Stormworks: Build and Rescue News

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is announcement week, as we alternate between game updates and announcements every Friday!

This week, we will discuss the upcoming updates and general plans we are making at the moment.

We already have the next 2 minor updates underway, with many improvements already complete and being reviewed. At the moment, we are regularly testing multiplayer as we want to make improvements to this area of the game. We are making progress, but this is still being worked on. Players can expect some improvement although we are not sure how much will be in the next minor update. Players can know this is being worked on and some progress is being made.



Otherwise, we have a long list of bug fixes and minor improvements that have been requested on the issue tracker. We are working our way through these, and we are making good progress. The new quality processes we now use have dramatically improved the quality of releases, with much fewer new issues, and we are fixing things at a good rate. Our goal is to reduce the total issues and get through the back-log of issues that has built up as a priority.

That said, we are still dedicating some resource to feature updates and major updates! We have loads of minor updates planned for the rest of the year and we are working on the next major update which should release at some point this summer. Our support plan for Stormworks continues to run indefinitely, and we are already discussing update ideas for the rest of this year and into 2023.



While we are committed to supporting Stormworks into the future, we are also thinking about other projects. The engine powering Stormworks is our own in-house engine and is now 6 years old, so we are discussing how we want to do things differently in the future and looking at creating a new engine that could power our next generation of game. This is still in the game-engine design stage and a new game is still a long way off.

Be sure to come back next Friday or a new minor update release!

And do let us know if this style of announcement is useful! We want to keep players in touch with the studio's plans, but with our personal style, we prefer to "do" rather than "talk", and we prefer not to give too much detail on anything until it is complete and working, so that we don't disappoint.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This week we add support for painting components on multiple sides! This has been a consistent problem for creators, particularly for things like 2 sided buttons and some windows, where you may want to set the paint color to be different on the inside compared to the outside.

Many components now have different paintable zones where needed, so you can change the color of different parts of the component as you wish.



We have also been hard at work fixing issues and making various improvements. The full list of patch notes is below. The issue numbers are included so those who want to cross-reference with the issue tracker may do so if they wish.

We are continuing work on the next minor update (due in 2 weeks), as well as the next major update. We will announce more on this when we have more info to share!



Thanks for all the players who have been asking for multi-sided painting, it has been a very long requested feature and we are pleased to have brought it to the game.

We look forward to your feedback!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.4.13

Fix - #6405 #6369 Seats displaying wrong tooltips

v1.4.14

Feature - #2885 Multiple component paint colours
Feature - #5693 Re-painted and optimized ai/mission vehicles

Rework - #2878 Ammo drums now lose their ammo when exploding
Rework - #502 The chat window no longer shows up over other UI
Rework - #5514 Fish no longer spawn under island meshes
Rework - #5257 The tutorial will now end when moving away from the starter island
Rework - Disabling vehicle damage now also disables engine overheat effects
Rework - Passworded servers have been pushed to the bottom of the server list
Rework - Servers now sort by network quality
Fix - #3472 Clients not taking damage from explosions
Fix - Fixed some code causing weather desync (#4881 #5245 #6138 #6204 #6251)
Fix - #4880 Wind override slider inverting its value
Fix - #4795 Gap in rail-line near O'neill base
Fix - #5480 Disaster Sirens now take into account tsunami travel distance
Fix - #3087 Lowered some dock mission zones for boats with origins below the waterline
Fix - #5818 Players lose their hair when in the seat
Fix - Buoyancy surfaces added to the air and liquid exchanger components
Fix - UI focus not clearing in certain situations
Fix - #6495 #6471 Fix Kraken data for saving/multiplayer
Fix - Ping always displaying as 0ms in multiplayer

New packet loss network graph has been added to the F1 menu

Addon Lua:
Feature - #5307 Added setWeather lua function
Rework - #715 onButtonPress() now returns the type of interaction (press/release)
Fix - #4588 parented server.spawnFire only spawning at vehicle center

Dear Stormworkers,

About 4 weeks ago and shortly after the natural disasters update, a small number of players started to report encounters with a kraken-like creature. Sometimes the claims lacked any evidence, other times there were dark screenshots in foggy storms suggesting something that could be huge tentacles.

Some stormworkers chose to believe the beast could be out there somewhere, but most dismissed the creature as a hoax, vehicle creation, modded xml or modded mesh.



And, for the next 4 weeks, the legend of the kraken lived on as only a myth. This was except for a small number of players, who remembered the megladon was released in secret, and were determined to search the oceans and prove that the kraken was real and was out there somewhere.

