Surviving Ceres News

Greetings Pilgrims;

It has taken a lot of hard work, but the next update is ready with various fixes and improvements to many of the issues reported by players. A huge thank you to everyone for supporting the game and for taking the time to give great feedback and reports.

We have also received a whirlwind of excellent suggestions, which we will discuss in the future after the game is stable and as close to perfect as we can achieve.

[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]

• Opening and reading data pads will now pause the game, making them easier for players to use. However, for this to function, you must now use the escape key or press the close pad to exit. You can no longer use tab or E (the default key values), but ESC is an excellent key.
  
  
• I have added an unstuck command.
  
  
• We fixed an issue where pressing escape on the leaderboard resumed the game but left the leaderboard up.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where deconstructing windmills showed the wrong name
  
  
• Fixed issues regarding deconstructing the aerial defense turret.
  
  
• Auto saves no longer overwrite your manually named save. Instead, they make a separate save called Auto_Save.
  
  
• I have made a variety of performance changes.
  
  
• Several minor fixes and tweaks have been made to try to avoid any sort of Unreal crashing issues. This one is tricky, as Unreal is far from perfect, but these should help with stability.
  
  
• We fixed an issue with expeditions that caused your save to overwrite without structures. This should no longer occur.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where the water filtration stacked water to 10, not 20.
  
  
• We fixed an issue where the advanced farm could create large stacks of foods, not their maximum size of 20.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where melons and tomatoes didn't yield the correct amount on the advanced farm.
  
  
• I added a new button to the assigned work HUD for colonists called "Fire All." Sometimes, wild things have occurred that messed up job listings and postings. If you face any issues, this new fire-all button will set all colonists to unemployed and reset all job positions to their correct values. I hope you won't need this, but it now exists to help anyone who has issues from any mass deconstructing or bugged-out colonists.
  

That is it for this minor update. We will see how it goes. If we don't get many new reports, we can move on to the first significant content update. But I will be ready to tackle any more minor issues that arise. Stability and bug-free are my top priorities.

Greetings Pilgrims;

First, I just wanted to thank everyone who has purchased the game, especially those leaving reviews. We don't have many reviews, but we have 100% positive ones, which fills me with joy. Thank you to everyone for their support, with or without a review.

There is an issue related to older saves from the demo and demo transitions into the full version.

I have made the game run as best I can for older saves, especially those from the February next fest. But there has been so much work done since then that it is hard. They still work, but a few issues are related to newer content and old saves.

As for the transition, the Steam cloud saves tried to copy your demo settings into your full version settings. I posted a solution on the forum, but uninstalling the demo and using manual load (not continuing the game) has fixed this issue for everyone.

[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]

• I fixed an issue with the deconstruction tool. The tool could get stuck. This was related to having it selected in the quick slots but then moving it to a different slot, taking it off your bar, or putting it into a machine. This should no longer be possible.
  
  
• I added an auto-save feature. A few people highly requested this. I never planned for an auto-save; I assumed quick, manual, and copying saves would be best. I find it annoying when games auto-save at the wrong time. However, having a few people's games crash on them and having them lose 6 hours of time hurts my heart. So, I added an auto-save that will auto-save every 10 minutes (let me know if this seems too slow or fast).
  
  
• I made several tweaks and optimizations to stop some players' crashes. These happen during long play sessions or in the late game. It is related to how much computation can be happening in a large mid-end game base full of colonists and several machines and facilities all working. I have added some optimizations and a few tweaks to lower calls. I wouldn't call it perfect, and I will continue to work on this aspect, but these changes should help.
  
  
• I fixed an issue where when you teleport to base, it won't trigger air to refill correctly.
  
  
• I fixed an issue where a player could leave from underwater to land and not have air begin to refill in a world past 50% terraforming (working atmosphere).
  

That does it for this small patch. I wanted to get some critical fixes based on reports and quickly add the autosave for players. I will continue to work on stability and issues if they come in, but once it settles down, I will switch to working on the first significant update that I hope to push live ASAP. I don't want to give a timeline yet as I haven't begun that work, and it would be foolish to guess, but feel free to join my discord, where I work very transparently and openly with my community.

[h2]It Is Launch Time[/h2]

It has taken a few years, but the time has finally come to release Ceres to Steam.

I want to thank all my beta testers, demo players, and, of course, the content creators who have helped showcase the game.

The game would not be as bug-free and smooth without your help. Thank you.

Now that the game is out, we can look toward the future. I have written a road map that you can find in the Steam forums if you want to get an idea of what is planned.

Thank you to everyone for their support. I can't wait to get players in the game and hear their feedback as we continue development.

Greetings Pilgrims;

This last-minute update contains a few requested features and changes I know many players wanted to see for launch.

Patch Notes

Custom signs and other signs didn't work correctly.

I tweaked the deconstruction to be smaller to avoid deconstructing the wrong buildings closely when they were on top of each other.

I added the ability for players, machines, and storage to remember the sort method. I had to put this in a hack job way to quickly get it in for launch. It works well, but it doesn't save if you exit the game and reload. It will continue to remember anything you select while playing, but it doesn't yet save that out. I will add the saving side shortly, but I wanted to push this live for release.

That is all inside this small patch.

Greetings Pilgrims;

This update marks the final update before the game's launch. Unless an issue requires an emergency patch, the game should be ready to go, and we can start to look toward its future.

This update is a big update for the Demo. If you are a demo player and want to know what has changed, you will need to read through the previous four update notes posted to the full version.

This update improves the Demo drastically and smooths the transition from a demo save to a full version save.

Older saves will continue to work with minor exceptions to specific recipe changes. Some changes won't be live in an older save, but functionally, they will work without issue.

In terms of the full version, there are only a few minor tweaks. There were minor issues with item descriptions, minor performance enhancements, and a change to how the farm calls for plants to grow. It was previously calling to overlapping machines if you placed machines in the dirt for farms. This will no longer cause an issue.

Thank you so much to everyone for their fantastic feedback and the many creators who helped show the game to players. I can't wait to see how the launch goes and how players feel as we set our sights on post-launch updates. Your feedback and ideas will go a long way towards improving the game.