ASTRONEER News

Steam players should receive this update today, March 10, 2020.

We have introduced a new item to help players achieve truly flat surfaces, the leveling block! Use them in Creative Mode to snap to the existing voxel grid to create flat surfaces that automatically snap to each other.



For now, the leveling block only exists in Creative mode, but we will evaluate how we can roll it out into the main game without completely breaking the soil economy!
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Small scrap items in the world can now be bundled for easier transport! T1 scrap objects will now bundle into a single T1 Scrap Bundle much like Tethers, Glowsticks, and Extenders. It takes five T1 scrap objects to create one full Scrap Bundle, but once a scrap object has been added to a Scrap Bundle, it can not be removed. T1 Scrap Bundles are shreddable in all shredders.


- Implemented performance optimizations to base game systems to continue improving framerate across the board.
- Implemented performance optimizations to speed up processing for hazard behavior and planet particle effects.
The following bugs have been fixed as of version 1.10.97.0
[h2]General[/h2]

• - [AS-9879] - After a mysterious absence, Geysers are back on Desolo!
  
• - [AS-3952] - Client is now able to see a geyser exploding when it has been dug up.
  
• - [AS-5144] - Geyser explosion VFX now match the color of the geyser that is exploding.
  
• - [AS-5583] - All Hazard SFX should no longer cut off early or not play at all
  
• - [AS-6717] - Control Panels and Catalogs will no longer remain open when a player enters a shuttle or vehicle.
  
• - [AS-7191] - Spewer SFX have been restored.
  
• - [AS-8830] - Atmospheric Condenser, Small Printer, Medium Printer, and Large Printer can now all be stopped by pressing the A button twice on Xbox controllers.
  
• - [AS-9207] - All the creative mode options are set to their defaults when start a new creative mode game after skipping the tutorial.
  
• - [AS-9502] - Creative mode catalog button is correctly illuminated.
  
• - [AS-9536] - Loose tethers, glowsticks, and extenders will no longer freeze when hovering cursor over any slot greater than T1.
  
• - [AS-9589] - The Player landing a shuttle will retain control of the shuttle even if another user enters a seat attached to that shuttle.
  
• - [AS-9595] - The resources in the control panel now light up when the client player has them in their backpack, the same way that they do for the host player.
  
• - [AS-9604] - Key inputs for the AUX slots on the buggy are correctly oriented.
  
• - [AS-9662] - Powerflow will now correctly change when a player connects power to an extender.
  
• - [AS-9706] - Research Sample tooltip UI now correctly disappears when the sample is scanned.
  
• - [AS-9719] - Large Printer now prints slottable items onto T4 slots.
  
• - [AS-9763] - Bouncing and knocking hazards grown from seed by the player will no longer disappear when loading a saved game.
  
• - [AS-9830] - Bundles placed on the same slot of any tier will now fill existing bundles on that slot.
  
• - Multiplayer
  
• - [AS-9600] - Client's grab line and item highlight no longer disappears for items that were quick-stowed from carry.
  
• - [AS-9856] - Client can now see VFX when digging up a Spewflower, Hissbine, or Boomalloon.
  
• - [AS-9857] - Client is able to interact with seeds and researchables that are spawned when destroying Hazards.
  
• - [AS-9870] - Client players are now able to add Tethers, Glowsticks, Extenders and Debris to partial bundles by using their cursor
  

[h2]Localization[/h2]

• - [AS-8094] - Spanish Localization inconsistencies between color palette names have been fixed.
  
• - [AS-9465] - German and Dutch now both use "STARTEN" instead of "START" on the EXO Request Platform control panel.
  
• - [AS-9520] - A player-reported Portugese localization error has been fixed. “Aguarde” has been replaced with “Segure” for (HOLD) interactions.
  
• - [AS-9910] - The first O in "СТАРОТОВЫЙ" is now removed and now correctly reads "СТАРТОВЫЙ" in Russian.
  
• - [AS-10219] - Inhibitor Mod is now called “INIBITORE” in both the catalog and the backpack printer in Italian.
  

Thanks so much for reading! Look out for an announcement next week regarding our next big content update! 🏗️

-jt

Steam players should receive this update today, January 24th, 2020.

This is a performance and quality of life focused patch that greatly improves framerates in multiplayer sessions. While testing this in house, we have been seeing speeds boosted significantly (2x-3x!) when playing with others. We are really happy with the results, but please let us know how things are going when playing with friends in all of your big saves. Work will continue on performance in both multiplayer and singleplayer and we will be keeping you all updated as we progress.

This update also includes a slew of quality of life upgrades and some experimental changes to terrain that should greatly improve the control that you have to make flat surfaces for a much cleaner look. Let us know what you think!



Hot Swap Functionality
Players can now swap current held item when placing item on a currently occupied slot when clicked. If there is no empty slot, then the item your cursor is hovering over will be swapped with the item you are holding!

Updated shreddable objects
Overhauled the properties of existing objects such as debris and platforms so that everything of large (Tier 3) size or smaller can be shredded to unify the shredding behavior of crafted objects and debris items to be consistent across the entire size set. Players now have a reliable way to remove objects from the game for scrap or to reduce clutter

• Medium Shredder: Shreds all T1 Objects
  
• Large Shredder: Shreds all T2 & T1 Objects
  
• XL Shredder: Shreds all T3, T2, & T1 Objects
  

Air Controls
Players can now toggle between roll or yaw vehicle controls mid-air by pressing the corresponding input:

• [Left shift] key on keyboard
  
• X on Xbox Controller
  
• Square on PS4 controller
  

Augment Power Toggle
Augments placed on the terrain tool can be toggled on or off via the corresponding use input while you have an augment highlighted:

• [F] key on keyboard
  
• X on Xbox controller
  
• Square on PS4 Controller
  

Low Storage UI
On Xbox and PC, if a save fails for any reason you should now see a popup notifying you of it. The pause menu will display error information about the last failed save. If it fails to save on quit, it will abort the quit, notify you that the save failed, and prompt you again to see if you want to cancel the quit or actually quit.

On Xbox and Windows 10, there's an indication on the list of saved games that shows up if your save storage space is nearly full.

On Xbox and Windows 10, if an individual save file is getting close to the limit for save storage, then a warning will be shown in the pause menu while that save file is loaded.
Choose Language UI
Players can now change the displayed language in game via the options menu.

Return To Shelter
Added a new menu option in the Quit tab of the main menu that allows you to return to your starting shelter! Use this to get out of sticky situations where your new save point has your save soft locked.

• [Several tasks] Heavily optimized Unreal’s replication graph and added the Net-dormancy concept to many object types in order to cut down multiplayer lag/replication time by, depending on game state and save, up to a factor of 11 (This will be further improved with future revisions as we will add Dormancy to more object types)
  
• Optimized power system to now work fully time sliced and async, thus saving up to 70% Game Thread time
  
• Optimized Entity Component system book keeping loops to only run when needed
  
• Optimized wind and solar panels to update in a time sliced manner, thus having a fixed performance footprint instead of scaling linearly
  
• Optimized some expensive loops in VoxelVolume component that handle the finding of relevant nodes for all viewers (i.e. players)
  
• Optimized the Researchable entity component loop to now also operate time sliced at a fixed cost
  
• Optimized the way we handle Gravity.
  

That is all! Thanks for reading! Next time we talk I will be sharing more details about the roll out of dedicated servers!

-jt

Today's Deal: Save 35% on ASTRONEER!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Thursday at 10AM Pacific Time

Welcome to the Holiday Update, featuring our first ever community goal where your progress gets collected with the entire player base to unlock exclusive rewards!

Steam, PS4, and Xbox "Play Anywhere" players should receive this update today, December 16th, 2019.





Exo Community Recovery Mission is live! The Holidays in the Sol system have arrived, and due to unforseen circumstances, EXO Dynamics needs you to participate in project CHEER to save them! Delivery crates from an LRCV have crash landed all over the system, and EXO needs you to locate and recover these top secret experiments. The Project CHEER Holiday Limited Time event begins on December 16th, 2019 until 12:00am PT on Jan 17th, 2020.

Rewards for participation include:

Frosty Visor - Rewarded after achieving 400 recovery points
Frosty Palette - Rewarded after achieving 2500 recovery points
Frosty Mask - Rewarded after achieving 2500 recovery points
Holiday Top Hat Reward - Rewarded to all players after the community goal of 100,000,000 recovery points is achieved

That is right! We have included some rewards for new types of customization that the community has asked us for for a while: Masks and Hats! Stay tuned for more cool iterations in these categories ;)

As an added holiday bonus, System Era is running an Extra Life campaign (supporting Seattle Children's Hospital :) ) based on the amount of recovery points the community as a whole achieves! At every 50,000,000 recovery points, SES will donate 5,000 USD to the campaign, up to a total of 20,000 dollars! You can join our team and/or donate to the cause here: https://www.extra-life.org/team/48680

EXO Request Platform has been added to the game. Use this new module to send recovered project CHEER experiments back to EXO Dynamics. Check the module's control panel for full mission parameters.

• Recipe: 2 Resin
  
• Prints from: Medium Printer
  

Festive light tethers have returned and will be available in the game till the end of the year!

A Happy Holidays photo frame has been added for a limited time. Snap holiday photos using the Camera item to send to your friends with your warmest season’s greetings.

• Optimized texture compression settings to significantly reduce memory usage.
  
• Fixed a bug in the research system which caused it to severely degrade performance if the research module was active in multiplayer games.
  
• Fixed a bug involving tethers that caused performance to degrade for clients in multiplayer games.
  
• Various stability fixes.
  

As we addressed in our most recent vlog, this is an ongoing process, but these bugfixes and optimizations should be a great start to ensure better performance in multiplayer sessions. Next months update will be focused solely on bugfixes, quality of life, and performance upgrades for multiplayer. You can watch the vlog where Brendan talks about this in more detail below:

https://youtu.be/Ieu2pPPGpKM



The following bugs have been fixed as of version 1.8.64.0

General

• [AS-8093] - Tutorial [FR]: The "Approach the {item} to interact with it" text string now appears correctly when playing in french.
  
• [AS-9221] - Wanderer Photo widget now correctly shows PlayStation button on PS4.
  

Audio

• [AS-9338] - Packager audio no longer gets cut off during repackaging event.
  
• [AS-9410] - Oxygenator audio now correctly stops when the oxygenator is packaged, destroyed, or deleted.
  
• [AS-9411] - RTG audio loop no longer continues to play after being packaged up.
  

Creative Mode

• [AS-9193] - Controller now changes terrain painter settings after a player interacts with an attached mouse.
  
• [AS-9207] - The correct creative mode options are now selected by default.
  

Multiplayer

• [AS-8319] - Resource deposits are now consistently visible to client and should no longer pop in in late.
  
• [AS-8637] - Client can now see the Trade Platform’s rocket animating back into place when it is returning from a trade.
  
• [AS-5501] - Tooltips now appear for client’s when interacting with the Odd Stone/teleporter control panel.
  
• [AS-9260] - Atmospheric Condenser’s control panel no longer enters broken state for multiplayer client when they return to relevance.
  

Localization

• [AS-8607] - Jetpack is now translated correctly in Russian in the tooltip, backpack printer, research catalog and creative catalog
  
• [AS-8822] - Medium Buggy Horn is now translated correctly in Polish.
  
• [AS-9242] - Text string for “PLAYER WILL NO LONGER TAKE DAMAGE” is now properly capitalized in creative mode tutorial in Italian.
  

Thanks so much for reading and for an amazing year! We can't wait to tell you all about our plans for 2020 and we hope everyone has a great holiday! ❤️

-jt

It is hard to believe, but Astroneer fully released this year which means we are qualified for the new Steam Awards format! You can support us in any category, but we think that we really stand out for the Outstanding Visual Style award!



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Thanks so much for your consideration!

-jt