ASTRONEER News

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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

We have added a completely new game type within Astroneer: Creative Mode! Creative Mode is an optional game mode within Astroneer that allows players to explore and create without any limitations! Turn off Oxygen and Power consumption, spawn all craftable items, and use your terrain tool without having to manage sediment or augments. WARNING: Creative Mode can be turned on at any time, but doing so will completely disable achievements indefinitely in the active save.



Creation Tool



The Creation Tool is a completely new terrain tool variant that is only accessible in Creative Mode. It has an on board infinite soil canister, and thus does not require Soil or Power. It also allows for entirely new functionality, Eyedrop Mode, and Paint Mode!



Delivery Catalog
This custom version of the catalog comes with all EXO items unlocked, as well as new item categories to support additional content found in the world! This includes resource nuggets, researchable items, hazard seeds, etc.... Just select the item you want and press the button and it appears!

Duplicate and Deleting Items

Creative mode allows you to duplicate or delete any item an Astroneer can hold. Once held, press Backspace (d-pad left) to delete, and Enter (d-pad right) to duplicate.



Terrain LOD Anchor

This new item "locks" terrain to it's highest resolution so that you can create large sculptures and view them from a distance. Only 7 may be active at any time for performance reasons, and activating more than 7 will cause the first one placed to deactivate. Use the menu option to toggle indicators on and off to quickly see at a glance where LOD anchors are and their status.

Free Flight Mode

Press Spacebar or A/X twice to activate free flight mode! This will allow you to travel anywhere, and help you create large structures without the need of any supports!



Item Plinths

Plinths allow for rapid deployment of items directly from your backpack, and come in multiple categories:

Backpack Printer Plinth
Small Printer Plinth
Medium Printer Plinth
Large Printer Plinth
Resource Plinth
Simply place one on terrain or in your backpack and click on the currently selected hologram to deploy an item. Useful for pulling the same item out of your backpack repeatedly.

Customizable Creative Mode Experience



Click any of the boxes in the Creative Mode menu to completely customize your experience. Toggle Oxygen, Vehicle Fuel, Power, Invincibility, and more.

Creation Tool Menu

Activate the Creation Tool Menu by pressing R on keyboard, or Y/Triangle on controllers. This will allow you to choose colors, change brush size, adjust deform speed, and more. Only can be opened while the Creation Tool is equipped.

Terrain Desync has been fixed.

We’ve fixed the issue that was causing Terrain Desyncs to occur in multiplayer sessions. Unfortunately, this fix will most likely cause deformed areas in existing saves to display artifacts. The good news: after you clean up these artifacts, there should no longer be any issues with terrain desyncing for multiplayer sessions.

Players should reach out to us if they see this issue occurring once this update goes live.

Performance Optimizations

Optimized memory allocation on all platforms
Optimized terrain deformation on all platforms
Bugs

The following bugs have been fixed as of version 1.7.55.0

[AS-7007] - Players can no longer appear in unearned suits, palettes or visors by highlighting them in the customization menu then switching menu tabs at any point, or by highlighting them then exiting the menu.
[AS-8852] - Small canister is now auto pulled to medium canister when they are both on separate storage
[AS-9056] - Saving and reloading at various states does not result in a partial nugget being created from the Chemistry Lab
[AS-8394] - Fixed a bug that caused Players to become not joinable when loading a save after they have previously Saved and Exited to the main menu
[AS-8787] - Centrifuge will not longer break for clients when returning to relevance after centrifuge is finished.
Thanks so much for reading! We are so excited to get this update into your hands and see all the incredible things you will create!

-jt

Steam players should receive this update today, October 24th, 2019.

Welcome to the Groundwork Update! We are really excited for the Paver and Medium Canister items to get introduced to the game, as we feel they fundamentally change how players look at rovers. Enjoy!

UPDATES

The following updates have been made to the game:
Paver

• Printed on: Small Printer
  
• Resource Cost: 1 Aluminium Alloy, 1 Silicone
  
• Byte Cost: 5,000 Bytes
  
• 
  

Medium Canister

• Printed on: Small Printer
  
• Resource Cost: 1 Plastic, 1 Glass
  
• Byte Cost: 2.500 Bytes
  

Vehicle In-Air Stabilization and Manual Controls

• Rovers automatically self-correct their rotation while airborne, and are much less prone to flipping over
  
• You can also manually adjust the Pitch and Yaw/Roll of rovers while airborne using WASD/Left-Joystick
  
• Control over Yaw or Roll can be toggled in the options menu.
  

Drill Controls/UI

• Overhauled to be more consistent with the current Terrain Tool cursor
  
• Remains visible when obscured
  
• More clearly displays the vertical tilt of the Camera
  
• Displays the slope of the rover relative to the ground-plane
  
• Displays the amount of available Soil
  
• Multiple improvements to feel and responsiveness
  

Small Trumpet Horn

• Printed from: Backpack
  
• Resource Cost: 1 Plastic
  
• Byte Cost: 1,000
  

Medium Buggy Horn

• Printed from: Small Printer
  
• Resource Cost: 1 Plastic, 1 Rubber
  
• Byte Cost: 2,000 Bytes
  

Large Fog Horn

• Printed from: Medium Printer
  
• Resource Cost: 1 Plastic, 1 Rubber, 1 steel
  
• Byte Cost: 4,000
  

Halloween in Astroneer


That is right! There are reports coming in from the Sol system that strange new flora are appearing on Atrox and Vesania! This is a limited time event that runs until 11:59 PST on November 14th! 

Granted on login

• 1 Visor
  
• 1 Suit Palette
  

Unlockable

• Visor Reward
  

Performance Optimizations

• Fixed a bug where tethers would occasionally cause performance degradation for clients in multiplayer games.
  

BUGFIXES

The following bugs have been fixed as of version 1.6.49.0:
General 

• [AS-8090] - Fixed a typo in "Connect the Small Generator to the Smelting Furnace to increase its performance". 
  
• [AS-8272] - Driving vehicles through Arch Platform, Ring Platforms, and Ring Storage now triggers their reaction slots when they are set up in the same session, and after save/load.
  
• [AS-8328] - Players can no longer print from the diagonal slots of XL Platform B.
  
• [AS-8358] - Decorators are now spawning in the carved out sections of both the Mountains Biome on Radiated and the Hills Biome on Exotic.
  
• [AS-8383] - Player’s tether and tether posts will now connect to all 4 sides of the large curved platform.
  
• [AS-8418] - Shuttle is no longer stuttering in flight after it has been picked up and moved by the player.
  
• [AS-8435] - All planets show the correct primary and secondary resources in Polish
  
• [AS-8462] - T4 Solar Array is now oriented the same as the other items that are printed by the large printer.
  
• [AS-8464] - Rovers Sockets are no longer flipped when loading a game while out of relevance.
  
• [AS-8494] - Chemistry Lab is no longer entering an unusable state when a user saves and reloads right after the chem lab finishes its process. 
  
• [AS-8578] - Resources now correctly pop back up when returning into relevance after moving items in storage.
  
• [AS-8601] - Packaging a Soil Centrifuge while it is active will no longer cause a crash.
  
• [AS-8607] - The Hydrazine Jetpack has the correct russian translations in the tooltip, backpack printer, and research catalog.
  
• [AS-8703] - Drill UI orientation on rovers will no longer offset when rover is an active physics object
  
• [AS-8707] - Audio now properly ends when the T2 Shelter is packaged. The audio returns when it it unpackaged
  

Multiplayer

• [AS-7692] - Shuttles that are stuck in orbit from previous versions, as well as shuttles that are left in orbit by the client in the current version are now destroyed.
  
• [AS-8384] - Customization items will now unlock during multiplayer sessions.
  

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy, and remember, the Creative Mode Update and our PS4 launch happen on November 15th, 2019!

-jt