Stormworks: Build and Rescue News

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is update week, and we have a bunch of fixes and improvements in this release!

The headline item is a new feature for Industrial Frontier DLC owners! In the third and final addition of new animals, we bring the gila monster and the tortoise as new animals that roam the arid desert.

These sweet and gentle beasts are non aggressive reptiles that live on the Meier Isles. They are shy wild animals, and will move away if you disturb them. In real life, the gila is venomous and tortoises can bite, and both carry diseases, so don't mess with them in the wild, but in Stormworks, they are chill.

Fixes and improvements include a bunch of useful stuff. We have fixed an issue with aerodynamics where we found a tiny typo that slightly changed how aero forces were applied to vehicles. This small offset probably won't be noticable except for very small vehicles with large aerodynamic forces such as missiles.



Other fixes include improvements to the rockets when fired while moving, a performance fix related to missions spawning in the wrong place, and others. Please see the patch notes below for details.

This is the last creature update we have planned, and we have no further plans to add new animals to the game at the moment.

In other news, we are on the final push for the new DLC and have started work on a trailer. We hope to launch this as an announcement trailer when we announce this new DLC, and we may do a developer questions and answers session at the same time. We will set up a Steam event for this when we are ready!



As always, we are also working on additional minor updates, and major updates.

We look forward to your feedback on this new update!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.8.6

Feature - Gila Monster and Tortoises
Fix - #17064 Aerodynamics surface processing issues causing unexpected behavior especially with small vehicles (missiles pitching up)
Fix - #17520 Rocket launcher weapon now respects relative velocity when fired from a vehicle
Fix - #17771 Fixed modular engine audio position and balance the effect radius
Fix - #18543 Centred oil rig base workbench
Fix - #18946 Fixed ocean_milani_explorer mission spawning inside physics (causing heavy lag in a specific area of the world)
Fix - #19418 Structure workbenches ignoring fuel requirements when infinite_fuel is disabled
Fix - #19534 Fixed LUA editor copy+paste for Mac
Fix - #19643 Player names not cleared from the server list if kicked during server join

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is announcement week, with last week being an update, and next week also bringing an update.

This week we discuss a new upgrade that we are planning to the vehicle management engine within Stormworks.

Currently in Stormworks, a single vehicle contains all the physical bodies related to that vehicle. This can include the main vehicle body, as well as any hinged parts such as custom doors or cranes, and any detached parts such as droppable bombs or lifeboats. Because these objects are all managed per-vehicle, this means that these parts load in and out together, even if they have become very spread out. They can become spread out if a part is dropped, or a solid rocket booster is fired off, or a lifeboat leaves its parent ship.

The issue with a vehicle being spread over a large area is that it is hard for the vehicle management engine to decide when that vehicle should be unloaded. This makes it difficult for the game to unload distant islands that the vehicle may be resting on, or unload these distant objects which can improve performance. With the explosions introduced in the Weapons DLC, a vehicle entirely encapsulated within an explosion can be completely destroyed and despawned. Sometimes you can see a missile hit a target before exploding then bouncing off the target or becoming stuck in it. These missiles should really be completely destroyed, but because they are considered a part of a larger vehicle, they are not.



So this is something we are reworking, deep within the game engine. We plan to split vehicles into sub-vehicles, and these sub-vehicles will be managed independently of each other. This will mean that each sub-vehicle will occupy only a small amount of space, which gives a huge advantage when managing them. Missiles and bombs will be destroyed when they hit their target. Distant vehicle parts will unload (unless they have a "keep alive block") which will help performance in some situations. This change will also be very useful for a future major update that we are working on.

The player experience should otherwise not be changed, and returning a vehicle to the edit grid will return the complete vehicle rather than just part of it.

While this is fundamentally a simple change to understand, vehicles connect to almost every system within the game so this change requires us to carefully and methodically upgrade lots of code in lots of places, and has been time consuming.



This upgrade should release later this year.

We look forward to your thoughts and feedback! We will return next week with a new minor update.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is minor update week! We are branding this update as the "critical fix" update, as we have fixed a crash issue that was the most common crash for most players. We expect this update to greatly reduce crashes in Stormworks for many.



We have also improved the physics sensor with extra output data. After releasing the physics sensor, some players asked for output in a slightly different format, so we have now added this to help with making certain microprocessors. This format relates to how angles are measured.

Otherwise, this update includes a series of other fixes which are mostly minor.



Thanks to everyone who gave feedback to last weeks announcement. We have read all this feedback and it is really useful to hear players thoughts.

We hope these fixes help, and we continue working on more minor updates, as well as all the other stuff we wrote about last week.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.8.4-5

Fix - Added protective code to address recent crashing issues related to oil spill data
Rework - #18678 Physics sensor angular velocity calculation updated and added additional tilt/compass outputs
Fix - #17556 Crash when teleported by an addon while in the workbench
Fix - #18474 getVehiclePos and addDamage now work with sub-bodies and returns the correct voxel transform
Fix - #18673 Chaff clouds not spawning in multiplayer
Fix - #18683 Flashlight rendering in photo-mode
Fix - #18846 - Updated Hyanen garage mission zone survivor transform
Rework - #19327 Disabled broken blue van mission location

Dear Stormworkers,

Last week was minor update week, so this week is announcement week! In this announcement, we will discuss the plans and strategies we have for game development over the next few years.

Stormworks

We continue our support and maintenance plans, with minor updates planned every 2 weeks, major updates planned every 4 to 5 months. We also have a new DLC planned for the end of this year.

Stormworks first launched its closed Beta almost 6 years ago, and we are still having loads of fun developing it. We have as many players as ever, and we plan to keep these updates going for a long time.

Minor Updates

The issue tracker is driving most of the content in the minor updates, as we work towards tackling the remaining bugs there. Of the remaining reported bugs, some are fixed and undergoing testing, while many are planned and their work scheduled. We are making steady progress and are usually solving at least 10 issues each minor update.

While bugs and the overall quality of player experience are our main concern, we are trying to introduce the occasional feature as an interest point for players. This can sometimes be a friction point with the community where some players feel that 100% of effort should go into resolving all issues. For this reason, we are thinking about dedicating most minor updates to bugs and quality, and keeping features for the major updates. As always, this is subject to player feedback. What do you think?



Major Updates

We have major updates planned and are currently working on content for 2024. We typically announce major updates with 3 weeks to go before their release.

DLC

We are working on one new DLC to be released at the end of this year. We can't wait to announce this! Exactly how and when we make this announcement, we don't know yet. We want to get a bit more development done but will share info as soon as we can.

Not Stormworks 2

As previously mentioned, we are also working separately on a new game! This new game doesn't affect Stormworks development and is a separate title.

This game is super early in development and is mostly ideas, prototypes, technology tests, designs and discussions. Its a very long way from any release.

Our goal is to make an awesome new building game, inspired by Stormworks, but also inspired by player creations, many other games, and our own new ideas. We plan to make far fewer features, but to a higher quality, with a greater level of finish.

Until we have a final name for this new game, we are calling it "Not Stormworks 2". The point is that while we love Stormworks, there is no point cloning our own game. Most of the features from Stormworks won't be in the new game, but that's OK because it allows the new game to be it's own thing, and allows us to be creative and introduce new ideas!

There are a lot of expectations around a Stormworks sequel, and this is something we have thought a lot about. It is best we focus those expectations on improving Stormworks itself. "Not Stormworks 2" is an ambitious building game, but it's a different thing and isn't intended to meet the expectations of a sequel. It isn't Stormworks 2!

Something we are very interested in for a new game is full modding support. We have been researching and developing some really cool technology that is aimed at a new approach to modding that gives full control and access to mod makers.



Player feedback is super important to us so please let us know if you have any thoughts on any of the above! We look forward to your feedback.


Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is minor update week. This weeks update includes several fixes and improvements in response to player feedback on the support tracker.

For Industrial Frontier DLC owners, there are also new predator animals!



The new mountain lions and coyotes are similar to the existing wolves and bears. They are quick, aggressive, and very dangerous! Mountain lions can also attack NPCs in the rescue missions.

The new crocodile is a little like a shark in the water, except sharks cannot chase you up the shore onto the land! Crocodiles spawn in water but can also walk on land.



Please check the patch notes below for full details of changes and improvements.

We look forward to hearing your feedback on the new fixes and features!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.8.3

Feature - Arid Island Predators

Crocodile
Mountain Lion
Coyote

Arid camp rescue missions can now spawn with a Mountain Lion

Rework - Stormworks crashes now have a submit crash dialog box
Rework - #19184 Always display component costs in editor

Fix - Random small oil patch rendering artefacts
Fix - Old save compatibility with new oil spill missions
Fix - Oil spill message spam on new spill

Fix - #17818 Crash when calling setAudioMood with invalid moods
Fix - #18936 Bullet casing direction for mirrored guns
Fix - #19188 Removed outdated logic popups for power and fluids
Fix - #19232 Fix vehicle thumbnails in save/delete confirm view
Fix - #19300 Updated pivoting and gimbal part descriptions to use turns
Fix - #19393 Removed invisible post physics at rail crossing

We have also added a link to the Geometa merchandise page to the game's main menu