Consolidated Patch Notes v0.2.1746.8073

We've passed a big milestone! v0.1 to v0.2 this week, given our major engine upgrade. Performance and fixes are the key of this week.

Known Issue with IC's

While not a regular section in our patch notes, we've got a major issue with IC's that is still awaiting a fix. There is an issue with some IC programs that can cause the registers and aliases to get mixed up, which can have unreliable results depending on how your program is structured.
If you are having problems with an IC program, and are unable to wait for a fix - you can resolve these issues by not using aliases and addressing registers directly. We will try get this fixed ASAP in a hotfix.

This week marks the completion of the first stage of the engine upgrade. Any major bugs caused by the switch should now be resolved, so a big thanks to everyone who was playing on the experimental branch while it was up and reported any bugs. Things should now be more-or-less back to normal, so now is probably a good time to re-iterate our patch process for all the new players who have joined us recently.



This weeks update will have a pretty significant postive impact on the game. Many users will now notice substantial framerate improvements as well as reduced stuttering. Unity 2018 will now allow us more options in the coming weeks for additional optimization and stuttering improvements as well.



Stable/Main Branch
This is the branch everyone is on by default. This is only ever updated manually, and any update on this branch will be accompanied by either a Consolidated Patch Notes post like this one. If an urgent bug shows up in the ~24 hours following a patch, we'll just update the patch note post with the details. If the fix takes longer than that we'll make a separate Hotfix Patch Notes announcement.

Beta Branch
This is where the magic happens! The build on the beta branch comes directly from our working source at the studio. If something has been committed, it'll be in the next beta branch build. An automated build happens every weekday at roughly 8AM NZST, but if we're fixing something live as we discuss it with people in Discord or in response to a Steam Community post we'll likely push an update right away. Sometimes there could be multiple updates on this branch in one day, luckily the way Steam batches changes they're pretty small.

When the beta branch does get updated, you'll see the public patch notes in the #beta-changelog channel on Discord. Some patches may not contain any public change notes though, so don't be surprised if you see a blank one! It probably just had some boring change or the addition of some new art/sounds that haven't been implemented yet.

We've slowly been increasing the "build states" for various structures in the game, to add more depth and complexity. In a sense, this helps with physical security as well in the future - removing some devices completely would require tools which you could restrict access too.

Additionally a new resource, plastic sheets, has replaced Steel and Iron sheets in some cases. These are produced from Silicon Ingots. This should ease dependency on Steel in some cases, particulary for walls. But it's going to make finding Silicon quite important.

Other balancing is occuring as well, changing the reagent quantities to create things and also how many sheets are consumed in the build state process.

• Fixed issue causing terrain to become corrupted if you left one world and created another without relaunching the game due to terrain chunk pooling (added to reduce garbage collection) not being cleared properly when you leave a world.
  
• Fixed world saves would sometimes get to a point where you could no longer place doors. This was caused by Cursor objects never correctly calculating their center position (only occurred once registered). This meant that when we fixed another bug regarding placement, this old one was exposed. This meant a final check was always occurring against one grid square in the world.
  
• Improvement chunk pooling manager for garbage collection.
  
• Fixed problem with dragging objects not displaying their icon properly.
  
• Fixed unable to deconstruct damaged pieces. This was because the new extended tooltip was failing for destroyed structures that were not correctly registering themselves as destroyed. Credit: Su-pa-Kitsune.
  
• Fixed Canisters exploding from being overpressurised had been accidentally disabled. It has been re-enabled.
  
• Fixed CircuitHousing's IsValidIndex function bounds check was incorrect. [Credit: Risu]
  
• Fixed Index lookup in IC's always returning 0 for aliases. [Credit: Risu]
  
• Added Stationpedia, an in-game help system. Default key to access is F1 (in game only). Framework has been added along with some data, note this is subject to significant change and does not contain all the information that is planned.
  
• Fixed null reference caused by player brain not being created in time for terrain generation to use it for positioning.
  
• Fixed null reference caused by failure to create global atmosphere on client in time to begin atmospheric processing. Credit: TakoMT via Steam Forums.
  

• Fixed NRE when stop server on dedicated server
  
• Fixed NRE on dedicated server
  
• Fixed Password server could become stuck in the top right of the screen when trying to drag it.
  
• Fixed ladder blueprint shows incorrect bounds.
  
• Fixed cannot connect to password protected servers. Now password window correctly passes in values, and allows connection to server. Issue was caused by a failed input box conversion between old unity version and new, which also didn't generate any errors.
  

• Fixed Control Chairs unable to fire engines. A Control Chair connected to engines should now be able to fire up engines again when driven. Clients will not be able to see the engine particles for the moment.
  
• Fixed Tutorial not able to complete due to Autolathe not having materials.
  
• Fixed Jetpack in tutorial did not start with stabilization turned on.
  
• Improvement garbage collection with terrain generation.
  
• Fixed could access buttons on simple manufacturing machines while still building them.