Stormworks: Build and Rescue News

Dear Stormworkers,

It is windows time! This week we are adding a set of 22 new window pieces to greatly expand the currently available set. These include many frequently requested and often xml modded parts, and will make building your vehicles and your cockpits much easier, with better results!

This update is in response to the many players requests asking for it - so a huge thank you to all the players who asked for these on the issue tracker and reminded us in the Q&A sessions! You have been asking for more windows for many, many updates, and they are finally here. I think the last window update was 18 months ago - it is about time!



We have also continued to work on improvements, and this week we have fixed several multiplayer issues. These fixes include waves and other game systems sometimes going out of sync, and some situations where physics might enter a broken state (a bug we internally named as the twilight zone), and many others!

We have also improved the bandwidth usage in servers, with games requiring only a fraction of the amount of bandwidth previously required in our tests. We hope this resolves many players multiplayer issues where the cause of their MP issues was not clear / contextual, and presumably playing multiplayer with limited bandwidth. This is also a big help to servers that now require less bandwidth to host many players.

We have also improved the network sync system so that games are smoother, particularly during bad network conditions where games would have otherwise have stuttered.



Please keep in mind, if your PC, (or the PC of the person hosting the game), does not meet the minimum requirements from the store page, then the "game experience may vary". Your and the servers internet connection are also important - you do need a basic broadband connection and about 12 kB/sec up and 24 kB/sec down to join a game, (and 24 / 12 per client to host), but if your internet connection is low quality, such as mobile internet with poor signal, or a family member hogging the connection, you are going to have a bad time and this isn't something that we can fix on our end.

Overall, these multiplayer improvements are very significant and we hope this improves the multiplayer experience for many players. We are continuing to look at multiplayer issues, so if you are still experiencing issues, let us know exactly how to reproduce your issue and we will take a look!



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

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.2.5-6

Feature - 22 New Window components
Feature - Networking layer optimization

Greatly reduced bandwith usage.
Greatly reduced stop-start freezing when playing with poor network conditions.

Rework - Additional params for setCharacterItem allowing for data to be set up on the items.
Rework - Component prices overhaul for a better balance in career
Rework - SpawnAddonComponent no longer auto adjusts to the location's tile position when using a custom spawn position.
(See default_mission_locations script for the intended alternate method of spawning)
Rework - getTileTransform now has an optional search radius parameter
Rework - Default Cargo script optimizations
Rework - Updated millitary base fast travel spawn point
Rework - Missions spawned with mstart no longer use a minimum range
Rework - getVehiclePos voxel_pos positions have been fixed and are now optional, returning the vehicle physics center if they are not passed
Rework - Custom preset when hosting a server defaults to MP island

Fix - Random generation potentially desyncing between clients
Fix - SpawnAddonComponent overriding custom rotation
Fix - Standardized use of RPS label for power logic nodes
Fix - Grippers now have 0.5 blocks leeway on their track (1 block length tracks always disconnecting)
Fix - getCharacterVehicle not functioning correctly
Fix - onPlayerLeave should now fire for all disconnect events
Fix - Added patch to default_mission_locations script to resolve errors in old saves
Fix - Game not returning to the menu state when disconnected from a server
Fix - Added protection for players entering the same seat
Fix - Client side wheels causing vehicles to shake in some situations

Added a warning when attempting to save when there is not enough disk space.
Added "Basic" tag to various basic components.

Dear Stormworkers,

This week we discuss some of the upcoming fixes and updates that we are working on in Stormworks!

At the moment we have a lot of new stuff in progress, from fixes, reworks, minor updates and major updates. Some of these new changes are going live today in a hotfix, others in coming weeks or months.



Fixes, Minor Updates, Major Updates

As always we are working on bug fixes and minor improvements. These smaller changes or quality improvements are often released quickly after we have made and tested them, so players can benefit from an improved experience as soon as possible. At the moment, we are particularly looking at multiplayer improvements, and investigating the associated bugs and crashes. Often these bug fixes take between an hour to a day to address, while others require days of work to resolve, and is a major allocation of development time.



Minor updates in progress involve the career updates we recently announced, including the hospital ship, refueler, mission types and mission content. Other minor updates include new windows, and other new blocks to expand the types of component and functionality you can build into your Stormworks creations. Minor updates typically take a few days to come together, and usually if a feature is bigger than this, it becomes part of a major update.



Major updates include the weapons DLC, natural disasters, and other unannounced (but rumoured!) major updates. While these updates are months of work, they happen in the background at a steady rate and their various components come together over time. We are often working on multiple major updates at the same time, and while these updates release every 2 to 3 months, they have often been in development for up to a year.



Carrier Command 2

Many players have been asking for updates on CC2. Today we are adding multiplayer support to the already live Carrier Command 2 demo as the game is participating in the Steam Next Festival. For those who are interested, go check out the multiplayer and let us know what you think with the in-game feedback button :-)

We are looking forward to releasing all this discussed Stormworks content! We hope todays hotfix brings some improvements, and look forward to the minor and major updates over the rest of the year and beyond.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers




Patch Notes

v1.2.4 Hotfix

Rework - Increased HTTP request max characters from 512 -> 4096
Rework - ?mstart with no parameters now spawns a random mission
Fix - Prevent softlock during mstart when a specified mission has no available locations
Fix - Fixed multiplayer issues caused by vehicle loading

v1.2.3 (Extended Patchnotes)

Rework - Modified processing of Addon script HTTP requests
Fix - Stretched rope rendering coming away from the anchor
Fix - Addon zone dynamic loading for Env Mod locations
Fix - server.isInZone now works correctly for rotated zones

Dear Stormworkers,

This week, we are adding new building fire missions, and various quality improvements to the missions system!

The new building fire missions can occur across the world of Stormworks in places where there are buildings or structures. They are similar in some ways to some of the vehicle emergency missions where vehicles can set on fire. The building fires are typically larger and can develop and spread over time. There are survivors and casualties to rescue, and reward will also be given to extinguishing fire.



A great many improvements have also been made to the missions. These changes touch many different parts of the system and are a mixture of bug fixes and needed improvements, and are mostly thanks to the many kind players who have reported these issues. Please see the full change log for details on exactly what is fixed.



This is the first stage of our improvements to missions that we discussed in last weeks announcement. We are really excited to revisit the missions systems and career, and bring some much needed improvements to this part of the game.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.2.3

Feature - Mission QOL and Frameworking
Feature - Building fire missions
Feature - Improved responsiveness of inventory searchbox
Feature - Improved fluid system to be more stable

Summary of mission qol changes:
Huge world load time optimization
Difficulty is now tied to no_clip instead of custom_menu so custom career players get correctly scaling missions
?mstart now has mission type and difficulty parameters
Clean up missions with ?mclean
Survivors can now spawn with strobes which activate when in the water,
Missions that are loaded no longer despawn to prevent expiry mid-mission,
Fixed several framework issues including misison objects not randomizing for each mission spawn
Mission survivors/fires now scale with difficulty
Characters and objects now display their names in game
Rewards for delivering survivors now scales with their health
Better flavor text for missions expiring
Rescaled mission spawn rate to be ~hourly
Fix missions not spawning in the first few days of career
Missions vehicle size now sacles with difficulty
Transport missions passengers also become NPCs on delivery
Transponder mission radius balancing
Bleeding survivors no longer stop bleeding if fully healed but no longer start at low health. Not all survivors now bleed.

Balance - Increased SRB thrust by ~4x
Balance - Buffed steam turbine generation
Rework - Added new inventory category for windows
Fix - Lua documentation for getTileTransform
Fix - Additive rendering for the firebox
Fix - Firebox consuming an extra coal than expected
Fix - Firebox tending to go out occasionally
Fix - Radiation detector now tracks and tests its compartment
Fix - Ocean missions always spawning at tile center
Fix - Coal funnel not reserving voxels for spawn coal physics

Lua API:

+ TILE_DATA, is_success = server.getTile(transform)
TILE_DATA =
["name"] = tile_name
["sea_floor"] = sea_floor_height
["cost"] = purchase_cost
["purchased"] = is_purchased

+ is_success = server.addDamage(vehicle_id, amount, voxel_x, voxel_y, voxel_z)

+ is_simulating, is_success = server.getObjectSimulating(object_id)

+ is_success, voxel_x, voxel_y, voxel_z = server.getVehicleSign(vehicle_id, sign_name)

~ server.setPopup(peer_id, ui_id, name, is_show, text, x, y, z, render_distance, [vehicle_parent_id], [object_parent_id])

Dear Stormworkers,

Thank you to everyone who has been playing around with the new nuclear and coal power! It is incredible to see the new creations, from the fully working Brinkfield Nuclear Power Station and enhanced resource trading add-ons to nuclear submarines and coal freighters. We have been carefully reading your feedback and reports, and will be bringing fixes and improvements soon.



If you are not already aware, there is currently a free playtest on Carrier Command 2 (another game which we are involved in developing). If interested, simply click "Request Access" on the CC2 store page!

In this announcement, we are announcing a series of improvements to the missions in Stormworks! Many of you have given great feedback on how you would like to see missions and career being improved, and we have been hard at work implementing these changes. Career continues to be an area that we are very interested in improving, and these will be some much needed upcoming changes.

Add-on Script Quality and Performance

We are adding new simple type-in commands to spawn specific missions, clean up existing missions, and other frequently requested functions. We are greatly improving the load times of the official add-ons, so games will load faster. Missions will scale in custom mode when noclip is disabled rather than when creative menu is disabled, to make it easier for players to play career with custom settings such as third person. Survivors will sometimes spawn with strobe man-overboard-beacons to make locating them at night easier. Existing missions will no longer despawn mid mission when they time out. We will be improving some of the difficulty scaling, particularly with certain mission types. Rewards for delivering survivors will scale based on their health.



Building Fires

We are working on adding a new mission type - building fires! These will be missions where there is a fire on a structure and survivors are at risk. It will be similar to crashed vehicle missions, except that the survivors are most likely within the structure and more at threat. This type of mission will be able to spawn at many locations across the game world, with many buildings rigged to set on fire.



Support Vehicles

We are working on new special AI vehicles - an aerial refueler that patrols the skies, and if you can intercept it, you can take fuel. There will also be a new hospital ship that acts as a moving hospital location where you can deliver casualties as part of the normal missions system. There is a helipad and rope connector points. This ship will be constantly moving, so be prepared to transfer casualties while underway.



New Mission Types

We are also looking at a variety of new mission types. We are considering buoy array operations where you install, remove and repair an array of ocean research buoys, underwater operations were you salvage sunken items such as lost anchors, missing persons where you are searching for an individual reported missing in a large area, man-overboard emergencies where vessels have reported a person overboard, delivering fuel, retrieving animals or objects, nuclear emergencies, and more. This is an evolving list and as always is subject to change. This also means we are looking for more feedback and suggestions, so if you have ideas for new mission types, please let us know!



These new missions updates will arrive over the next few months as some of the minor updates we have planned, along with the usual fixes and improvements that we are also working on. There will also be other minor updates such as new components and other stuff!

We are also working on the major updates discussed in a previous post! We will share more on these soon.

As always, we look forward to your feedback!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

The coal, nuclear and steam major update is out now!

The new coal system includes the new coal resource, coal handing with physical particles, hoppers, ducts, and funnels. Coal can be burnt in the new furnaces to heat water.



The new nuclear system includes fuel rods, fuel assemblies, and control rods. You can make your own reactors by arranging these new components in an enclosed space and filling with water (coolant). You can insert and remove fuel rods to renew your nuclear fuel and control the rate of reaction with control rods. You decide the size and design of your nuclear reactor, but consider the mechanics of disposal of spent fuel and maintenance!



The new steam system allows you to turn water into steam (using the boiler), turn steam pressure into mechanical energy (using the turbine) and turn steam back into water (using the condenser).

When these new energy systems work, expect long fuel life and high persistence. However, when they go wrong, expect disaster. Steam components will explode if the steam pressure gets too high, and nuclear reactors will melt down if they get too hot.



We give you new Geiger counters and hazmat suits to help deal with the dangers of radiation, but any mishandling of radioactive materials, damage to reactors, or losing control of your nuclear reaction and melting down will have severe environmental consequences. Nuclear fallout may last a long time, rendering areas of the game world dangerous to visit.



As well as these new systems, we have also re-made the fuel trading system with the new lua API. You can now buy and sell coal as well as oil and liquid fuel across many new locations in the game world. The market is dynamic and will move and adjust based on supply and demand.



We have also rebranded: Sunfire Software is now Geometa! We renamed a while back and have just got round to setting up our new website. It's still the same company and the exact same team.

There are also a series of bug fixes and improvements included in this update! See the change log for the full details.

We hope you enjoy the new content and we look forward to hearing your feedback on this new major update!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.2.1

Feature - Coal & Steam Power
Feature - Nuclear Reactors & Radiation
Feature - Resource Trading Addon*

*The new resource trading addon replaces the old fluid gantries addon, and the trading code has been moved from the game into the Lua so players can customise or add their own locations/vehicles much like our other addons.

Added Clear Radiation button to custom menu to remove fallout zones
Added a Preset Reactor and Firebox setup

Rework - Added a second port to fluid tanks for better integration into coolant loops. New behaviour only occurs when both ports are connected.
Rework - Adjusted monitor borders
Rework - Signs now render tooltips if they have a custom name
Rework - In singleplayer edit modes, damage is now paused
Rework - Removed Hazmat suit from default wardrobe
Rework - Fluid system pipe flow division better fits pipe demand

Fix - Tanks storing more than their maximum
Fix - Ocean floor triangle rendering winding backwards
Fix - Restored missing update to modular engine audio
Fix - Misnamed variable in default mission script
Fix - Increased string buffer for addon vehicle names (could not place vehicles)

Lua Changes:

+ server.setVehicleHopper(vehicle_id, hopper_name, amount)
+ coal_level, hopper_capacity, is_success = server.getVehicleHopper(vehicle_id, hopper_name)
+ d, m, y = server.getDate()

~ tank_level, **tank_capacity,** is_success = server.getVehicleTank(vehicle_id, tank_name)

+ function onButtonPress(vehicle_id, peer_id, button_name)

setVehicleTank and getVehicleTank now use Litres instead of centiLitres