Stormworks: Build and Rescue News

Dear Stormworkers,

The Coal and Nuclear Major Update will release next week on Thursday 27th May!



Included in this major update:

Coal

• New coal resource and coal particle system
  
• Coal handling, hoppers, ducts and funnels
  
• Coal furnaces
  
• Coal trading and new fuel trading system
  

Nuclear

• Nuclear fuel rods, assemblies, control rods
  
• Nuclear fission mechanics
  
• Radiation mechanics, environmental damage, sickness
  
• Handheld Geiger counter and Geiger counter vehicle component
  

Steam

• Boilers and condensers to change water into steam and vice versa
  
• Steam turbines to convert steam pressure into mechanical torque
  

Coal engines are designed to be large and heavy, but the fuel to last a long time. These high endurance engines are best suited to ships, trains, and large land vehicles.

Nuclear reactors are designed to be larger and heavier but produce large amounts of power, and are ideal for the largest scale creations. The fuel rods have a very long lifetime, but require careful management due to the risks and dangers of radiation.



We are really excited to share this new major update next week!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This weeks update goes out in honour to all the Stormworks builders making walking vehicles!

We are adding a new "friction block" that is a sort of rubber pad that has very high friction. While it is intended for walking robots, there is actually a wide range of potential applications where you want a creation to stick to a surface rather than slide around such as feet for containers, grabbing claws, stabilizer legs, and more.

This is a highly physical and generalized block, and we expect players to find many more applications and uses for it.



We have been blown away by some of the incredible walkers produced by the community. The logic being made by the community is really impressive, and we hope this new block is a help to these creators.

This week, we also bring a series of updates, improvements and bug fixes, please see below for the full list of changes and fixes.



Next week, we plan to announce the release date for the next major update! We are really looking forward to this release, the new power sources are interesting to build, the coal handling mechanics are really fun, and the dangers of radiation add a new consequence and peril to the game.

We look forward to your thoughts and feedback in the comments!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.1.25-26

Feature - Friction Pad component - attempts to grip nearby surfaces

Rework - Re-Added default elevators
Rework - Updated monitor meshes
Fix - Multibody sleep activation for child components
Fix - Addon editor main bar "edit location" button not working for enironment mods
Fix - Hide data tooltip for signs on default detail
Fix - Tutorial boat transponder locator broken. Renamed emergency beacon to transponder.
Fix - Crash when spawning addon zones
Fix - getTilePurchased() returning additional broken data
Fix - Transponders on character belts overwriting each other
Fix - Linear tracks breaking when flipped in y axis
Fix - Lua documentation issues
Fix - tree fire and rustle sfx not updating when dragging the pause menu slider
Fix - Addon zone dynamic loading
Fix - Addon zone parenting

Dear Stormworkers,

In this announcement we will discuss the many upcoming features and updates we are currently working on in Stormworks.

We are also involved with the development of Carrier Command 2, which is the spiritual successor to the original Carrier Command (1988) where you control a military carrier and compliment of autonomous air and amphibious vehicles. A free playtest is launching soon and you can apply to join the playtest beta over on the Carrier Command 2 Steam page (just click Request Access).

So, what upcoming Stormworks updates are currently in development?

Steam and Nuclear Power

We are adding new coal, steam and nuclear components in the next major update, and we will announce the release date soon!

Coal is a new tradable resource, and can be burnt in furnaces. Players can also design their own nuclear reactors and react fuel rods to produce heat. Heat from both systems can also be used with the new steam boilers, turbines and condensers to generate mechanical torque.



Weapons DLC

Weapons are coming to Stormworks in an upcoming paid DLC this year! They include modular gun and cannon components, warheads, and new hand-held equipment. We are also working on new gameplay content where you fight an enemy force for control of the Stormworks world.

We have been testing weapons internally, and they are great fun to build, experiment, and operate, particularly in multiplayer. We still have some work to do, but we are really excited.



Missions Content

We are extending the existing missions and adding new add-ons to add more things to do in Stormworks. Career is a frequently discussed topic in the community and is an area of focus for us. New missions will include stuff inspired by the old missions, as well as many new ideas.

We are also extending the existing AI add-ons to include new AI vehicles that support the player in passive ways, as well as reworking other parts of the game such as fluid and resource trading.

Natural Disasters

We are just starting work on the Natural Disasters Major Update! This is a really exciting area to create new and thrilling events in the game that can have a missions aspect. We won't announce details here as we are really early in the development process, but please let us know your ideas and requests for types of natural disaster!



New Biome

We have just started work on a new biome, to extend the world of Stormworks, giving players new places to explore, and new territory to populate missions. We are early in the development process and cannot guess when it will be finished.



Quality Updates and Bug Fixes

As usual, we are also spending a lot of time investigating issues and fixing bugs. The new issue tracker website is in progress to support this effort, and we will continue to drop bug fixes and improvements on a regular basis, along side developing the big new features discussed above.

You can get even more details in the latest Questions and Answers video! Thank you to everyone who submitted questions, and thanks to MrNJersey for hosting.

We hope this announcement is informative and helpful! We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This week, by popular request, we are releasing an update focused on optimization and bug fixes.

What is in the Optimization Update?

The new physics detail setting allows players to reduce the detail of physics calculations in exchange for more performance! In our tests we saw performance could double in some physics-intensive situations, when changing the detail from full to low. The setting is in Options -> General.

We recommend setting physics detail to "Full", because with reduced detail, the simulation can struggle with small or narrow objects. However, if you want to spawn in very large or complex creations, or if you just play Stormworks on a potato, reducing the physics detail setting can be a game changer.



Physics is further improved by a new system that pauses updating of objects that are not moving or interacting with other physics objects. This means in many situations, vehicles parked up or lying on the bottom of the ocean floor have a very low physics computation cost.



A new red warning system lets you know if an unsupported vehicle has been spawned (modded workbench). We don't control what content players upload to the Steam workshop, and some creations are made in a modified version of Stormworks rather than the version we created. Many of these creations are awesome, but can also cause issues for some players, and the red warnings are designed to explain this.

There are also new yellow warnings if a vehicle has excessively complex physics or too many lights. The intention is to provide players with more information on how vehicle design impacts the frame rate of the game with particularly complex creations.

Minimum Specs

Players considering getting Stormworks must carefully review the minimum spec requirements. Stormworks is a CPU intensive game and you do need to meet all the min specs, including the CPU requirements. We know many players play without having the minimum hardware, and we ask these players to have realistic expectations about their frame rate. We love that you play the game, but it's not meant to work on your hardware. We would like to help, but there are limits to what is possible.



Bug Fixes

We have addressed a huge number of issues in this update! Please see the full list below in the change log. Many thanks to everyone who reported issues - it is a huge help to us and we thank you for your patience as we address them.



Questions & Answers

We are going to do a new Questions & Answers video soon! To help us give the most complete answer, keep your question short and also be specific. Submit your questions hereThanks for all your questions!

As always, we can't wait to hear what you think about this new update! It has been a lot of work, and we are very excited to hear your feedback!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.1.23-24

Feature - Physics detail level (Found in general settings. Override for dedicated servers in server_config; acceptable values are 60, 120, 180.)
Feature - Default script performance increases (2ms -> 0.5ms average)
Feature - Physics Engine now allows more objects to sleep
Feature - 'Low performance' warnings on intensive vehicle load
Feature - Improved performance for lua functions that search through vehicle components
Feature - Small Sonar (Released with 1.1.18)

Rework - First person surface swimming camera tracking improved
Rework - Rescued survivors now have a 3s grace period when entering a hospital before becoming an NPC
Rework - Tutorial QOL changes: Named tutorial survivors, Extra info on popups, Changed some popups to screenspace
Rework - Limited maximum number of vehicle fire spreads per tick (Greatly reduce lag)
Rework - Tutorial can only be started in first 7 days
Rework - Several component editor warning updates
Rework - 1x1 Gearbox defaults to unlocked in Classic Career
Rework - Updated tutorial boat to prevent players getting stuck on the back
Rework - Removed default elevators

Fix - Vehicle state is now fully reset when returning to workbench
Fix - Transponder signal not despawning with the equipment
Fix - Tutorial missing popups on final stage after reloading
Fix - Handheld radio and remote control range being larger than described
Fix - Vehicle component damage being attenuated to 0 for large components
Fix - Pipes rotating when dragging in the editor
Fix - Dynamic objects / characters not saving their time alive
Fix - Handheld transponders overwriting each others locations
Fix - Prevent lightning playing in the vehicle editor
Fix - Sharks dealing very little damage
Fix - Equipment duping when dropping unconscious characters
Fix - Crash when linking from a deleted component
Fix - Crash when dragging from a deleted MC component
Fix - Modular engine composite data for fluid volumes now reflects the display value (x10)
Fix - Rope buoyancy in internal volumes
Fix - Crash using invalid unicode characters from lua functions
Fix - Skis, Cameras, Water Cannons draining electric when motor is not active
Fix - Vehicle fires ignoring environment audio slider
Fix - Trees ignoring environment audio slider
Fix - AMD vega fire graphics glitch
Fix - Linear track input values not working
Fix - Several occasional crashes
Fix - Ocean foam clipping inside buoyancy volumes
Fix - Improved water surface transition for camera
Fix - Prevent survivors taking damage on attach and detach from ladders
Fix - Player equipment not dropping correctly while dying during a ragdoll (Shark drag)
Fix - Torque components showing full detail labels by default
Fix - Electric relay not showing state on normal detail label
Fix - Cost tooltip for hotbar components not showing in custom mode
Fix - Powered linear rails being connectable on the backside face
Fix - Multi-target radar can now detect 8 targets instead of 7
Fix - Cut/Paste sometimes disconnecting logic nodes on components
Fix - Several components not placing correctly in mirrored mode
Fix - Dropped moveable transponders all sharing the same transponder ID
Fix - Air ram and Air filter unable to transfer fluid from the environment
Fix - Vehicle markers now use the center of the primary body instead of the center of the build zone
Fix - Equipment hotbar UI not updating correctly when running out of charges
Fix - Underwater camera mode not activating when inside filled volumes above ocean level

Reworked/Redocumented AI info

server.getVehicleData() now returns .mass and .characters
.mass = vehicle mass
.characters = a table of object_ids attached to the vehicle { id_1, id_2 ..etc }

Removed "Vehicle Button" addon component
Consolidated "Zone" and "Cargo Zone" component types:
Spawning a zone with spawnAddonComponent() will now add it to the list of active zones (that are seached with getZones())

Removed misleading "name" field from spawnAddonComponent() and getLocationComponentData()
Added .tags table to spawnAddonComponent()
Added .tags table to getVehicleData()
Added .tags_full string to all the functions that return .tags for custom parsing

vehicle_id = server.getCharacterVehicle(object_id) -- To get the vehicle a character is currently in
is_dev = server.isDev() -- To check if the game host is a Developer

Dear Stormworkers,

In this upcoming announcement, we discuss the mechanics of nuclear reactors in the next major update!

Nuclear reactors in Stormworks are designed to be a power source with very long fuel life and high energy output, but also very heavy and large. They are modular so that players can design them to the size and specification that they need, and manage their internal mechanics, from the simplest reactor to the most advanced refuelable reactors with safety features.



Safety features are important. As with real nuclear energy, the risk of melt down or radiation leak is a huge downside with significant consequences. We are adding the concept of radiation to Stormworks, where radiation can be contained within compartments, or otherwise leaked into the environment. Radiation is harmful, and will persist for a long period of time. It is essential to handle nuclear materials carefully and dispose of waste responsibly.



Nuclear reactors are created from just 3 new parts: fuel rods, fuel assemblies, and control rods.

Fuel rods are the nuclear fuel that slowly reacts and depletes, generating heat and radiation. They are radioactive. When submerged in fluid, they will pass their heat to and also irradiate that fluid.

Fuel assemblies are a sort of connector for fuel rods. Like real nuclear reactors, rods are arranged in arrays of several rods in order to achieve the critical mass required for the reaction to build up. Fuel assemblies placed next to each other allow the fuel rods within the assembly to interact with each other.

Control rods are placed adjacent to fuel assemblies to absorb reactivity and reduce the energy. They can be used to control the heat output of the reactor.

As with other reactors, this heat can be used to heat water to generate steam, to power steam turbines. We will talk more about steam power soon!



We look forward to hearing your thoughts on nuclear reactors and the upcoming major update.

In response to player feedback, we are also trailing some optimization improvements to Stormworks over on the experimental branch. If this is of interest to you, check out the experimental branch and read the experimental changelog on Discord. Be sure to check back next week, as we are trying further optimizations and we are excited to share any progress with you!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers