Abiotic Factor News

[h5][color]Greetings, esteemed colleagues![/color][/h5]
So long as time remains linear (we have it on good authority that it shall), we are inching ever closer to the Cold Fusion (1.0) release of Abiotic Factor where we answer (or ask) even more questions about your fate in the GATE Cascade Research Facility.

Questions such as:
Will Dr. Thule ever get his coffee? Will Dr. Cahn ever give us the words of approval we crave? Will Abe ever figure out how to get that submarine up and running? Will Janet ever get her “me time”?

Time will tell. And time, after all, is probably linear. Onward to… Residence Sector. The Shopping District. The Botanical Lab? These are all just words. Let’s throw some images out there, shall we?



[h3]Updated Roadmap[/h3]
The roadmap has received an update. While it’s not fully comprehensive, it does feature some of our favorite new things arriving in Cold Fusion.



[h3]The Praetorium[/h3]
Little is known about this clandestine vault. In the depths of this sanctuary, where order is kept, Clericum stalk the shadows of the archival halls.



In Cold Fusion, if you’ve not made a point of upgrading your equipment with the Enhancement Bench, doing so before venturing further would be most prudent.

[h3]Cubicles and Grid Snapping[/h3]
Ahh, the office cubicle. The pinnacle of space saving efficiency and individualism in the workplace. There is nothing more satisfying than pressing your own cubicle seamlessly up against your coworker’s cubicle, which is why gridsnapping is getting added - for now, just for cubicles. Maybe other things later?



[h3]Oh, Taco Mine[/h3]
Yearning for something that almost imitates Mexican cuisine? GATE’s* got you covered. Or rather, Jimmy’s got you covered.

*GATE is not currently focusing on the food court as much as it once did.

[h3]Power Leeches[/h3]
We sent a lot of feedback about the so-called Power Leeches to Dr. Thule and he said he can definitely contain their electrical discharges. He went ahead and built something or other and turned it on and now we have a much bigger problem.



Wow, thanks Dr. Thule. Really came through for us there. Still, he assures us that as a result of this, the smaller ones will be less of a nuisance in the future, so that’s something to look forward to.

[h3]The R.A.I.N Shower[/h3]
Whether you’re growing a third arm or just a bit smelly, this decontamination shower will get you right as R.A.I.N.



[h3]T4 Storage - The Compact Crate[/h3]
The new Compact Crate will allow even more storage space to help you minimize the clutter in your base and/or maximize your loot gremlin ways.


[h3]Void Chest[/h3]
Let the void swallow you whole, and then use it for storage! The Void Chest has but one inventory, stored in the void, and can be accessed from any other Void Chest, at any other location.



That does it for this Status Report sneak peek! Our next Status Report will be an FAQ about what moving into 1.0 will have on existing save files for our early scientists. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to pop them in the comments, send an email or pop in our Discord to ask us.

See you in the summer, scientists! Do stay warm out there, we hear it’s getting rather cold.



[color]Onward -- to science.[/color]

[h2]Join the Scientific Community![/h2]

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[h3]You can also join the Research Division today on Steam![/h3]
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[h5][color]Greetings, esteemed colleagues![/color][/h5]
No two scientists are exactly the same, just as no two days in the Facility are exactly the same! If you want a truly personalized experience in the GATE Cascade Research Facility, Sandbox Settings can help you create it. This little introductory post should help get you started on your scientific sandboxing journey.

[h3]What can you modify?[/h3]
Firstly, to get started, either start a new game or select an existing save and click Modify Sandbox Settings to see what’s what!

The modifiable settings are organized into three categories, World, Enemy and Player.

World - World settings are focused on the environment and the Facility itself, and how all of that operates outside of you, the scientist. These settings affect things such as time of day, loot spawn rates and weather.

Enemy - Enemy settings are centered on enemy NPCs and their statuses such as respawn rate and health.

Player - Player settings are about you - primarily things to do with your character’s hunger and thirst, item durability and respawn penalties.

By hovering your cursor over the name of each setting will pop up a tooltip to explain what the setting does and how changing it may affect things.



If you ever feel like things have gotten a bit out of control through your relentless tinkering, you will always have the option Reset Sandbox Settings at the bottom of the page to reset everything, as well as the ability to reset individual settings using the arrow button next to the settings you have modified. This will show up on a setting if it is in a non-default state.


[hr][/hr]
[h2]Common Questions[/h2]

Can I change Sandbox Settings on an existing save?
Yes, you can change your Sandbox Settings at any time from the Modify Sandbox Settings when selecting a world save.



Can I modify survival mechanics, like hunger and thirst?
While we don’t recommend major changes here as many game balancing and features focus on these mechanics, yes, you can still modify or disable them if you want to and we’re not going to stop you!

By scrolling down to the Player settings you can set both Hunger Drain Rate and Thirst Drain Rate to 0 so that these stats will never drain. You can still eat or drink for fun, as is its primary function. If you do eat or drink you’ll still see your satiation status pop up for a moment but they will now always be full.

There are some other options for things like Fatigue Drain Rate, Item Weight Multiplier (encumbrance) and Item Durability as well.

Can I decrease enemy spawn rates?
Yes indeed. Scroll to Enemy settings and change the multiplier for the timing between enemy spawns, Enemy Spawn Rate. The default is 1. This value determines how frequently enemies respawn. A lower value will increase enemy respawn timers, whereas a higher value will cause enemies to respawn more quickly than normal.

Can I make it so that refrigerators preserve food forever?
Yes, you can even do that! In the World settings you can change Refrigeration Effectiveness and use the dropdown menu to change it from the default “Normal” to “No Spoiling when Refrigerated”.

Can I change friendly fire?
You can even completely disable it if you like. Or crank it up 3 times higher than normal for some janky totally not balanced PvP action!

Friendly fire damage is determined by percentage. Scroll down to Player settings and use the dropdown menu to select a percentage from between 0%, being no friendly fire damage, to 300%, meaning whatever weapon you use will do 300% the usual amount of damage to your fellow scientists. The normal value is typically quite safe for co-operative play.



Can I change the weather events?
You can turn off weather events in the World settings menu via a dropdown menu. You can also change their frequency of occurrence if you want more or less weather than usual.

There are also ways to cancel certain weather events in game if you activate their related device, which is integrated somewhere into the Facility.

If you’re a new player and don’t know what weather is and are wondering how there is weather inside a Facility, hey, don’t worry about it, you’ll find out soon enough.

Can I build without limits?
There is a setting you can change to allow for free range building. In World settings, we have a Structural Support Limit setting which you can turn down to 0 to allow you to stack structures as much as you like instead of capping at a specific height or amount of structural support! In 1.0, we will also have the option to turn off bridge limits, allowing you to bridge eternally…


We also have buildable cubicles on the way. You heard it here first.

Can I adjust the Day Night Cycle?
By scrolling to World settings you can toggle the Day Night Cycle to Always Day or Always Night. Most things still operate as though day and night are occurring, but you won’t get lights out if you select Always Day, for example. You can also try an Always Night adventure, if you’re a little freak like that. You can always chicken out and change it later if you need.

You can also disable Power Sockets Off At Night if you don’t like power going out at night. This is another one of those “We don’t recommend it, but we won’t stop you” sort of things.

Can I change how base raids work?
You can turn off the enemy's ability to damage all deployables in Enemy settings using the Enemy Damage to Deployables multiplier. Setting this multiplier to 0 will prevent enemies from being able to damage any deployables you have placed.



Can I manually edit the sandbox settings file? What about dedicated servers?
You can edit the SandboxSettings.ini file directly if you prefer. Be aware, we do not typically recommend this for anyone aside from advanced users. You can find a guide here. Edit at your own risk and read the guide before doing so!

[hr][/hr]

And of course, there are loads of other things you can tweak in the Sandbox Settings that we didn’t touch on here. Check out Sandbox Settings if you’re interested and make the GATE Cascade Research Facility your own!

[color]Onward -- to science.[/color]

[h2]Join the Scientific Community![/h2]

• Discord
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[h3]You can also join the Research Division today on Steam![/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/427410/Abiotic_Factor/

[h5][color]Greetings, esteemed colleagues![/color][/h5]
What would science be without robotics? Thankfully, due to our esteemed artistic colleagues, we don't have to wonder!

Waterbot by synchrojay on Steam

Lego Defensebot by mleon on Discord

Best Boi by Robyn on Discord

Defensebot by DeathWolf on Steam

The Occurrence by LostAlyx on Reddit

Bot by Dolt1372 on Steam

Mini Bot by stradorious on Discord

Bots by Blackraven鸦 on Discord

Thank you all for joining us for this thrilling robotics presentation. It's amazing to see how far science has come thanks to all of you amazing minds at the GATE Cascade Research Facility!

Until next Peer Review...

[color]Onward -- to science.[/color]

[h2]Join the Scientific Community![/h2]

• Discord
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[h3]Join the Research Division Today![/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/427410/Abiotic_Factor/

[h5][color]Greetings, esteemed colleagues![/color][/h5]

For today’s Status Report we’re doing a bit of Home World Q&A! So many questions, so little time. Would you like to learn (and see) more about Home Worlds? Splendid.

Right this way.


[h2]Home Worlds FAQ[/h2]

[h3]What is a Home World?[/h3]
Home Worlds are portal worlds focused on giving you a place to live your cozy scientist life, away from the hustle and bustle of the GATE Cascade Research Facility! You can use this space (as little or as much as you’d like) in the same way you’d use any other base building location in any other portal world. You can craft, cook and grow plants, and time will pass as usual within this space. Speaking of space…

[h3]Do Home Worlds have a lot of building space?[/h3]
Home Worlds will always feature a good amount of open space for base-building. While it will vary from world to world, most will have at least one location we consider “the building spot.” But knowing you folks, we’re underestimating exactly where you can manage to cram in a refrigerator.


[h3]Do Home Worlds contain furniture and other items?[/h3]
Home Worlds will sometimes contain their own unique furniture which you can package up and bring back to the facility, if you’d like! There won’t be any weapons or “useful” items in these places. Unless you consider a different fish variant to be useful. Which you might.

And more to the point, you can bring your own furniture IN, creating and setting up whatever you want, just as you can in other Portal Worlds.

[h3]How do I get a Home World?[/h3]
For now we’ll just have one Home World that will be available on 1.0 launch, and that is the Torii Home World, which can be found as part of the Supporter’s Edition. We’d like to remind all scientists that early access scientists are receiving that entire package free of charge, so at this moment, you don’t have to do anything to get it if you’re already playing! Scientists reading this later (hello future scientist!) may be required to purchase the Supporter’s Edition to access the Torii Home World.


[h3]Wow, that’s a very pretty lake, why isn’t the rest of the game this good looking?[/h3]
how about you shut u–

[h3]What kind of content will I miss if I don’t have any Home Worlds?[/h3]
Out of respect to the scientists who may not have these worlds in the future, we’ve set a few rules for these Home Worlds.

First, if the host owns the Home World (e.g. Supporter’s Edition in this example) then everyone who joins their server will have access to that location and everything within it.

Secondly, these Home Worlds are meant as purely cozy and/or cosmetic spaces to set up your base / farm / art gallery – or whatever you want to use them for. They don’t feature new NPCs or lore. They may feature a meaningful lore location (like Torii) or simply exist as part of one, but that’s about it. These Home Worlds do not fill the same role as gameplay portal worlds which feature story, enemies and other loot.

[h3]How will I access a Home World?[/h3]
The Office Plaza is the hub of early Facility life and one of the most accessible locations for our early game scientists. In 1.0, you’ll find a new teleportation hub has opened up in one of the plaza wings. This gives you access to these locations rather early, if you want to use them.


You can also set up your own portal system to connect to your Home World as well for added convenience.

[h3]Do Home Worlds reset like normal portal worlds?[/h3]
Yes, Home Worlds will reset in accordance with normal portal world rules and their (few) contents will restock. As with any Portal World and base building, the same rules apply to Home Worlds.

[h3]Can traveling traders visit my base in a Home World?[/h3]
They can! It’s a little unnerving the first time but, you know, the more the merrier.

[h3]Can my base be assaulted by enemies in Home Worlds?[/h3]
Home Worlds are peaceful places, but they are still Portal Worlds. In the interest of fairness (and because we can’t control the wild nature of portals!) they will follow all of the same rules as any other Portal World.

[h3]Are there cosmetics tied to this Home World?[/h3]
Just as the Supporter’s Edition is sort of a bundle of Home World, cosmetics and such, we expect future Home Worlds to follow suit on this. Heck, there might even be a suit or two - someday.

[h3]Do Home Worlds work on Dedicated Servers?[/h3]
Yes! Dedicated Servers will simply base the available Home Worlds on the ownership of the Admin scientists. This means server owners will be able to “approve” their Home Worlds for use on the server. As you can see, we’re not being too shy about keeping Home Worlds pretty available. We think it’s more fun this way.

[h3]Can I have more than one Home World?[/h3]
Sure! As you can see, the GATE staff have built quite a few potential portals! Will they all get filled up over time? Maybe. Portals to the Home Worlds you have acquired will be activated in the Office Plaza teleportation hub automatically, as long as the host scientist has it.

[h3]Are Home Worlds limited time?[/h3]
Heck no. Like all the content we’ve added thus far, we aren’t really super interested in gating it by time or anything like that. We don’t have any plans to make any limited time content. We believe games should be enjoyed now, and 10 years from now.

[h3]How do I get the Supporter’s Edition? I don’t see it on the store![/h3]
If you’ve already been sciencing with us through this Early Access period, the Supporter’s Edition will be automatically teleported into your Steam Library at 1.0! After that point, it will be available on the store page as you might expect.

[h3]Does Zag have anything he wants to say about Home Worlds and their design?[/h3]
Yeah, sure. Let me hand the mic to Zag.

Thanks Criss.

We have a lot of really fun portal world ideas and some of them just don’t come up to the bar of “an entire portal world” so we thought pretty hard about how we could turn some simple, more artistic worlds into base-building spaces instead.

…

Okay, are most of them gone? Good.

Look, it’s really simple guys. Sometimes if you don’t let artists stretch their legs a bit and make some pretty portal worlds once in a while they start to gnaw on their cages and bite you when you try to feed them.

So, problem solved.
-Z

Uhh, thanks Zag, that’s um, very humane of you. … Ahem.

Thanks for coming along with us as we learn about Home Worlds! We’d love your thoughts on what you might want to see in a Home World, what Home Worlds you might want to see in the future and what you think you’d use it for!

And with that, we are heads down as we sprint LIKE THE WIND into our impending 1.0 launch on Steam, Xbox and Playstation! And have no fear, 1.0 may be the end of the main story, but we’ve got a feeling this is not the end of the road. Maybe we’ll be enslaved to Abiotic Factor forever. There are worse fates, we suppose.

See you again soon.

[color]Onward -- to science.[/color]

[h2]Join the Scientific Community![/h2]

• Discord
• Newsletter
• YouTube
• Bluesky
• Twitter

[h3]You can also join the Research Division today on Steam![/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/427410/Abiotic_Factor/