Barotrauma News

Hello everyone!

The Treacherous Tides update will be releasing next week, so let’s take one last look at what you will find in it.

Overhauled traitor system
We wrote about the overhaul in more detail in our previous post. In a nutshell, look forward to playing with traitors even in the campaign game mode! Other notable changes include:

• A new total of 27 traitor events, including multi-traitor events and event chains.
  
• Many new traitor-specific items.
  
• Traitor events will now use the scripted events system, making them more varied and easier to mod.
  

Storage and inventory changes
You can read more about these changes in this earlier post. Besides the previously mentioned, there will also be a new item called the backpack. It's a larger version of the toolbelt with a small movement penalty, available through the new assistant talent “Bag it up” and from vendors around the midpoint of a campaign.

And there’s more
The update also adds the usual list of bugfixes and other improvements, such as:

• Circuit boxes, a new and tidier way to create complex wiring systems with components.
  
• Improved alien ruins, adding a better sense of progression.
  
• Enhanced alien artifact effects which make them riskier to transport and store.
  
• Updated Berilia and R-29 submarines.
  
• Animations for using devices on the sub. No more just standing there, menacingly.
  
• Ammo indicator lights for turrets, making it easier to see when to reload.
  
• Addressed the scarcity of lead, allowing fabrication of ammo with additional materials.
  
• Skill loss on death can be adjusted or completely turned off in the server settings.
  
• “Braindead” characters joining the server will immediately get control of their character back.
  
• About 10 more pages of changelog, coming next week.
  

Read more about the upcoming update on our blog now and stay tuned for Treacherous Tides next week!

Hello everyone!

We’ve already mentioned a few times that the next update will focus on overhauling the traitor mode of Barotrauma. Now it’s time to take a closer look.

With the traitor system overhaul, our goal has been to make traitor gameplay more engaging, offer more variety, and make it work with the campaign game mode. Traitors will be off in campaigns by default, but you can now invite treason to your travels in campaign mode as well.

We’ve added two new settings for traitor gameplay in the server settings:

• Danger level: Controls the maximum danger level of the traitor events you may be assigned. You can use this setting either to limit how destructive traitors will be, or to add extra challenge.
  
• Traitor probability: The host can now fine-tune how likely it is that a traitor will be on board, from 0% to 100%.
  

Successful traitors will receive XP and/or monetary rewards, and the possibility of continuing their traitorous acts with escalating danger. If the task fails or the crew correctly accuses the traitor, a new player will take their place for the next traitor mission.

Where the previous traitor system consisted of only 7 different events, after the update there will be a total of 27 events that traitors may be assigned. Some of these events will also require multiple traitors to accomplish. These multi-traitor events will require special codewords to identify co-conspirators, adding a modicum of teamwork to the misbehavior.

The new events bring with them new items as well, such as:

• The radio jammer, for tasks requiring privacy and silence.
  
• Deepdiver ducks, for when you absolutely need something to throw.
  
• Different types of timed explosives, to promote a sense of urgency.
  
• The husk caller, for, well, we think you can figure it out.
  

To learn more details about the update, check out our blog. Smooth sailing everyone, but do watch your back!

Hello everyone!

Now that we have been back from our holidays for a while, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit our plans for the upcoming storage changes. As we wrote in June, we wanted to get feedback on the proposed changes to the storage system – and that is definitely what we got, so thank you for all the comments! We have now had time to go through all the feedback and adjust our plans a bit.

Most importantly, the storage container item will not be removed. We read about the many inventive and novel ways in which this item is being used, beyond simply boosting raw storage space in cabinets. Such creative applications of game items are always interesting for us to see and we don’t want to discourage them, so even after the update, you will still be able to use storage containers to store personal collections, or carry loot from a wreck, for example.

We are, however, still going to restrict storage container placement inside cabinets. Let’s take a look at the currently planned storage changes in a nutshell:

• Material stacks in cabinets will go from 8 to 32. This includes items such as: minerals, medical items, ammo, consumables and genetic materials.
  
• Overall, cabinet storage slots have been increased by one full row.
  
• All cabinets will receive extra slots, which can be used to house storage containers. The number of these slots depends on the size of the cabinet. Storage containers can only be placed in these slots, not in the other slots of a cabinet.
  
• Cabinets will have two handy buttons, one for automatically merging incomplete stacks, and another to sort all the items alphabetically.
  
• Oxygen, welding fuel and oxygenite tanks no longer stack in character inventories. They have increased duration to compensate, so you don’t need to swap them so often, and they stack normally inside cabinets.
  

In addition to the storage changes, the next update will also introduce new content and improvements. We’ll write more about those in the coming weeks; look forward to things like a fully overhauled traitor mode, with new missions and mechanics, as well as various quality-of-life changes, tweaks and touch-ups.

You can test the newest storage changes and most of the upcoming content in the Unstable version of the game now, and we will continue to monitor the feedback leading up to the update’s release later this autumn. For more sneak peeks at what’s to come, check out our blog!

Hello everyone!

Summer is here, and our team will be taking some time off. While we are away from our desks and slower to respond for a few weeks, you can already begin sneak peeking at the next update in the Unstable test version.

A notable change coming in the next update has to do with item stack sizes and storage containers. As you may know, storage containers can be placed inside cabinets to amass huge numbers of items on board a submarine. This results in a poor user experience, because it’s hard to find the items you need using this storage method. The large item counts also hurt game balance and performance.

This is why we are going to remove storage containers from the game, but to compensate for the loss, we’ll increase stack sizes for materials and meds stored inside cabinets. You can find more details about the upcoming storage changes on our blog.

We believe this change should make inventory management much better on the whole, and help with balance and performance issues at the same time, but we understand some of you may still view the storage cutback negatively. To make sure we hear from you and can still adjust these changes before their public release, you can now test them in the Unstable version and give us feedback over the summer!

Another part of the next update which is already available for testing is the first iteration of the new traitor mode. We’ll write more about the traitor system changes later in the summer, and the update is planned to be released in the autumn.

Stay tuned for more news later, and have a great summer!

Hello everyone!

We've just released a hotfix to address a few issues in last week's Summer Patch. See the list of changes below:

v1.0.21.0

Fixes:
- Fixed LOS effect sometimes "lagging behind" when the sub is moving fast.
- Fixed some minor visual issues (occasional jitter/flickering) on the LOS effect.
- Fixed some issues in the bot AI that we're causing a large performance hit particularly in situations when there's lots of bots in a sub with leaks.
- Fixed bots abandoning their orders (such as operating a turret) if the room is unsafe (e.g. flooded).
- Fixed an issue in character syncing that occasionally caused disconnects with the error message "Exception thrown while reading segment EntityPosition, tried to read too much data from segment".
- Fixed wires set to be hidden in-game (e.g. invisible circuits built outside the sub) being visible on the Electrician's Goggles.
- Fixed an issue with level resources that caused crashes with certain mods (e.g. ones that include subs with piezo crystals).
- Fixed NPCs waiting on some outpost modules never reaching their targets, causing peculiar behavior.
- Fixed waypoints sometimes not getting connected between outpost modules if there's a very short hallway between them. Addresses some cities missing connections between waypoints, causing AI to be unable to navigate through the modules.
- Fixed some UI layout issues (most noticeably, ultra-wide crew list) on certain resolutions like 3440x1440.
- Fixed campaign saves occasionally failing to load with the error "an item with the same key has already been added". Seemed to only occur when using certain mods.
- Fixed crashing when you e.g. use a pet from some mod in the campaign, disable the mod and reload the save.
- Waypoint adjustments to most submarines, outposts, wrecks, and beacons. Especially on ladders. Should take care of the remaining AI issues on ladders (the old subs in the saves don't get updated, but the fixes apply to new subs that you don't yet own. And ofc all the subs in a new game!)