Stationeers News

Mostly odds-and-ends this week, with a few new quality-of-life features and fixes but mostly just building on the foundation of the game. Things like the military gear may not obviously fit into most of the game as it stands, but the less obvious things like the new character rig will greatly improve our workflow for working with characters down the line. Audio work continues, with the newest member of our team taking the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the basics of the UI and Audio system in game before moving onto some of the more challenging development areas.

Additionally, we're rapidly approaching the end of our first year in Early Access. We'll be putting together a brief video looking at what has been achieved throughout the year and what the future will bring for Stationeers. You can expect to see this in the next few weeks.


Later in development we're going to want to add more variance to characters with gear options and role-based outfits. In order to prepare for that, we've fixed a long-standing issue with the character rig, which should resolve several outstanding animation/appearance bugs, mostly affecting female characters.


We're continuing to fill the void that some players may have noticed, with the addition of interface audio to the settings screen. This work will continue over the following weeks with the mission/task UI and inventory receving some long overdue audio feedback. After that's out of the way we'll move onto some of the more technically challenging sound implementations to round out this so-far neglected aspect of Stationeers.

• Fixed Null Errors that could be encountered on load due to issues getting an invalid game install path from Steam.
  

• Added Wall Light Battery variant. This has only a data port, but takes a battery as a power source so is useful as an emergency or temporary source of power.
  
• Added Suit Storage will now recharge batteries that are put in it, including batteries inside head torches and marine helmets.
  
• Added new character rig and models. This is a visual improvement to provide a better and more consistent visual result for characters, while still using the same rig for both male and female.
  
• Added Marine Helmet, Armor, and Uniform. Constructed on the Tool Manufactory. Helmet has a battery slot, and a lamp. Armor has four internal slots for storage. Currently does nothing special this is the first pass and will be extended later.
  
• Added first pass of controller support. Currently no defaults, so you have to set your own axis definitions. Added button images for Xbox One Controller (other controller image support to come later).
  
• Added Major refresh of Localized text files. Untranslated keys are no longer included in every XML file, as missing keys now default back to english. See the #localization channel in Discord for more details.
  
• Added branches and ternary operators to the IC to complete the missing ones.
  
• Added interface audio to the settings menu.
  
  
• Improvement JumpTags can now be used as variables on the IC. The value of the variable is equal to the line number the tag is defined on.
  
• Changed Plants no longer take damage from being in an atmosphere that doesn't contain what they need to breathe. They'll still take damage incorrect temperatures, presence of toxins or lack of water, however.
  
• Updated Localization Files (Current to 10th November)
  
  
• Fixed Disk Slot on Air Conditioner and Wall Cooler allowing any item to be inserted.
  
• Fixed Re-scaled audio settings sliders to a max of 100, this being identical to what was previously the default setting of 80. If you had volumes below the previous default value they will have been scaled accordingly, so no volumes should be any different unless you were using settings above 80.
  
• Fixed issue where IC housing dropdown list entries were not cleared when removing a ProgrammableChipMotherboard from a computer, leaving them visible in the world and attached to the motherboard.
  
• Fixed slightly less shadow from helmet when looking at player shadow. Was caused by incorrect layer assignment on one of the scene directional lights.
  
• Fixed skin color not changing to correct body when wearing uniform. Now skin correct color on hands and arms while wearing uniforms.
  
• Fixed Headlamp not counted as a "light" for the purposes of the Light key and status indicator. Now all helmets with lights, and headlamp, will be togglable with this.
  
• Fixed bug where powered item status indicator would stay on when dropping an item while it was turned to on.
  
• Fixed Randomize button in Character Creation screen did not randomize all attributes. Also did some slight optimization on character creation screen. More to come with this.
  
• Fixed StationContact buttons now more clearly display whether or not they're within contactable range.
  
• Fixed issue dropping objects since yesterdays beta update introducing controller support due to it still using an old input system.
  
• Fixed DynamicCrate missing Lock interactable, causing Debug.Log spam and lowering FPS when looking at crate.
  
• Fixed a bug in which a graph with a line y=0 would prevent interaction with consoles on either side of it.
  
• Fixed Jetpack animations for directional movement not working properly due to controls refactor.
  
• Fixed Playing of interface audio, game sounds and voice notifications are now gated behind checks that your master volume and volume for that particular channel is above 0.
  
• Fixed Tooltip Opacity slider values not rounding correctly.
  
• Fixed a big frame counter running in duplicate and reduced more memory allocation.
  
• Fixed Volume scale readjusted to now bottom out at -40db instead of -80db, making more of the slider range useful.
  
• Fixed a item kit composite floor grating bug where the kit claimed there were five options rather than the actual four.
  
• Fixed Game now more gracefully handles instances where Steam isn't running, displaying a prompt rather than just a wall of log error text.
  
• Fixed invalid construction option entries on ItemKitBasket and ItemKitWallIron (Thanks supakadai & Sli in Discord).
  

It's been a quiet week or so and with some of the team taking extended breaks we were fairly light on the ground - but we made some good progress on the trading mechanic and have a few other surprises.


One thing we've been working towards through early access is a way to give the end-game further meaning. You've mined everything valuable around your starting area. You've built an impressive base with all the requirements for survival comfortably taken care of. You've built redundancy and automation using all the tools at your disposal - what is there to do next? We've got several ideas for expanding on late game life, and Interstellar Communication touches on several of them.

As described several updates ago, we're working towards what we've dubbed the 'Trader Mechanic', but the final implementation will actually support far more than that.

In creative mode you can now spawn in construction kits for Satellite Dishes and a Communications Motherboard. A Communications Computer will display all of the contacts that could be reached by all Satellite Dishes on its network, and the signal strength to each. You can adjust the angle of your Satellite Dish in order to improve the signal to available contacts or find new ones. In time, you'll be able to use logic to streamline this process like on all the other devices in the game.

The next steps we'll be implementing will allow you to, given a sufficiently strong signal, initiate contact. This may just be for information (ie. reports from weather satellites) or to accept trade offers or visitors assuming you have a powered, connected and accessible landing pad (also currently available in Creative Mode).

As with all our new features, portions of the complete feature may be accessible while it is still a work in progress. We encourage you to try it out, report bugs and let us know what you think on Discord!





To demonstrate some of the flexibility of how some of the systems in Stationeers interact, we'd like to introduce the newest member of the botanist/atmospherics engineer toolkit - the Alien Mushroom. This functions in much the same way as existing plants, however instead of breathing in Carbon Dioxide and exhaling Oxygen, these will inhale Nitrous Oxide and exhale Nitrogen and Oxygen. This serves as a proof of concept for allowing us to easily change the gas mixtures inhaled and exhaled by plants, for which the next step will be to expose these values to mods.



As promised, Rocket has continued to expand the Stationpedia to now include information on Alloys, and applied a few usability improvements as well. The color scheme has been changed again to improve the readibility of some elements, but may still be subject to change based on peoples feedback. It will also now automatically appear when beginning the tutorial or your first game. For those who have been asking about how to translate this, once more of the guide is complete we'll be making it available through the localization system so you'll be able to help translate it into your preferred language.

• Added Alien Mushrooms. Alien Mushrooms breathes in Nitrous Oxide and breathes out Nitrogen and Oxygen. This is a first pass for plants breathing custom gas mixes.
  
• Added Alloy information and list to Stationpedia.
  
• Added Tutorial and new game Stationpedia will now popup with opacity set to none by default, to make it easiest to read it.
  
• Added second pass on Satellite Dish. Vertical and Horizontal can be set, in a similar way to the Solar Panel.
  
• Added first components of the systems supporting Interstellar Communication to creative mode.
  
• Added RatioNitrousOxide LogicType to logic-enabled atmospheric devices.
  
• Added Door Setting variable can now be set by Logic.
  
  
• Changed approximate checks on programmable chip from using |a - b| < e*max(|a|,|b|) to |a - b| < max(e*max(|a|,|b|), float.epsilon
• 8) to avoid it wigging out when a or b are near 0.
  
• Changed GraphDisplay so that graph runs from left to right, and reduced wasted space on the plot by removing above/below the x-axis if no line is plotted there
  
• Tweaked and adjusted the layouts of the Settings screens so they're easier to read.
  
• Updated text input fields to now animate while hovering over them.
  
• Improved server messages. Server messages (shutdown notifications, server notices etc) now show up in the chat window as well.
  
  
• Fixed Doors not reset Setting to new Open state, so it assumed actions must be taken (Credit: Risu)
  
• Fixed Player State Window (top right) now displays temperature as "not a number"(NaN) when in a vacuum.
  
• Fixed Player State Window color values not being initialized, and only updating correctly on first change.
  
• Fixed Aliases being cleared on reset for IC Chips (Credit: Risu)
  
• Fixed Beta bug where NaN was displayed when below 0 celcius, not invalid temperature. Now displays Nil (localizable) correctly for invalid temperature, instead of 0 which it displayed previously.
  
• Fixed syntax highlighting bug in programmable chip editor that would cause things like `# O=k` to display tags, and `# 0=kelvin` to not be coloured correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug where players could use RTF markup to highlight their own code.
  
• Fixed the incorrect display on the computer monitor of IC source code.
  
• Fixed Rotated filter slots on the large gas filter so their label is visible.
  
• Fixed NullReference on generating terrain while flying faster than it could generate.
  
• Fixed a couple of null reference exceptions caused by the interim commit of the trading mechanics.
  
• Fixed Stationpedia window was not correctly initializing centered.
  
• Fixed an animation delay when hovering certain buttons in menus.
  
• Fixed occasional error for some players when populating Stationpedia data resulting in none of the text being loaded for any language. Will now display an error and continue loading normally.
  
• Fixed reagent coloring in help system was a dark purple that was nearly always hard to read. Has been replaced with magenta to help with reading.
  
• Fixed two matching filters show up as a warning (Credit: Risu).
  
• Fixed visual blueprint missing for Portable Solar.
  
• Fixed NitrousOxide filters were removing Nitrous Oxide from the input pipe correctly, but would add Water to the output instead of Nitrous Oxide.
  
• Fixed tutorial required player to keep Stationpedia window open at all times during microwave task. Now player only needs to open it, and if they want to have it closed during the rest of the task they can.
  
• Fixed WallCooler being an amazing heater in Europa. WallCooler efficiency drops as the temperature difference becomes too large. If the waste network becomes 100 degrees warmer than input, efficiency begins to drop until zero at 200 degrees.
  

Immediately following last weeks patch a few nasty issues surfaced as a result of the engine migration, but they've been tackled and we're able to refocus on the trading mechanic. The new UI capabilities we have thanks to the addition of the Stationpedia will be a big part of that, so keep an eye on the beta branch for the latest on our works in progress!

It's only been a few days since our last hotfix, so not a massively dramatic update this week - however there is one very important things to note.

CAUTION: Back in September a change had the unintended result of canisters no longer taking damage when over-pressurized. This update includes a fix for that.

Besides that, we got a lot of fixes in for non-critical-but-annoying bugs, some that have been around for a while. The save process has been made much more robust, with more checking done when saving to ensure things are working and better error reporting when it doesn't. It also won't overwrite files if there are any problems with the save process.

Dedicated server is still a work in progress, but some of the outstanding issues with Integrated Circuits and Atmospherics (specifically, welder gas tanks) on dedicated server have been resolved. The remaining major bug relating to vanishing items on dedicated is proving more of a challenge, so if you happen to have a reliable set of steps and a world save to reproduce this issue we'd love to hear from you on Discord!


And surely not the last! We've expanded the tutorial to include build states for machines. Expect it to be expanded further in the future to integrate the new help system.


We've implemented an entirely new in-game help system - Introducing the Stationpedia! It can be accessed using the F1 key and is a nice simple way to view game information without having to alt-tab. You can click on most objects to link through to other ones for all raw materials, gases, crafting kits, structures, their recipes and the values they have that are exposed to logic. This is definitely not an exhaustive list and we'll constantly expand on this as we (and you) think of more data to add. The window can be resized, and there's an icon in the top right corner that will let you toggle transparency.

Added game version now stored with IC Source Code to help track down issues and in case we need to do special version handling later.
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.
Added opacity toggle and help buttons to tutorial window.
Added deconstruction information, similar to construction tooltip. When a tool is in your hand, and Extended Tooltips is enabled, you will receive information on what tool is required (if any) to deconstruct the structure you are looking at. To disable this, turn off Extended Tooltips in the settings menu. This will help when deconstructing items as it tells you what tool to use.
Added Operate and Logic modes to all doors. When set in Operate mode (0; the default) the door works normally. When set to Logic mode (1), using the doors buttons will ignore open/close requests and change the "setting" variable, depending on the open state. If the player presses the button and the door is open, the setting will be set to 0. If the door is close, the setting will be set to 1. This allows you to manually control doors using it's buttons, instead of using the doors internal operation.
Added 'Mature' logic slot type. Will return 1 if the plant growing in the tracked slot is in a growth state flagged as 'Mature', 0 if not.
Added MaxQuantity as a LogicSlotType. You can now read both the Quantity and MaxQuantity of a slot for easy Diode displays!
Added Nitrous Oxide to Silver and Lead ore output.
Added Reagent, Gas, and much more information to Stationpedia. Now detailed information is available for this. For example, the Reagent and Gas pages will tell you what objects the reagent/gas is found in.
Added Autosave support for new worlds. If you don't have a current save slot set (by saving the world manually) and your autosave timer is reached, a new save slot will be created.

Improved garbage collection during terrain generation by pooling and reusing terrain chunks through the implementation of a 'Terrain Pool Manager'.
Improved tutorial significantly. Integrated it with the Stationpedia, so that players can click on highlights to get taken to more information.
Removed Tablet from tutorial. Instead tutorial covers recipes within the Stationpedia.
Changed WaterFilter in starting equipment to a ItemKitSensor to replace the one removed a couple of days ago. Water filter no longer required due to a water canister being included with the portable hydroponics added to the starting gear several weeks back.
Changed dedicated server. ClearAllInterval now treats zero or negative values as 'don't run ClearAll automatically'.

Fixed inability to create new entries in the code library due to the code input window obscuring the text input window.
Fixed NRE on dedicated server regarding elevator shafts.
Fixed IC Operations BDNSAL, BDSEAL, BEQAL, BGEZAL, BGTZAL, BLEZAL, BLTZAL and BNEAL branching to the incorrect line. [Credit: Risu]
Fixed the 'Setting' value on CircuitHousing not persisting through save/load due to CircuitHousingSaveData being a child of StructureSaveData instead of LogicBaseSaveData. [Credit: Risu]
Fixed IC housing losing device references on load on dedicated servers.
Fixed Logic Dials visual position not being updated on load. [Credit: Risu]
Fixed Automated Hydroponics not being paintable. It can now be painted like the other hydroponics structures.
Fixed welders not working on dedicated.
Fixed changing Autosave settings while the game is running not applying any changes. Autosave can now be disabled or have the interval changed after you start your game.
Fixed bug with chunk pool could not be reused.
Fixed problem where if the save process failed for any reason, you would not be able to try save your world again until you relaunched the game. You will be notified in the console if a save fails.
Fixed problem where incomplete saves may still overwrite existing ones. Now, as it saves each file of a world save they'll be given a temp_ prefix. If all the parts save completely, they'll replace the existing save files. This does not affect the contents of the backups folder.
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.
Fixed problem with dragged 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]
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 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.
Fixed could access buttons on simple manufacturing machines while still building them.

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.
  

For the first time in many months, we're not doing a weekly update! Before anyone posts about the project being abandoned, let's talk though the good news about why that is!



Most importantly, and most significantly, we are making a major upgrade in the engine. We have made the game using Unity. We locked the unity version a month or so out from our initial launch which means we haven't continued to upgrade the engine since then. Why is this? Well, engine version changes can cause a lot of headaches. While they do contain lots of bugfixes (good!) they often necessitate changes in how things work (bad!).

There was also a significant change in pricing for Unity which was going to have some pretty huge ramification for the cost of our project. This is a very niche title, that's likely to run very close to only break even. We have to buy licenses for not only the people developing the game, but even our build servers! So it adds up pretty quick.

In the end, the benefits of this project being like others in our studio (which had moved to Unity 2018), and the fixes and new features of 2018, meant that we needed to upgrade. And so we have. Heightmare did the initial test, porting over and changing what was needed. Then we started migrating all the team, and our build servers. We've got all the hard parts of that working to the point some in the community are actually testing versions of the game running in the updated engine. Now we're just finishing the upgrades to our automated build and deployment system so it works with the new Unity version.

What are the results? Well, quite staggering really. Load times for a community provided large map were reduced from 5-10 minutes to seconds. There are other areas we'll have significant improvements in that will be more appreciable over time.



If you've played RimWorld, you know how well trading can factor into to these kinds of game. So we wanted to start looking at what trading could look like in Stationeers. A form of trading is also key in our inspiration, SS13, so we felt it was a necessary component before we could replicate round-based play of Stationeers as well.



The initial groundwork has been done, the models have been made, which means we can begin the implementation in the coming weeks. It will involve placing down a landing pad. Placing landing "beacons" which would guide AI aircraft in, and then placing a communications relay which allows you to talk to these traders. You need to make sure the path you set is clear, or the AI craft will crash and not want to trade.



Initially it will just be trading, once that works out, we'll look at how the mission system (already implemented) can be extended to include people coming in via these ships. Perhaps you need to escort a scientist out to a remote area, or find someone lost and then recover them to a rescue ship, and so on.







The medical system seems very basic. You get hurt, you take a pill. The reality is the system behind it is actually well fleshed out - it's just the "healing" that is simplified. You have organs, they take damage. So we want to expand this and surgery is seen as a key component.



It's a good chance for to examine: how do we get key mechanics into the game? Well, simply put - we play games! For me, SS13 in particular Paradise Station has been a surgery system I really enjoy. I play on that server as a Surgeon often; so I'm very familiar with how fun it can be. We discuss those ideas in an open forum, and often break out to a whiteboard to discuss the implementation. Then it gets captured on an internal intranet, tasks get assigned, and the work begins in earnest.



When will we see this in? Good question! The answer is really "it depends". Really what affects it most is how stable the build is, how well the engine upgrade has gone, and how bad stuttering is in the game.

Some weeks, people complain about us having new content coming when there are still bugs - assuming this new content takes people away from fixing bugs. That's seldom the case, we prioritize bugfixing over new features. New features and content get implemented because: the programmer doing it needs a break (something fun), implementing it takes a very short amount of time (variations of existing things can take only 10-30mins to implement), others are working on core aspects of the game so the programmer isn't able to do bugfixes till they're finished.

We're pretty upbeat actually! The project is in a good place, it's fun for us to add new things because we've ended up refactoring most of the really troublesome things. We are left with a few hard ones: such as stuttering and whether we completely replace Unity's networking API with our own solution. We also have big design decisions to make, some community suggested such as how much more "science" we model with things like pressure and temperature.



What is most fun, at least for me, is going into the game and adding new stuff and then seeing people play with it. And with a good foundation, we're able to do that much easier. We got some rough feedback early in the project, and updates were a lot slower. But that's just because we took on the biggest tasks first. And that's a tough part of early access, consumers aren't really ever exposed to these realities and as a developer: you can be rewarded for having a short time "more content" focus rather than a long term "better architecture" approach.

Please consider leaving a review on the project! It's really good to get feedback and review score makes a tremendous difference. Whatever review you leave but especially if it is not recommended, please leave some constructive thoughts. There is, for example, a recent negative review saying that the game doesn't run on Linux for them. We think that's a bit unfair, as the game isn't listed as supporting Linux. We see significant drops in sales based on even a few negative reviews. Some people do change their reviews, if they listed specific things and we go in and address them

So that is a pretty good overview of where we are at, and where we are heading for the next few weeks and months. Please let us know your thoughts, and get involved on the forums and discord!