And finally, they have succeeded, while creating vehicles, and info to help others also search for the kraken. Several youtubers have released videos over the last few days with this new info, proving the kraken is real.



The kraken is a physics based squid-like sea creature which uses its tentacles to swim around the ocean, attack and wrap around player vehicles. It is a very unique approach to creating a kraken, and we are not aware of any other game where the creature is a complete physics based animal rather than more of an event or tenticles and mouth anchored to the sea floor.

What Are The Spawning Conditions For The Kraken?

The kraken only spawns in strong weather, at night, in deep water. The ocean must be atleast 150m deep, the sun must have set, the fog must be atleast 25%, and rain atleast 50%. The "Enable Megladon" setting must also be ticked in the creative menu.

These conditions may change in the future, and we may add a "spawn kraken" button to the creative menu in the future too.



The kraken has been huge fun to develop and test in Stormworks. We have had a lot of fun so far playing with, trying to survive, and battling it. Releasing as an easter egg and watching players react has also been awesome fun!

Development continues as normal, with a feature based minor update coming next week, and several more minor and major updates continuing development.

We look forward to your thoughts and feedback on this new creature of the sea!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

We are back with more updates and improvements to controller support!

You can now control the player character, as well as rebind all your controller settings, with a joypad or controller. We have also fixed some issues for players with complex controller setups. This means that most of the game now works with a joypad, as well as multiple controller support. The exceptions are the vehicle editor and add-on editor, which still require keyboard / mouse / touch screen.

As well as improving the game for any players using a joypad, this update dramatically improves the player experience when playing on the new Steam Deck.



We have also fixed lots of bugs and issues that players were experiencing. Please see below for the full details. The full set of controller changes can also be seen below in the patch notes.

We will return next week with an announcement, and again the week after with a frequently requested feature that has long been asked for by vehicle builders!



We look forward to your thoughts and feedback on these new changes!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.4.11

Controller support updates:
- Character controller support
- #466 Vehicle controller support
- Characters/Vehicles no longer move while in map/photo/creative menu
- B button now acts as a generic back button for all UI screens
- Creative menu day/night slider support
- Research screen controller support
- Photo-mode controller support
- Sunrise-Sunset slider support
- Back button keeps getting selected when scrolling a list
- Pad input key-binds now work for UI navigation (#6070 #6081 #6206 #6264 #6001)
- #6000 Rebinding menu can no longer be backed out of except with 'Esc'
- Photo-mode hotkey tips now display their bound keys
- Reset button now works correctly for bindings

Rework - Iceberg tiles now have more room between bergs for ships
Rework - #1553 Force non-combat AI vehicles to despawn if they sink
Rework - #5262 Catalytic converter now converts exhaust to air rather than destroying exhaust

Fix - #5871 Edge-case logic thread lockup caused by setVehiclePosSafe

Fix - #5441 Crash on vehicle despawn while interacting
Fix - #5122 Prevent vehicle fires when damage is toggled off, vehicle invulnerable flag is now checked for all damage systems
Fix - #4926 Objects removed via lua now force an update to despawn them
Fix - #3615 Make radar ignore trees
Fix - #2792 Fix setVehiclePosSafe getting stuck when targeting an area between two vehicles (occasionally caused game lockup)
Fix - #793 #728 Language workshop uploading disabled
Fix - #3924 Added buoyancy surfaces to heat exchangers

Fix - #5254 Missing collision mesh for filing cabinet
Fix - #5891 Missing Face on Fluid Hose Anchor
Fix - #4981 Floating tree cluster
Fix - #4940 Foghorn model issues
Fix - #4930 Mute sirens when damaged
Fix - Short Tornadoes

Dear Stormworkers,

Last week, we released new controller support for some of the UI screens in Stormworks. Next week, we will further extend this support to include character control and further joypad improvements.

This extended support is important for players who want to play with controllers, and also for supporting the new Steam Deck hardware which has just launched. Its a great excuse for us to improve controller support which is something we have long wanted to do.

The new character support will enable you to move around, use first person items, interact, and use seats, from your joypad.



We are also improving controller settings so that you can program your UI bindings for multiple controllers, and set your controller up to work as you want. This will also resolve some issues that players with multiple controllers / hotas / steering wheels are having.

This upcoming update will also include several important fixes and improvements, and as usual, the full list of these changes will be released in the change notes.



Next weeks update has already entered testing in our new and improved quality process, and we are already working on the subsequent minor update, which is a feature update, and a very popular player request!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers