Project Clinic
A month ago we started our Vulcan playthrough and we've been busy playing ever since. We've talked about our processes before but it's worth talking about again as it is core to how we make games at Rocketwerkz. This kind of play session is not a traditional development play test but rather us truly playing. Sure, we note our issues and ideas down but our goal is to actually just play the game like a normal player.
We played on the same server the whole time, but lived separately in our own independent bases. At points when we started to hit performance problems we identified the issues and increased performance significantly. We'll go over them in detail later in the post, but these changes were profound and allowed us to have a server with multiple, large, complex bases while still getting excellent performance.
As time went on in these play sessions, we start to divide our time more between development and playing. We started to tidy up a lot of what we had been adding and working on the more complex systems that we wanted to tackle. Generally in these final few weeks we end up with: 1/3 of our day spent playing, 1/3 to do small task and fix small issues, and 1/3 used to fix large issues or work on big changes.
A New Way of Playing
Before we started our play session we decided that we wanted to try all making our own, separate, bases. To do this we added what we call "Round Robin" start. This works by spreading the players across all the spawn points on the map. If there's a free spot it will put a new player there before it starts to double up.
Along with this new way of spawning we added "Community" Start conditions which provide each new player with their own set of full supplies in a lander, which allows a game to be made up of a collection of bases, instead of a single one.
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Respawn Overhaul
With this spread out base play style, when a player died, it could take other players a long time to prepare and make a trip across the rough dangerous Vulcan terrain. This helped us identify some issues around the process of dying, being dead and the few ways of respawning.
[h3]Known Issue: Desync for some players[/h3]
We have managed to identify long-running issues with a "desync spiral" that is experienced by some players, even when not using SteamP2P. Players get stuck in a state where they are severely behind in updates. This tends to occur where a user has a high-ping to the server, and the bases (or network updates) become large. We are producing a new version of RakNet (which we have revamped into "RocketNet") which addresses these issues. It was not ready in time for this update, but we expect to have progress in the new year.
[h2]Body Bags[/h2]
Dead player bodies can have a big effect on performance and are prone to bugs, both while lying on the ground and while being dragged. Player bodies will now more quickly decay, and when they do they will enter a body bag, and their belongings will be placed in a large cardboard box.
Since body bags now exist as a transitory representation of the players state, reconnecting to an active server, and finding yourself dead is now possible. Previously, corpses would explode into dropped items, and players would reconnect with the server no longer having a reference to their old self, and they would just respawn in a fresh drop pod. The new bodybag method should give you a better insight into how a server progressed, potentially how and where you died, and add the ability for someone to try and resurrect you.
Cryotubes can be used to re-life rag-dolled players or players in body bags. The cryotube's tool tip has been expanded significantly to represent the many aspects of a characters life state, and explain how to resurrect them. If you have extra body bags laying around, and the players have respawned, or left the server, you can deconstruct them with an angle grinder.
[h2]Respawn UX[/h2]
We've redone the UI and UX for respawning to better convey what your state is, and what it means to respawn. Life resource usage, and what is given on re spawn changes depending on your difficulty and starting conditions, so keep that in mind when playing with different settings.
[h2]New Respawn Kits[/h2]
When respawning you will now come down in a Lander Capsule, and you'll always at least start with an emergency suit, as the previous naked landings on stationeers difficulty didnt lead to any possible recovery on many planets.
[h2]Respawn Stress[/h2]
Respawning will give you a difficulty settings dependent debuff. Respawning will temporarily affect your food and water consumption speed, tool usage speed, as well as give a price penalty when buying and selling to traders.
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Performance Improvements
This update includes a major round of performance optimizations across both clients and dedicated servers. We have reduced unnecessary terrain generation, significantly cut client-side physics and animation overhead, and moved many high-frequency devices to pooled audio and lightweight animation components. Terrain meshing on dedicated servers has been heavily optimised, and dynamic items outside render range no longer run full physics on clients. Save times have also been dramatically reduced by optimising compression. Together, these changes deliver much smoother gameplay, especially in busy bases and multiplayer sessions.
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New Stuff
[h2]Super-Heavy Cables[/h2]
The new super heavy cable has a maximum wattage of 500kW and has long variants of three, five and ten to allow for easy building of long powerful trunk lines.
[h2]500kW Fuse[/h2]
A new 500kW fuse has been added to accompany this cable.
[h2]Landing Pad Tank Connector[/h2]
Liquid and Gas Landing Pad Tank Connectors let you directly pump to and from portable tanks, making early gas trading easier.
[h2]Construction Safety Equipment[/h2]
These items allow you to dress your under-construction areas and leave warning signs for other players to tread carefully.
[h2]Heal Pill[/h2]
The heal pill will only heal you partially and to heal fully you need to use a cryotube. Depending on what damage you have taken you may still end up dying unless you can make it to a Cryotube.
[h2]No More Data Disk[/h2]
Console displays no longer have a data disk slot to set configuration. This has long been confusing, and results in more complex objects, synchronization, and geometry. Now the consoles have a screw, like logic devices that, when used with a screwdriver, will toggle between configuration and operating mode.
[h2]New Food[/h2]
[h3]Cheese Wedge[/h3]
A new type of food only available via trading is Cheese Wedges. This can be used to create the other new food the Burger!
[h3]Burger[/h3]
A new high-tier food made from cheese, tomato, flour, egg, and soy oil. Burgers can be eaten faster than other premium foods, can be stored in Burger Boxes to slow decay, and eaten directly from the box. Some traders will buy properly packaged burgers.
[h2]Super Large Direct Heat Exchangers[/h2]
These Super Large Direct Heat Exchangers are the same as their smaller counterparts but with much larger surface area meaning they can transfer more heat.
[h2]Loader[/h2]
The Loader will take objects from its left slot and put them in the available slots of the object inserted in the right slot. The slots will be filled in order from first to last. If no available slot is found, the left slot object will be ejected. The right slot object will auto eject once full or if the level is pulled.
[h2]Large Cardboard Box[/h2]
A new larger cardboard box has 10 slots, four more than it's smaller version. Both cardboard boxes can now be painted and are useful for base inventory management.
[h2]1x3 In-line Tanks[/h2]
New 1x3 Liquid and Gas in line tanks with a volume of 360L of have been added making it easier to build up the overall volume of a pipe network.
[h2]Engines[/h2]
These new engines can be got from one of the Exotics Traders. The have a significantly higher fuel throughput and thrust output while having a small mass increase.
[h2]Steel Frames[/h2]
Steel frames aren't new but their new build state is. You can now continue to construct of a steel frame into a new build state using plastic sheets and a screwdriver. The end result is a smooth finish. Where you may have previously used multiple walls over the top of your frames for aesthetic reasons you might now choose to simply finish the construction of the frame instead.
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Inventory
A new 'sort' button has been added to inventory windows. This button will sort all items, primarily alphabetically and secondarily by quantity. This will also consolidate any stackable items, such as ores. Dedicated slots will be ignored (such as canister, battery, etc.). The only exception to this is ore slots.
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Tooltips
Tooltips are one of the primary ways that information is conveyed in the game and we're always striving to improve and add tooltips wherever we can. This patch contains a load of tooltip improvements. As well as adding new or more useful tooltips to a bunch of devices we've also added better tooltips for Status Icons, and Inventory window buttons.
[h2]Status Icon Tooltips[/h2]
Status icons can now have dynamic tooltips that give you specific information about why you are seeing it, and what effects it might be having. For instance, with the new respawn stress debuff you can see exactly what stats are effected. We will continue to expand the tooltip on more of these icons in future updates.
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Trader Changes
We have made extensive backend balance improvements to traders to deliver a smoother and more reliable trading experience when interacting with them and completing trades. Certain traders now spawn only in specific slots, Tier 3 Hydroponics traders will always stock Dargaferns, Tier 3 traders carry more bulk goods, and Tier 1 traders carry less. Landing pads are now fully insulated instead of partially insulated.
[h2]New Trader Slots[/h2]
We have added two dedicated trader slots for special traders so they no longer replace regular traders, giving you more options available at any given time.
[h3]Exotics Trader Slot[/h3]
This slot is dedicated to the Genetics Trader and the Rare Items Trader.
The Genetics Trader sells Darga Ferns, genetically modified plants, thermogenic plants, and fertilised eggs.
The Rare Items Trader sells non-craftable items including heavy rocket engines, cosmetic fuselage pieces, and catalytic filters.
[h3]Utility Trader Slot[/h3]
This slot is used for special utility traders and flavour traders such as the Food, Hardware, Consumable, and Appliance traders.
We have also fixed several multiplayer trader UI issues that previously made trading in multiplayer frustrating.
[h3]Contact Fuzziness[/h3]
We've removed the fuzziness that was being applied to the contacts. While originally an intentional feature to make finding contacts via logic more difficult, its removal makes programing trader contacting more straight forward.
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Rocket Changes
Rocket fuselage pieces can now be swapped between variants without deconstructing the entire rocket. The rocket UI is now faster and more reliable on clients, matching server behaviour and fixing multiple control issues. Space ore yields have been increased, while deep mining yields have been rebalanced to match.
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Showers
Showers can now boost your Hygiene level to 150% letting you stay cleaner for longer with the added benefit of having a movement speed bonus of 5% while your hygiene is over 100%.
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Vulcan
Our play session has been on Vulcan, so it got a little love. Vulcan now has two types of storms, the regular ash storm as well as the new solar storm. Some work was done on it's space map, including the addition of Janus which contains various gas cloud nodes.
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Logic
We are continuing to put a heavy focus onto expanding out logic systems in the game. Several new logic values and outputs have been added to expand automation and control options. Expect more of this to continue with future updates. We will be expanding the "internal stack" available on other devices to allow even more extensive automation.
The
TotalMoles logic variable on the gas sensor now returns the total molar quantity for the grid square it is in. The occupancy sensor now exposes a stack containing occupant entities and their first-level slot data, allowing logic systems to inspect what occupants are wearing, such as checking for EVA suits.
A new
NextWeatherHash logic type has been added to the weather station, allowing detection of upcoming storm types. New
FreeSlots and
TotalSlots LogicSlotTypes have also been added, enabling better control of objects when using the Loader or Unloader.
The Vending Machine now has
TargetSlotIndex which will tell you the currently selected index, and
TargetPrefabHash will tell you the selected prefab hash.
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QOL
[h2]Repair[/h2]
We're slowly adding more ways to repair your base so you can avoid having to completely reconstruct parts as they become destroyed.
Large Tanks, Cutes, and Large Batteries can now all be repaired in place using various tools and materials. This information is available in the tooltip when looking at them.
[h2]LED Consoles[/h2]
LED consoles displays will now correctly orient their displays to always be up to be in line with the other displays.
[h2]Quick Fire Quality of Life[/h2]
Gas sensors are now paintable
Hard Suit Backpack now have 20 slots
Atmos Analyser Cartridge now shows temperature value of liquids.
The large fridge now has a light in it
Stationpedia pages for seeds and plants now link back and forth between them
Chargable items and devices now display their total power capacity in the Stationpedia
Added special info-boxes to Stationpedia for Cryotube and devices that will suspend metabolism.
Large Wind Turbines now rotate to point into the wind
The critical warning for waste tanks has been changed from 100% to 95% to avoid complete panic
Changed the trigger collider of the Grow Light so it now lights an equal amount in each axis.
Wall pressure is now calculated using the combined max pressure of all structures on a face, instead of per-wall deltas. This prevents weak walls from failing when supported by stronger walls on the same face. Note: this only affects walls that are
back to back.
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HARM Suit Changes
The harm suit had a bunch of balance changes to make it perform better in the super hot environments of Vulcan and Venus. The coolant will now heat up by ~1 degree per day instead of ~10 degrees per day. It also has a nice new helmet interior!
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Notable Fixes
Dedicated servers now correctly save when the last player leaves, using a more reliable event-based trigger.
We also fixed a client respawn desync that could cause dropped items to appear at the respawn point due to missed position updates.
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Localization
A new comprehensive Japanese translation has been provided by community member
@JouNin.
We have also pulled in updated French, Russian, and Simplified Chinese translations from the community
GitHub.
Thanks to
@JouNin,
@CedricDx,
@AlexusYT, and
@MRythm for their continued support.
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Recent Community Standouts
Check out SemlerPDX's newest amazing base tour video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKzuIKBV3Q
Check out Cows are evil's beautiful modded base in his latest Europa playthough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n3GnRwagtM
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Update Wallpaper
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Your support makes these updates possible
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/2624/Stationeers_Complete_the_Set/
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[h2]Change Log 0.2.6085.26682[/h2]
Due to Steams character limit, we cannot include the patch logs for this update.
Please find them in this pastebin.
