Hey Spacers, The team has been hard at work since we announced Kitfox Games as our new publishers and the "Across the System" update went live. Our focus has been on game stability and bug fixes, ranging from wildly misbehaving police that would refuse to do (or hyperactively over-do) their jobs, to spooky bugs where derelicts suddenly disappeared or entire station populations suddenly dropped dead. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34518042/adb261304799e08140c32a60e9294f9d39e7ea67.png[/img] [i]Police behaving badly![/i] The team has also been gradually adding more quality of life improvements based on player feedback, including a new tooltip showing more insight into the inner workings of character AI, as well as a warning when the player is potentially committing a crime. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34518042/2afaf06ef17f7ade056b5bb5b2f63266779efdb2.png[/img] [i]TV Crimes![/i] And we’re putting considerable effort into performance optimization, now that the game sessions are growing longer and longer. Updates have been fast and furious, too, often happening multiple times per week. We had to take a pause for a couple weeks while, unfortunately, Dan attended a funeral. But we expect builds to resume this week. In happier news, Michael Richardson rejoined the team this month after a long break! Michael is one of the original developers who worked on Ostranauts, and writer of much of the game's setting lore. With luck, his contributions should allow us to accomplish our stability and remaining milestone goals faster. We also wanted to give a warm welcome to everyone who has picked up the game in the last couple of months. Because of your support, we have more breathing room in our timeline to work on the game. Which means more upgrades and improvements to make Ostranauts better and more approachable before 1.0. We’ve also been working on populating the [url=https://ostranauts.wiki.gg/wiki/Ostranauts_Wiki]Ostranauts Wiki[/url] with a small group of community members. It’s far from comprehensive now, but it’s a great starting point for learning the basics. If you’d like to join the effort, please feel free to contribute! Every update, no matter how small, makes this living document a more valuable resource for players. If you prefer to receive these updates in email form, you can sign up for the [url=https://www.kitfoxgames.com/sendy/kitfox-subscribe]Ostranauts newsletter here[/url]. That’s all for now but we will have much more to share in the near future. Thanks for playing! [h2]Full patchnotes for the update today (v0.14.0.18)[/h2] These changes should be compatible with older 0.14 saves. Though if that save has already had errors (e.g. like dead NPCs), some of those errors may continue until a new game is started. [b]Improvements[/b] -Collision avoidance AI now uses a broader rectangle projection instead of a line, for better avoidance. -Purchased ships now start with their reactor turned off. -Added current funds info to encounter screens where the player is expected to spend money. -Changed the aerostat construction zones to use new, improved layouts. -The aerostat construction zone completes construction over time between visits. -Changed the loot tables for type of flying and derelict ships to be more coherent. -Changed apartment prices to be more regionally unique. [b]Bugfixes[/b] - thrusting should now simulate correctly when using a towing brace - reactors on derelicts should no longer explode immediately after docking - autosave/F5 should not soft-lock the game - super fast forward should not run endlessly until the player died - orphaned compartments should not be left behind on ships, causing strange pockets of hypoxia or missing atmosphere - derelicts should not be left with extreme rotational velocities after ships undock from them - stations like Luna should now have more reasonably small populations - shift-clicking items that can be dragged when they are also a container (e.g. dolly) should be more consistent - buying fusion reactant cargo at station markets should be more consistently possible - the scrap kiosk should no longer provide better prices than the licensed kiosk when the player holds a valid visa - the game should not soft-lock when selecting a pump's input signal - directories should be deletable even with '...' in the name - loose reactor cores should not try and run fusion anyway - acceleration should not be copied from station/other ship when undocking - NAV UI should now show more accurate time units when displaying days, months, or years - ships should no longer suddenly explode when docking with a ship that had a pathfinding error - crew should no longer be knocked down immediately after loading a save where the crew was maneuvering - security bots should not attack each other on the aerostat construction zone anymore - attacks on REDACTED should no longer be considered a crime while on stations - red attack intent arrows should not remain on the screen after leaving the map via transit - 4K resolution should have more legible text sizes in encounter UI, debug overlay UI, popup UI, bug log, and console debugger - console debugger window should now handle resolution changes better - AIs can access the Gig Nexus kiosk - stations have correct NAV icon after a save/load - no longer missing transponder in Heavy Tug 01 ship - orbitals should move at correct speed for their apopapsis/periapsis, improving gravity effects when undocking - old saves with incorrect VORB periods should now be repaired. [b]Performance improvements/optimization for:[/b] - searching within nested objects - querying the nearest source of gravity - cargo market queries ship mass - checking collisions between ships - on items that respire and are not human - trigger calculations where the trigger was blank - pathfinding when querying the properties of tiles - AI is deciding on next work task - a placeholder object is re-tasking itself - requesting a random object from a ship - cargo market generating several logging messages - police ship navigation calculations