alternate ending completed
-New Achievement: Take No Chances - alternate ending completed
-New Achievement: Free For All - alternate ending completed
-New Achievement: Completionist - all Lost Colony endings completed
-New Achievement: True Mettle - complete the game in ironman mode
-New Game Mode: Reflected Galaxy - Quantum reflection is inverted, and you begin the game in the reflection


Changes
-Infected health regeneration can now be hampered by blocking long range comms
-Pibot can fly through the Grand Warp Gate when four data fragments have been collected


Thank you for your time!

Best,
The Leafy Games Team