Stormworks: Build and Rescue News

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is the announcement week, while next week will be a new minor update!

We want to dedicate this weeks announcement to saying a few words about creators. We wake up every day with a need to just make something. We are particularly lucky that this game is aimed at people who share this passion. Playing Stormworks is all about designing and creating, sharing what you have built, and thinking about how to improve it. We know how time consuming and difficult it is to make many of the Stormworks creations we see on the workshop. We really value our players passion for design and building. This type of game is not for everyone, and so there is a lot of excitement, joy, and pride to know that these qualities are shared with so many.



We have also talked about content creators and Youtubers before. The processes may be different, but I am sure there are a great many players who like us, appreciate and admire the determination, energy, creativity, and craft that goes into creating this kind of content. Building things is awesome.

But we also want to talk about the many other great building games on Steam. Steam has proven itself as the best platform by far, for supporting an ecosystem of specialist and niche games, that can only exist on PC.

I think around 9 years ago, when I was starting out as an indie game dev, I discovered Space Engineers and Kerbal Space Program. These games are technically creative, and innovative, but at the time, I was most amazed that they had proven viable. It seems obvious now, but 9 years ago, the idea that a highly technical building game for an audience who likes to geek out about science and build stuff, was crazy. These developers took the leap that has lead to a whole generation of new games for people like us. Thank you.

Other big games that deserve a lot of recognition is Scrap Mechanic, Astroneer, Satisfactory, and Stationeers. Each have pushed the genre in their own style, and their enthusiasm to believe in their vision, put everything behind it, and continue to love and support their players for years, is inspirational to all developers. Thank you guys, you are awesome.

This post is getting long, so sorry that we can't list more games or give all the praise these games deserve. Please do check them out and let us know about other games and why they are important in the comments!



Some quick notes:

AMD fixed their drivers!! If you have been crashing with AMD graphics recently, please update your drivers.

Potential new DLC! We are considering a huge update before the end of the year, including loads of new big features that we have been working on for over a year. Some will be part of a free update, while some of the optional stuff might be in a DLC.

Incoming minor updates with new content and components! We have the next few minor updates in testing and there is some great new content to come! Come back next week for the next one.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

In this minor update, we are adding a new size of tank tracks between the small and medium sizes. These tracks will be 2 blocks wide, which has been frequently requested by tracked vehicle creators who are struggling to get the look they are going for, because the 1-wide tracks were too narrow, and the 3-wide tracks too wide. These new tracks otherwise work just like the others!



We have also been continuing to look at multiplayer. A popular request is for servers with players on to be sorted to the top of the list. This makes it much easier to find servers with players already on. We have also been looking at a rare issue where some players found themselves such in place and unable to move in multiplayer. We have made some improvements to this, and it should be resolved for most users.

This update also contains the usual bug fixes and improvements. Please see the full patch notes below.



Thanks to all the players giving great feedback on potential audio changes! We have been planning many of these suggested changes, and they should make for some great minor updates.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.5.7

Changes that include a #NUMBER relate to fixes or features submitted by the Stormworks community via geometa.co.uk/support/stormworks which can be accessed via the 'Report Bug/Request Feature' button in-game.

Posting a submission to this tracker ensures we review your suggestion/report since we may not see reports submitted via other channels.

Feature - New medium size tank track wheels (#9371 #5466)

Rework - Updated dedicated server sorting algorithm to lower the priority of empty servers
Rework - Amended multiplayer client event processing for more consistent ticking

Fix - #9783 Adjacent hatch buoyancy generation preventing vehicle spawn
Fix - #5456 An issue with door buoyancy surfaces with water entering
Fix - #10013 Fix resize selection grid crash
Fix - #10794 Lighting flare billboards are now based on light intensity
Fix - #11054 Addon editor focus now raycasts correctly when the target point is below height 0
Fix - Fix some components requiring more charge to activate than they use
Fix - #10716 #2622 Special colours (orange) are now ignored for character meshes
Fix - #11365 Removed input/output labels from two way logic node types
Fix - #11486 Fixed some issues resolving refunded cost when removing asymmetric vehicle components in symmetry mode
Fix - #9657 Fixed mirroring issues for the Fluid jet
Fix - Prevented some cases where inputs can be sticky while interacting with buttons
Fix - Crash caused by parsing states of vehicles with microcontrollers
Fix - Crash when attempting to send data to a server that has been disconnected from

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is announcement week, with a minor update due for release next week!

We are working hard to improve Stormworks in many directions! Some of these directions are less interesting to talk about in an announcement, such as fixing crashes and digging through netcode, while more cosmetic changes tend to be easier to write about.

One such direction we are exploring is improvements to audio! For a long time, players have been asking for improvements to various sound effects, and asking for new sound effects where audio would be useful feedback. For the last 8 years we have been lucky enough to work with Chris Randle and Jon Daou across various games.

For sound effects it has worked best in the past to order in batches, but for Stormworks we have frequently found ourselves needing sound effects on a weekly basis for a new component or interaction. This has encouraged reuse of SFX, or missing SFX out, and there are many places where we would want to improve.



Instead of ordering in batches, we will now be having a sound engineer work weekly with the team to improve all these missing and borrowed sounds, but also work creatively on the sound design. We hope this will bring a big improvement of quality of audio over the coming months, and we will be looking to players to let us know where they think we should start, and where the highest priorities are in terms of improving audio.

In the mean time, we will also be getting on with all the various fixes and improvements, minor updates (including new frequently requested components), major updates, potential new DLC, and more.

We look forward to your audio ideas!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

In this update, we add 4 new outfits: light, medium and heavy body armour, and bomb disposal. If you have the Weapons DLC enabled, these outfits give additional ballistic protection from small calibre rounds, or in the case of the bomb disposal outfit, explosions!



Many players have been asking for Weapons DLC updates, and we are really excited to bring this new update. Even if you don't have the DLC, these new outfits are still available with cosmetic only function.

We are also adding several important bug fixes and improvements, please see the patch notes below for full details.



As always, we are continuing to work on more fixes and imrpovements, minor updates, and major updates! The next few minor updates will include new components and we will announce more soon!



We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on the new update!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.5.6

Changes that include a #NUMBER relate to fixes or features submitted by the Stormworks community via geometa.co.uk/support/stormworks which can be accessed via the 'Report Bug/Request Feature' button in-game.

Posting a submission to this tracker ensures we review your suggestion/report since we may not see reports submitted via other channels.

Feature - Functional Weapons Outfits (#7960 #3217)

In this update we have added 5 new outfits that protect the player against projectile and explosive damage at the expense of slowing down the player's movement speed.
Most of the new outfits include a helmet which will additionally reduce headshot damage.

Fix - Player now orients to the look direction when walking (using walk hotkey)
Fix - #10701 Audio settings tab sliders not applying correctly
Fix - #11200 Fix default weapons script breaking when failing to spawn a turret
Fix - Fix onButtonPress event interactions with instrument panel buttons
Fix - Updated several component descriptions that were using hard coded hotkeys in descriptions
Fix - #11642 Adjusted mounted end-effector raycast to begin within the component
Fix - #11676 Mesh issues between arctic airport and main island
Fix - #11717 Gyro now creates editor warning when electric is not connected
Fix - #11746 Speargun inventory spelling error
Fix - #11805 #11754 Leaks now occur for voxels that take more than 1 damage in a single instance

Dear Stormworkers,

In this announcement post, we discuss next weeks minor update including new weapons outfits, as well as other upcoming minor updates and major updates.

Next week we are releasing new outfits! These outfits spawn in inventory boxes in a similar way to scuba, firefighting, etc. outfits. While they are available in the base game, they only function cosmetically. With Weapons DLC enabled, these outfits provide enhanced ballistic protection.

The new outfits include various grades of body armour / helmets, as well as a bomb disposal outfit with protection specifically to explosives.



Of course there will be more than just these new features, and many fixes and improvements will also be included in next weeks update.

We are getting further ahead with our updates, and have managed to extend our lead-in time (the time between completing or near-completing an update, and releasing it). This is giving us more time for quality control and testing, and is generally just a calmer way of working. This also means we are working on various minor and major updates at any one time!



We previously discussed a new major update that we have been working on, that we would like to extend and expand into a much bigger DLC update. We are still considering this and working on other new features that are related and could become part of this, if not their own update.

We are also working on other major update features, and while it is too early to talk about specifics, there is a lot of really fun and interesting stuff that can add a lot to the life of the world of Stormworks.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers