The Alpha 51 update brings a large expansion to the southern region of the world map.

South of the existing maple forest now opens-up into new meadows, forests, rocky mountainous terrain, rivers, waterfalls and lakes.

A new mountain valley cuts down between the two southern peaks, offering plenty of new mid-altitude terrain (and cougar hunting grounds).



Down at lower altitude, a vast lake opens up stretches of beaches and deep water (now the largest body of water on the map).

A new silver birch forest-type runs along the edges of much of the southern beach-front. This forest is dense with foliage and high saturated colors.

Other new tree types, foliage and rock formations have been added, to give a distinct visual difference to the new zones.

The largest of the new lakes currently doesn't give access to any underwater cave systems. This is planned for the future. So (for the time being) players setting up bases in the new region will need to hike to the northern lake to mine crystal from the existing cave system.

Eventually I plan to interconnect the cave systems, such that players can traverse the map underground.

All of the new areas and assets have been hooked-up to the seasonal system introduced in Alpha 50 (including several foliage types I missed in the previous update).


The new large rock formations introduced problems for hunters pathing across the map, often leading to them getting trapped or lost. I've expanded on their pathing logic to negotiate the new geometry (whilst keeping the load on the CPU to a minimum).

This was actually a sizeable overhaul. I've run a lot of simulations with the new pathing logic, however there will certainly be room for improvement, so I'll appreciate reports of any issues.

As a visual indication of the changing seasons, flocks of migrating birds can now be seen flying north in the late fall, and south in the spring.

A video of this event can be seen here: https://youtu.be/eqPt1EP3OT4

Similar to cougar and moose; bears now have their own vicious mauling animation.

The aim of this is to increase immersion and add a greater sense of threat to bear encounters. Some players may not be keen on this type of animation, so I've added an option to disable it in the game options:

The animation can be seen here (WARNING: graphic content): https://youtu.be/ZBK5ml8GX8M

After seasons were introduced, many players reported that they'd like to control the duration of seasons. There is now an option when launching a profile to configure this. The days can be as low as a single day per month, or up to a full 365 days for a full year.

When browsing the server list, this setting can be viewed in the info popup when clicking on a server in the list.

Due to the scale of the map, I've avoided using map-wide collision for foliage (such as bushes), due to its heavy demand on the CPU. I'm testing a new system (in this update, only with new bushes) whereby collision dynamically toggles around a given radius of the local player at a minimal CPU cost.

This means bushes will audibly rustle when walking/running through them (as well being able to hear predators, prey and hunters moving through them nearby). I feel this adds more immersion. Once tested on this build, I'll expand to include many more foliage types.

There was a fairly common bug, whereby hunters would suddenly disengage during base attacks and start casually returning to their base. This is now fixed.

Occasionally predators would stop moving after attacking a base structure, leaving them easy to exploit. This has now been fixed.

Since seasons were introduced, hunters and animals had issues navigating paths across ice, sometimes resulting in them failing to move on the ice at all. This has now been addressed for all AI.

With the additional map space, I've increased the number of roaming moose and deer, and added new logic for having them space out more evenly while roaming.

Previously, if a bed was obstructed by other base items, spawns would be consumed but players would be dropped elsewhere on the map. This is now fixed.


Thank you so much to Tony Lee for helping to provide this support.

• Fixed bug/exploit where burnt meat could be converted back to raw when adding to the fire.
  
• Fixed item dropdown menus sometimes getting stuck on screen.
  
• Fixed occasional crash when accessing certain base items (such as solar panels, turbines, radiator, etc).
  
• Reduced Depth of Field Blur at Distance. I've dialed back the aggressive depth of field blurring over distance. This results in an overall cleaner presentation and image quality.
  
• Fixed edge-case bug where fortresses would sometime not reconstruct elsewhere after being destroyed.
  
• Fixed bug where dropped kits would sometimes float in the air after being killed by a predator.
  
  
• Fixed item pickup messages not showing the item name for clients of co-op games.
  
• Disabled gamepad input by default, preventing the issue of new players turning in circles when first playing the game. This can be re-enabled by setting AllowJoystickInput=1 in UDKEngine.ini.
  
• Fixed diving gear exploit, where it was possible to refill the oxygen meter by switching out the diving gear while underwater while no O2 tank was present.
  
• Reduced tree shake while chopping wood.
  
• Fixed issue whereby 9mm stacks would be removed on death if stacked on top of freely issued rounds.

As the game world is now becoming substantial in size, I have plans to add more reasons and mechanics to venture out far and make large journeys. Please stay tuned for further updates.

I hope everyone has a great holiday period. Thank you for all the continued support. Please share your thoughts/suggestions/critique on the various social channels below (I do read it all).

Cheers,
ColdGames

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs

Twitter: @playSubsistence
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playsubsistence/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkQZ7vkTiqetTC0_8umY2Pg
Steam Forums: https://steamcommunity.com/app/418030/discussions/

Continued Translation Support Credits (in no particular order): Thank you so much for the support.
Spanish (David Lascasas)
Hungarian (Erb Ármin)
Portuguese BR (Thiago Schumacke)
German (LPCaiser)
Italian (Marcello Brancaccio, Federico D. Ravagli)
French (Anthony Charrault)
Czech (Dílna U mnicha)
Dutch (Damster_NL)
Russian (FRAME)
Turkish (Çagla Gurbet)
Swedish (Mattias Gustavsson)
Norwegian (Christer Djuvik, Svein Tore Stegemoen)
Romanian (VaeVictis)
Estonian (Streamerize)
Chinese (Tony Lee)

Alpha 50 finally brings seasons to the game. The world will now dynamically transition through all 4 seasons, affecting both the visual aesthetic and many gameplay mechanics.

Almost every type of foliage and tree has been hooked-up to a new system to handle smooth visual transitions through the various seasons.


In early spring, grass will start to grow and sprout an assortment of flowers across the various meadows, woodland and mountain slopes. Trees that have shed their leaves will regrow their canopies. Rivers and lakes will thaw as the daily temperatures rise.


During the summer months, as temperatures rise, the spring foliage recedes and much of the grass will go to seed.


As fall settles in and the heat subsides, the trees and foliage will transition to autumnal shades of reds, oranges and browns. Dead leaves will blow in the wind as the moose enter their rutting season.


Winter brings harsh cold temperatures, snow and blizzards. The rivers and lakes will freeze and many species of trees will become bare of leaves. Much of the grass will die or be buried by snow. The severity of the cold temperatures (and heat during summer) are adjusted for easy/normal/hardcore modes. This short video shows an example of a winter blizzard:


Ground snow accumulation is based on snowfall, meaning as winter rolls in, it is the weather that will dictate the buildup of snow on the ground and rock formations.

Many of the tree canopies will change throughout the seasons. Below shows an image of the same forest scene across summer/autumn/winter.


Getting too cold will now slowly deplete protein levels, and while too hot will deplete hydration levels faster then usual.

A new “heat-tolerance” meter now shows in the player’s clothing profile. Different clothing items will affect this level. If the temperature rises above this level, the player will start losing hydration at a faster rate (and this will be indicated by a “HOT” status icon).

So carry extra fluids on hot summer days, or take a swim to cool-off.

Players can now craft radiators from the BCU craft menu.

Radiators kick-out more heat than campfires/woodburners (allowing for higher altitude base-building). They also have a much greater range, so can get better coverage through the base. Being within range of Radiator heat, gives a slight increase to health regeneration speed.

Radiators draw power from the base when active. While active, the heat elements will light up and emanate heat waves. Heat generated by radiators is affected by interior insulation properties (see below).

During the heat of the summer, bases can get very hot indoors. Air Conditioners (found in the BCU craft menu) can drop internal base temperatures by as much as -20°.

The fan blades animate and the cooling element will light up while the AC is running.


Up until now, heat from a fire was either on or off, regardless of proximity to the source. Now the influence of fires (also radiators and AC units) falls-off as players move further away. It’s percentage of influence is now displayed over the status icon.

In addition to this, both the radiator and AC unit are influenced by insulation in the base. If you have an open-air base, heat from the radiator will be diminished greatly over distance. However an enclosed base will make much better use of radiator heat and AC cooling. I’m not using true volumetrics for this calculation, so leaving a door open won’t deplete the base of heat, however standing by an open doorway will be cooler.

During the winter months, while the rivers and lakes are frozen, players will need to melt snow in their canteens to acquire water.

Simply stand on snow and the “fill with snow” action will show under the right-click menu. You can also use shift-click.

During mid-September through mid-October, moose will enter their rutting season. During this period they will become highly aggressive and instead of fleeing from players, will stand their ground and attack/chase.

When entering this period, all players will be notified. Also an additional icon will show next to the month reading in the top left for the duration. Players should be cautious of moose encounters during this time.

Through the depth of the winter, the rivers and lakes will freeze over. This means certain resources such as kelp, clams, sandstone, fish will be unavailable. Also crystal, as cave access will be restricted. However traversal across lakes will be easier, as you can simply run across the ice.

I’ve seen many players comment on ice-fishing, so this is something I’m considering adding.

During the winter months bears will go into hibernation and white wolves will emerge onto the landscape.

White wolves are more camouflaged to their environment, have higher hitpoints and yield more loot than standard wolves.

During fall months, cotton can be found and picked around the world. These plants will either give you one piece of cotton or a seed.


Previously water temperatures were the same as world temperatures (apart from the -4°C wetness penalty). Water temperature is now treated separately.

The winter jacket offers decent warmth during cold months. However, it offers little protection from physical damage. It also uses the chest armor clothing slot, so cannot be worn with combat vest or diving gear.

Sweaters provide better warmth than any of the existing shirts or hunter jacket, but offer less hit damage protection.



Firearms and bows now take usage damage. Once depleted of health, they will become unusable and require maintenance.

Broken weapons will show a red X over the item. Right-clicking will show a repair button, which shows the repair recipe as you hover over it. The recipe changes based on how damaged the weapon is.


Weapons with upgrades are more expensive to maintain. This increased cost is only applied for “increased damage” upgrades.

Clothing now also take damage and will need to be repaired.

Damage is caused to items depending on where the damage was inflicted. Once worn clothing is reduced to zero health, it will be moved into the main inventory. So if your inventory is full, be aware the clothing item will be dropped. There will be an audible “ripping” sound when a clothing item’s health reaches zero.

The individual stats (damage and warmth) for clothing items can now be viewed in the craft menu, and in the hover-tip for the item.

Hunters (including rogues) will now dress accordingly for the time of year.

During the winter months they will wear camoed variants of the winter jacket. This will substitute any combat armor, so generally they will be less protected from gunfire.

During fall and spring you will see them wearing sweaters and t-shirts.


I’ve updated the status icons to also now display text. Also have a back shadow, so easier to see over the background.

Heat packs provide a short period of warmth (regardless of world temperature). Currently set for 2 minutes. While active a heat icon will show.

In normal and hardcore modes, players spawned in the wilderness during winter will be issued a free heat pack as part of their starting loadout (to help with their journey back to base).

Difficult to display in the image below, but bears and wolves now have much denser hairs on their bodies.


I’ve finally added a simulation for the fishing line, connecting the rod to the float.

This feature actually rolled out (unmentioned) with the previous performance hotfix, but it deserves a mention as I feel it makes fishing way more immersive, seeing the line tighten and jerk around as fish fight as you reel them in (also was a lot of work :) ).

I’ve fixed the annoying alignment issue on item dropdown menus. Often then would render offscreen, requiring players to move the item to select actions (especially for toolbelt and clothing items).


Crates and dropped hunter kits have slightly less loot during the winter months.


Previously if a player exited the game while their dropped kit was yet to be collected, it would not save and be lost. This is now corrected and will still be there after reloading the profile.


Selecting a public server in the server browser will now display the current time of year that server is in, and also the current version of the game.

When attempting to join a server that is currently in winter, the player will be prompted by a warning advising so.

Currently each season lasts 6 in-game days, so around 14 hours of gameplayer per year. In the future I plan to allow players to configure this themselves.

It is possible to override the current month when launching a profile. Simply click the ‘Edit month’ next to the current month on the profile.

This should give players some freedom to exit from winter, or play any season of their choice without disrupting their progress.

Several players reported discomfort with the bright lightning flashes during storms, so I’ve added a toggle for these flashes in the in-game settings.

Previously there was a jarring visual cutoff where river water would transition into lakes. I’ve now fixed this so the transition is blended smoothly.


Huge thanks to Streamerize for localizing this version!

• Prevented infection from animal attacks during the first day on easy and normal modes (full day for easy and 0.6 of a day for normal).
  
• Increased speed at which fish are reeled in when fishing.
  
• Increased distance at which loot will not despawn near players.
  
• Added subtle metallic reflections to base armor-plating.
  
• Updated almost all foliage (grass, flowers, bushes) such that wind will only affect the upper part of the plants. Previously roots of grass would move in unison with the upper part.
  
• The menu map will now display in the same season as the most recently saved SP profile save.
  
• Fixed rare bug where wind turbines would not turn and generate power.
  
• New sound for picking up plants.
  
• Added one second delay preventing players from drinking from a canteen after filling with dirty water (to prevent accidental infection).
  
• Reduced volume of the double barrel shotgun fire sound.
  
• Slightly reduced the number of ore nodes in the world (and decreased their size).
  
• Prevented edge-case where fishing tackle would fall through the ground if cast on to the ground or river.
  
• Higher tier shirts and pants now require the lower tier as part of their crafting recipe.
  
• A random clothing item is no longer deleted on death (in normal mode).
  
• Starting M9 and low tier pants now start on low health.
  
• Added lower poly LOD’s for all clothing and human meshes.
  
• Fixed sudden lighting changes while transitioning into evening/morning during cloudy/rainy days.
  
• Fixed bug where the light from a fire wouldn’t move for clients of co-op games if the fire was moved.
  
• Alpha version number now displays at the top right of the hud.
  
• Prevented edge-case in hardcore mode where premium weapons parts could be excluded from hunter base destruction crates.

Please note that this is the first step in truly bringing seasons to life in the game, and lays a foundation for seasonal specific elements for future and existing features.

This one has been tricky to balance. In particular the temperatures, being influenced by time-of-day, time-of-year, weather, wetness, altitude, clothing, sheltered-amount, artificial heating/cooling. I imagine I will follow this release with some balancing hotfixes once players have given me feedback.

Thanks for everyone’s patience while I worked on this one. Please share your thoughts on the new changes and what you’d like to see in the game moving forward.

Cheers,
ColdGames

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs

Twitter: @playSubsistence
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playsubsistence/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkQZ7vkTiqetTC0_8umY2Pg

Continued Translation Support Credits (in no particular order): Thank you so much for the support.
Spanish (David Lascasas)
Hungarian (Erb Ármin)
Portuguese BR (Thiago Schumacke)
German (LPCaiser)
Italian (Marcello Brancaccio, Federico D. Ravagli)
French (Anthony Charrault)
Czech (Dílna U mnicha)
Dutch (Damster_NL)
Russian (FRAME)
Turkish (Çagla Gurbet)
Swedish (Mattias Gustavsson)
Norwegian (Christer Djuvik, Svein Tore Stegemoen)
Romanian (VaeVictis)
Estonian (Streamerize)

Since Microsoft has been rolling out the new Windows 1903 update, many players have reported significant drops in game performance while playing Subsistence (even on high-end hardware).

This patch should fix the performance issues for those affected (not all hardware configurations have experienced the issue). Microsoft may patch the issue, but I didn't want to wait.

This is essentially a patched version of Alpha 49. It does include a few small tweaks of the upcoming Alpha 50 release, but the main features of A50 are still a work-in-progress (and thus are disabled in this build).

I'm working hard on the new update, so please stay tuned for the release.

Cheers,
CG

* Thanks to modder PredatH0r for help with this fix.

Alpha 49 is primarily focused on introducing a new underground cave system, currently accessible only via deep-water scuba diving. Expanding on the later-game resource trees and adding further world exploration to the later-game progression. Along with many other new items, gameplay and graphical improvements, fixes and tweaks.

Players can now craft scuba diving gear to explore the deep waters in the world. The equipment is crafted at the new “Diving Station”, a powered crafting station that can be crafted in the BCU.

Must be placed within the radius of a BCU and is used to craft both the Diving Gear and the required O2 tanks.

The diving gear uses the chest armor slot on player’s clothing profile (however provides zero damage or warmth protection).

The O2 tanks are single-use items and will consume their O2 contents while the player is wearing diving gear and submerged in water.

While in use, the standard O2 meter will update to show the tank-count and current tank O2 amount. As one tank depletes, the next one will take over and start being used.


There is a new explorable cave system deep underground. Currently this area is only accessed via a dormant lava tube deep underwater in the largest lake. If you venture down there, be sure to pack extra O2, or risk stranding yourself with no means of escaping alive.

Building is not restricted in caves, although in the future I may need to put some restrictions on blocking entrances (on open public co-op servers). Resources are limited however, so players would have to transport resources if they wanted to start construction projects.

Throughout the caves, deposits of Crystal Ore and Coal can be found and mined. Mining crystal nodes causes more wear on tools than other ore types.

Crystal can be processed down in the refinery to produce raw crystal, which is used in later-game crafting recipes and item upgrades.

Coal can be used as an alternative fuel source for campfires/woodburners, lessening the demand to chop wood for fuel. It’s usages may be expanded in future updates.

Note: Cave ore nodes have a much longer respawn cool-down. So if you clear a cave area, it will take quite some time to repopulate.

Groups of mining hunters patrol the caves. Unlike other hunters, these guys pack double barrels, .44’s and recurve bows, so can be dangerous.

I have plans to expand on their behavior and roles in future updates.

Clam shells now spawn in the lakes in the world. Bash them open using an axe or pickaxe and harvest the pearl inside.

While these shells spawn at all depths, they are more common in deeper waters.


Circuit boards are a new item, crafted at the workbench. They have been woven into the later-game crafting and upgrade recipes.

I’ve increased the size of the ore nodes in the world (also corrected their placement alignment). I added a more realistic destruction physics simulation to when they break apart. I think this makes harvesting nodes more satisfying, but let me know what you think.


There is now a larger 42 slot storage unit, which can be crafted in the BCU. This unit is intended as more of a lavish, later-game convenience item and should be a nice QOL improvement for established players maintaining large bases.



Taking damage, bleeding, harvesting animals, etc will now cause blood splatters in the surrounding environment.

This means that violent battles can result in quite a mess. Some players may not like this, so I may make a toggle for this in a future update.

Currently only used for 4th-tier weapon upgrades. These parts are currently only acquired from specialty crates spawned from detonating BCU crackers on established hunter bases.

The larger (more established) bases yield greater number of these parts. Destroying an underdeveloped base will yield none.

Sorry for the delay on this fix (I know this was frustrating). Plants and ore nodes in the world will no longer despawn while the player is nearby.


Previously the daytime color-grading had a heavy yellow tint. I've dialed it back to a more natural pallet, where the blues and greens can pop more.

I’ve also been experimenting with denser ground foliage detail (see image above), so you’ll notice certain areas look a bit different.

Previously, as these areas were inaccessible, they had almost no detail. I’ve now added lots of new rock formations and detail.


Since the last couple of map expansions, I hadn’t updated the settings for visual culling on distant objects, meaning certain areas were making needless draw calls on very distant objects (especially on the west side of the lake). I’ve updated it to be far more aggressive. It’s unlikely you’ll notice distant objects popping out from view, but the stress on performance is now reduced in these areas.

A couple of tweaks to the fishing system: If a player is too close to the bait, the less likely fish will bite. Fishing in very shallow water will reduce the chances of hooking large fish.

I’ve been working on some other cool improvements to the fishing system, but couldn’t get it wrapped-up for this update, but it will follow soon.

Tools now take usage damage when mining nodes (not currently for chopping wood).


Accidental usage of bandages, health kits and antidotes will now not consume if the player is not in need of that particular med type.


Previously when stepping over geometry, the camera would instantly snap to the new Z axis. I’ve added smoothing to make this feel more natural. This is a subtle change, but I think makes a marked improvement to the feeling of play.

Huge thanks to VaeVictis for localizing this version!

• Slugs cost 1 less iron.
  
• Fixed bug that allowed items to be shift-clicked into the bed.
  
• New water splash particles in rivers.
  
• Fixed bug where HC profiles weren’t being successfully wiped in a fail-state.
  
• Reduced storm sounds while underwater.
  
• Fixed bug that could cause rain particles to play while underwater.
  
• Added new underwater caustic lighting fx (moving light ripples).
  
• New axe/pickaxe underwater swinging sound.
  
• Extended reach of axe and pickaxe.
  
• Increased size of kelp.
  
• Moose have had a slight stats boost.
  
• PvP kills now get logged in the launch log file (allowing server admins to identify them if they wish to ban).
  
• New console command “coord” will display the local players map coordinates (type “help” to see a list of available commands). This is primarily to help with trouble-shooting bugs with the community.
  
• Deer and moose will less frequently choose to swim in lakes when fleeing from danger.
  
• Fixed bug where you couldn’t switch ammo types when clicking the ammo-type icon while weapon was in slot 1.
  
• Fixed bug where hunters would fire random shot at the ground when fleeing to cover.
  
• Fixed co-op client audio bug where sleeping players would make reloading sounds.
  
• You now get slightly more gunpowder and casings when crafting at the workbench.
  
• Fixed glitched floating ore nodes and kelp at the foot of he western river.
  
• Fixed edge-case bug where moose would choose to stay in a particular area and stop roaming the world.
  
• Fixed hammer impact/repair sounds not playing for clients of co-op games.

Thanks for everyone's support and patience while I worked on this one. If you haven't already, please join the community on the Steam forums and the official Discord server (invite below). I welcome your thoughts and suggestions for the game moving forwad. Please stay tuned for more updates as the project continues to evolve!

All the best,
CG

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs

Twitter: @playSubsistence
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playsubsistence/

Continued Translation Support Credits (in no particular order): I hugely appreciate the support.
Spanish (David Lascasas)
Hungarian (Erb Ármin)
Portuguese BR (Thiago Schumacke)
German (LPCaiser)
Italian (Marcello Brancaccio, Federico D. Ravagli)
French (Anthony Charrault)
Czech (Dílna U mnicha)
Danish (Morten Sørensen, Jesper Christensen, Bartholomeo Alexander)
Dutch (Damster_NL)
Russian (FRAME)
Turkish (Çagla Gurbet)
Swedish (Mattias Gustavsson)
Norwegian (Christer Djuvik, Svein Tore Stegemoen)
Romanian (VaeVictis)

A new shotgun can now be crafted at the workbench. The Double Barrel is a powerful weapon and has a much tighter spread than the pump-action, making it suitable for mid-range combat as well as close.

It’s dual barrel allows for two shells to be fired in quick succession, however then requires a fairly lengthy reload, so be tactical with your timing on shots/reloads.

I know it seems strange that other weapons are still crafted in the player crafting menu. As new weapons are introduced, the higher power firearms will slowly move over to the workbench.

The flashlight can be attached as with the other firearms.

Players can now craft a Distiller (located in the BCU). This item must be placed within range of your base and allows you to distill your own Alcohol (“moonshine”) overtime.

Alcohol requires potatoes and sterilized water to be crafted in the Distiller. It takes time to craft, so be sure to queue it up and plan ahead.

The motivation behind this is to add greater purpose and benefit to potato farming, and to open up craftable flammable items for players to play with.

Alcohol can be used to craft Molotov’s in the workbench. Molotovs are effective at damaging bases, and dealing with mobs during attacks.

When a molotov explodes near a player/animal/hunter the initial blast will catch them on fire. They will remain on fire for up to 10 seconds. Jumping into water will put the fire out. Hitting multiple targets with the initial blast is an effective way of dealing a lot of damage.

Molotov fires will burn for up to 20 seconds, dealing damage to all buildables/players/hunters/animals that touch their flames. The player who throws the molotov will get a distinctive sound and hitmarker display as the molotov fire inflicts damage.

Base items (such as storage chests, generators, etc) protected by a wall will not take fire damage if the flames originate from the opposing side of the wall (even if flames may sometimes appear to clip through).

During attacks, hunters will now sometimes use molotovs instead of grenades. I think it adds to immersion to fire-fights to have flames illuminating the battle (and creating no-go zones in the flames).

I’ve added a subtle tree-shake animation and falling leaves while players chop trees. It’s a small tweak, but I feel this makes the process feel less static and more satisfying.

A large part of this update was focused on continuing to improve network play. I was discovering that some long-term co-op profiles would suddenly start lagging and becoming unresponsive for clients. This would occur when extremely large bases were built on the map.

This was caused by having too many dynamic items in the world and exhausting the available network channels on each client connection (not bandwidth related). The main culprit was physical loot in the world (1000’s of items), with each item using its own network channel.

I’ve added a new system (which uses only a single channel) which reports to the client on harvestable items in their proximity.

This has big benefits for clients, servers and solo games:

• Both client and server now only spawn dynamic items for loot in their immediate view (less rendering and tick cost).
  
• Far greater stability and scaling for servers with huge bases.
  
• Less demand on the server to determine if items are relevant to clients (much less stress on CPU).

Other than performance gain, players should notice no difference in gameplay. I’ve also set a building cap for co-op games (to ensure stability) which will display in the hud for all players if it gets near. The cap is high, but I’ll be working to increase this as I continue work.

With the recent improvements to server performance, I’ve increased the max count from 8 to 10. Please let me know if your experience problems.

This was being caused by the server deeming nodes “not relevant” to clients, so as a side-effect of the new system detailed above, this problem has finally been eliminated.

Previously clients of co-op games had a noticeable lag on hits registering while harvesting trees and ores, and when picking plants in the world. I’m now using client-side predictive logic to eliminate this lag entirely, so clients will have a much more responsive experience while harvesting!

Players can now craft high-powered, single-projectile slugs (currently only used with the double barrel):

Slugs do extreme damage but are expensive to craft. Press Left-Alt (rebindable) to switch ammo types while the weapon is equipped, or click on the ammo-type icon above the weapon on your toolbelt.

The male character model will now grow a beard if alive for a long time. Dying will reset this. It’s a simple feature without any transition states through growth, I just thought it added a bit of variance to character aesthetic.


I’ve reduced the slots in the animal housing. The previous 8 slots was too much and encouraged early-game players to keep far more animals than they could afford. It now starts with a single slot and additional slots can be added via the upgrade menu.

Hitmarkers (that show when you hit an enemy) have been increased in size. They will also now flash red when the shot was a headshot, giving the player better feedback during combat.


Suggested many times by players; an oxygen meter will now show at top-center while diving.


If standing near an explosion, the camera will now shake based on the power of the blast. This should increase immersion during attacks. I may add a toggle for this in a future update.


I’ve pulled in the first person weapon holding position for all firearms in attempt to give better body presence (also while aiming down sights). I think it feels better, but let me know your thoughts.

Co-op hardcore games end if one of the team dies (and there are no bed spawns). Previously other players would wonder why the server exited. Now all players will see a message indicating the name of the player who died.

Credits for the translation (thank you for the support):

• Morten sørensen
  
• Jesper Christensen
  
• Bartholomeo Rudolph

• New sound for tools breaking.
  
• Current ammo types now show above all toolbelt weapons while the inventory is open.
  
• Chicken stew now gives +hydration.
  
• Fixed bug that allowed items to be lost via shift-clicking into the fabricator.
  
• Slightly increased speed at which loot will repopulate after harvesting a zone.
  
• Fixed newly-posted co-op chat messages fading out while the player has the chat open.
  
• Fixed glitch where animal house water meter would briefly fill to max when adding cooked foods.
  
• Fixed bug where queued crafting meters would visually continue while game was paused.
  
• New first person sprinting animation for the M9.
  
• Selected ammo type for a weapon (such as premium/grenade arrows) now persist through a save/load.
  
• Prevented hitmarker showing when player takes environmental damage.
  
• Condition icons are now cleared when player dies.
  
• Fixed oven not showing pans cooking when loading a save.

Thanks you so much to all the players who have been posting thoughts and discussions on the Steam forums/Discord server/FB page/etc. I try to read it all and see lots of great ideas and insight posted regularly. This all helps immensely while I continue moving forward with development. Hope everyone’s having a great week, please stay tuned for more updates!

Cheers,
ColdGames

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs

Twitter: @playSubsistence
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playsubsistence/

Continued Translation Support Credits (in no particular order):
Spanish (David Lascasas)
Hungarian (Erb Ármin)
Portuguese BR (Thiago Schumacke)
German (LPCaiser)
Italian (Federico D. Ravagli)
French (Anthony Charrault)
Czech (Dílna U mnicha)
Danish (Morten Sørensen, Jesper Christensen, Bartholomeo Alexander)
Dutch (Damster_NL)
Russian (FRAME)
Turkish (Çağla Gurbet)
Polish (Daniel Łokietek)

Hi everyone! Today’s update is focused on addressing the performance issues that hosting players have been experiencing while several other players are playing on their server.

Previously, hosting players will have noticed an increasing drop in fps (frames-per-second) as more and more players joined their server. Often to the point of having unplayable or uncomfortable framerates.

This update overhauls much of the backend networking code and is showing vastly improved performance.

While benchmarking performance on a typical co-op game of 4 players, I’m am reading more than 200% performance increase for the host (which is huge). I also believe this performance should scale well even with larger player counts.

For anyone interested in technical details, below shows the performance stats for before and after for a hosting player for a 4-player co-op team, running the game at 2560x1440:



The intention is for clients to experience no difference during gameplay. However due to the fact that I’m now sending much less data over the network for items/players/AI that are far away from the viewing client, there may be some visual quirks. I’ll be keeping an eye on this and continue to make tweaks accordingly.

The netcode for ore nodes is now all new, so I believe this should rectify reported glitches of clients not seeing ore nodes while hosting players do.


Currently I’ve left the max player count at 8, and plan to monitor the performance stats of the new build. I’ll look into raising this count once I’ve collected more data.

My apologies to anyone waiting on a content update, but I felt this issue was important enough that I wanted to get this update out as soon as possible to ensure hosting players have a smooth gameplay experience.

Please stay tuned for further updates soon. If you haven’t already, please join the community Discord (link below). Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Cheers,
ColdGames

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs

Twitter: @playSubsistence
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playsubsistence/

Hi all! I hope everyone had a great holiday and new years. The first of the updates for 2019 is now live, here are the full details:

A deadly (and non-predatory) new animal now roams the wilderness. Moose are more rare than any of the other animals and will also avoid encounters with humans. However when provoked can deal extreme damage by goring players with their huge antlers.

You can view footage of Moose goring here (warning graphic violence):
https://youtu.be/QvfsvKu2LGI
Hunting and killing Moose now provides an additional source of sinew, as well as yielding antlers, fat, cloth, a guaranteed liver and a rack of ribs (a unique item to Moose).


Providing you have an Oven and Baking Pan, the ribs can be slow roasted with vegetables to create a meal that provides the highest boost to max health and stamina currently in the game.

A new high-tier bow can now be crafted at the workbench.


The Recurve Bow is intended for later-game and offers the following pros/cons over the standard bow:

• Deals slightly more damage per shot.
  
• Higher velocity arrows (so easier for leading shots).
  
• Less arrow drop.
  
• Quicker handling.
  
• Slightly better zoom while aiming.
  
• Arrows have a greater chance of breaking.

Unlike the standard bow, the Recurve Bow can have it’s fire-power upgraded at the workbench.



Heavily requested by the community since launch, players can now craft a flashlight attachment for their firearms at the workbench.

The Flashlight will attach to all the firearms and, while the weapon is equipped, can be toggled using the “L” key. This key can be rebound in the in-game controls menu.


The flashlight operates on batteries that can be crafted at the workbench.

A single battery will give a total charge of 12 minutes (real-world time), meaning each should last a couple of nights of continuous use.

You can charge a battery powered item by dragging and dropping a battery onto the item.

Battery powered items (currently just the flashlight) will display a charge meter on the item.

When attached to an equipped weapon (and the flashlight active) the charge indicator will display on the weapon, so you can easily see the charge remaining on your hotbar.

It is now possible for inventory items to be stored within other items. Left clicking any item will open a display of the item details at the top of the hud. For firearms you will see two slots designated for attachments.

Adding in-item storage required a fairly drastic overall of the inventory system code, and I did question whether I should spend the time on it. However, I see many other uses for this functionality for future features so I feel it was worth the effort.

Butchering an animal (or using the axe on humans) will now leave the player’s hands persistently bloody until washed. You can also see this bloody state on your co-op team-mates.

Neglecting to keep yourself clean will eventually result in an infection which then must be cured using the antidote.

To wash your hands, you can either:

• Submerge yourself in water.
  
• Press “use” on a water surface (if you want to stay dry).
  
• Use a full canteen or water bottle (option is in the right-click menu).

There is now a much easier, quicker and smoother butchering process. Previously the player would have to crouch and move around to find the correct spot. Now butchering can be triggered by looking at any part of the animal while close to it. The camera will transition into the correct spot and begin the process.

I feel this will actually have a big impact on gameplay pacing. Having to watch a slow animation after each animal kill was immersion breaking and took control away from the player. Gameplay during hunts should now flow much better. Let me know what you think.

I’ve fixed the issue of hunted animals being lost to lakes. Previously animals would sink to the depths, preventing the player from harvesting them.

I’ve now tweaked the physics so that animals should come to rest allowing them to be processed.

Players can now sit on the sofa and armchair. I haven’t tied this in with any gameplay mechanics yet, so this is purely for visual immersion at this point.


You can now shift-click items in/out of your toolbelt. This should be handy for quickly managing weapons, buildables, etc.

You can also shift-click into the weapon attachment slots.

Generators and Fabricators will now automatically shut-off once the power/mass storage tanks reach full capacity.

This means you’ll be able to leave them running without fear of overflowing the tanks and losing the excess.

Now craftable from the player craft menu under “Doors”.

• Polish (by Daniel Lokietek & Tomasz Samulski)
  
• Swedish (by Mattias Gustavsson)

• Increased spawn rate of locked crates.
  
  
• Fixed bug where the BCU marker sometimes wouldn’t show after BCU is first placed.
  
• Fixed hunters getting caught on the dropped kit when being killed in water.
  
• Crafted weapons are now added directly to the toolbelt.
  
• Reduced time to disassemble items.
  
• Fixed exploit of being able to add items to unallowed slots by swapping with item currently in the slot.
  
• Fixed bug of grenades being lost when throwing one with a stack size greater than 5.
  
• Slightly reduced ambient sound volume.
  
• Fixed cougar suspicious animation not playing for clients of co-op games.
  
• Fixed bug with host of co-op game not seeing the cougar “dragging-human” killing animation.
  
• Fixed cougar not dropping corpse when attacked during kill animation.
  
• Increased the time it takes for chasing predators to reach top speed.
  
• Increased the size of the lines indicating max health and stamina for better visibility.
  
  
• Fixed bug where player would go into falling animation when taking damage while asleep.
  
• Added fallback for rare bug where items can become invisible for clients. Now dragging another item into the slot will correct the slot.
  
• Fixed bug where clothing items were still clickable after closing the HUD.
  
• Workbench now defaults to the “Craft” tab.
  
• Fixed bug where ammo-type icon was not showing while switching for hosts.
  
• Fixed bug of clients not being able to view the correct model for alternate arrow types being used by other players and hunters.
  
• Fixed rare bug where 1st person arms get stuck in sprinting anim after aiming down sights.

Just want to give my thanks to everyone in the community for your support through 2018. Helping report bugs, giving feedback/suggestions and participating in the discussions helps a tremendous amount and I try my best to follow all discussions. I’m excited to continue evolving the game through 2019 I have a long list of goals I plan to achieve with the project!

Have a great Sunday!
All the best,
ColdGames

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs


Russian (FRAME)
Turkish (Çağla GURBET, Dogukan Yilmaz)
Dutch (Patrick Oostindjer, Damster_NL)
Spanish (David Lascasas)
Portuguese BR (Thiago Schumacke)
German (Jazz Jay, Sebastian Künzel)
French (Anthony Charrault)
Hungarian (Erb Ármin(Reaper))
Norwegian (Christer Djuvik, Svein Tore Stegemoen)
Czech (Dílna U mnicha)
Polish (Daniel Lokietek, Tomasz Samulski)
Swedish (Mattias Gustavsson)
* Please let me know if I missed anyone.

Hi all, hope everyone is doing great! This new update is largely focused on bringing greater depth to the hunters and their behavior in the world. As well as expanding on later-game activities and an assortment of other features and fixes.

In the later-game hunters will now start constructing giant fortress bases. These monster bases are multiple stories high and heavily defended. They are also prime for looting if you can get inside.

You can see some raw video footage of a lone-wolf fortress raid here:
https://youtu.be/oOX01-P278g
The hunters will eventually start armor-plating the base to secure it, so players will have to use greater force to gain entry.


Hunters now have an entirely new AI system allowing them to operate and function indoors. This has been a goal since the hunters were first introduced, and by far the most challenging technical aspect of this update.

Typically games use pre-baked navigation meshes to implement pathing for AI controlled NPC’s. This usually requires a predetermined/fixed map layout, and be generated in advance due to costly performance.

Due to the free-form modular building system in the game (where buildings can constantly change shape and grow/shrink over time), using a traditional nav-mesh approach seemed problematic (and possibly why I’ve never seen indoor AI-pathing within dynamic modular structures in an open-world base-building game).

I instead built a custom indoor pathing system, designed to allow hunters to calculate paths at run-time through dynamically-built modular structures. I’ve done a lot of bench-marking and the system has a very low performance impact. It’s still in a prototype phase, so please report any issues.

The implications of this new system (and a key motivation for the approach) is to open the possibility of hunters entering player bases during attacks, which would offer some interesting depth and tactical gameplay when defending your base. This would be something to explore in a future update however.

Hunters will now venture away from their camps to fish the lakes on the map. This is actually not just a visual facade. They go through the exact same process that players must; from casting, waiting for bites, striking and reeling in.

They won’t always choose the same fishing spots and sometimes travel large distances to reach water. This can introduce some unexpected, emergent hunters encounters as they travel around the map.

Killing a hunter after he’s caught a fish will mean you can steal his catch and take it home for your own dinner.

You will now notice hunters sitting by their campfire to rest and cook food.

Kill the hunter and you can steal his dinner for yourself.

Due to the large size of the fortresses, the old system for choosing locations for bases was not suitable. The entrances wouldn’t align correctly with the ground, trees would obstruct the structure, terrain would poke through the ground floor, and exploitable nearby ledges would compromise the base security.

There is now new system in place to handle this. There are no preset base locations (and never have been). This is all decided during gameplay and means there will almost never be two bases on separate profiles in the exact same location.

Hunters now have a new system to using the various utilities in their base. Prior to this update, loot would just be spawned in various base items.

• The woodburner gets topped up with fuel and lit.
  
• Fat is added to the woodburner and rendered down.
  
• Ores are added to the refinery and refined (drawing power from the main base).
  
• Power generators are topped up with fuel and set to run when low on power (also put into overdrive if the power-draw is high).
  
• Meats are cooked on the woodburner.
  
• Perishable food items are stored in the fridge (and the fridge turned on when food is inside).
  
• Base lights are switched on/off depending on the time of day.
  
• Cooked meals can often be found in the oven (no pans however).

Previously AI (animals and hunters) would only switch targets if they took damage from another player while in combat. This led to some odd moments of AI not responding to player’s right in front of them.

There is now new logic to handle switching targets based on the current scenario. I think this will make a big difference to combat in co-op.

To combat the armor plating of the new fortress bases, players can now craft a Breaching Charge at the workbench to destroy doors during raids.


The “Rogue Transceiver” is a new loot item that can be found in hunter base loot chests.

They are single-use items and, when used, will place a beacon on a rogue camp somewhere in the world.

In co-op, all team-mates will also see this beacon. Only one beacon can be placed at a time and will last for 15 minutes (real-world time). If all rogues are killed at that camp by the pursuing team, then the beacon will end and another one can be activated.

There has been a lot of fine tweaking of the hunter combat. Previously their accuracy did not decrease with distance, leading to some frustrating long range shots for the player.

They are now less accurate (which diminishes further with distance), however their movement is more precise and focused. With this and the new target-switching, I hope that this will balance out into no difficulty increase, but you’ll have to let me know your thoughts.

I hadn’t updated this since several map expansions ago, so this should give players a bit more breathing room.

This should give players avenues to sneak past enemy bases, and avoid extreme hot-zones.

Hunters would previously get stuck if encountering a wide perimeter wall around a player base. I’ve now added handling for this, so that they’ll either try to move around or blow a hole in the wall with force!

Regular hunters will now start moving into the world 2 days after a BCU is placed (previously 3).

Rogues also start moving in much earlier, as they were previously mostly a later game addition.

Previously hunters would drop a lot of food items. Typically players are able to keep themselves fed through hunting, fishing and farming. Now they instead drop more casings and gunpowder, so players can keep up with the demand for ammo.

This means if you kill a hunter who is fishing (and they are some distance from their base), it will not aggro the whole squad and remain as a stealth kill.

This hopefully creates a better balance between solar and wind power.


Down to 2.5 seconds per unlock.

Reduced from 5 seconds to 3.

I ran some heatmaps on predator roaming locations and have dialed back a couple of the zones.

More than 10 new items added to potentially spawn in hunter loot drops.

The wooden door can now be upgraded to armor-plated. The will significantly increase it’s hit-points and make repairs cheaper after attacks.

Hunters will also upgrade their entrance doors to armor-plated (for fortresses only).

Requested many times by players. Now available under the “railings” craft options, which will snap onto foundation stairs.


Players can now craft curved wall halfs. Wooden variants can be upgraded to armor-plated, and there is also a glass variant option.

I’ll continue to expand on the library of building pieces in future updates.

Players usually have a specific preference for how they position their toolbelt items. It’s always been frustrating to have to manually re-position these items (and re-add clothing items) after picking up your death crate.

Now when ”taking all” on a player’s dropped kit, all toolbelt and clothing items will be restored to the positions they were in when the kit was dropped.

The axe and pickaxe will now slowly take damage when used against base items (doors), indicated by the small health-bar on the inventory item.

This is to give greater emphasis on other means of breaking into bases, and decrease the incentive for chopping at doors for long periods of time (especially for fortresses that have several safe-rooms). They can still serve this purpose, but you might want to carry some spares.

They currently won’t take damage while logging and mining, although that may follow shortly.

Many players reported difficulties finding hunter dropped kits after a battle, due to dense foliage. They will now show a faint hud beacon, which should remove this frustration.


Finally the berry plant has its own distinguishable model. Previously it was confusingly similar to the fiber plants.

Previously when a player, hunter or animal was killed while in a base, they would clip through the base structure and fall out. This was very immersion-breaking and is now fixed! I think this makes indoor combat much more satisfying to see bodies slump into corners, or fly-over railings, etc.

Players will now lose less max health and stamina when they die. The new loss is 2/4/6 across easy/normal/hardcore respectively.


Older save games will work fine, however the hunters will be reset in the world, meaning they'll need to build-up from scratch.

• Russian
  
• Turkish
  
• Dutch

Crafted sticks now yield two sticks per log.

• Fixed selected tab not highlighting when accessing the fridge.
  
• Fixed bug where low-grade rabbit and chicken meat wouldn’t burn.
  
• Fixed bug where you could accidentally use an inventory item at the end of the butcher animation.
  
• Added contextual hot-key hint to the use action on item dropdown menus.
  
• Gameplay now fades to black when exiting the game.
  
• Now only possible to lose a max of one clothing item when dying (in normal and hardcore).
  
• Only the bandage issued for free gets destroyed on death (previously a whole stack could get flagged as free).
  
• Fixed glitchy AI movement (both hunters and animals) through water to now stay level with water surface (while roaming).
  
• Added damage skins for the bed.
  
• Added more performant LOD culling for fibers and pickable plants in the world (previously they were being rendered even if very far away).
  
• New wind animation for medicinal plants.
  
• Removed glitch where players could deal damage by jumping on another player’s head (some players may miss this… :) ).
  
• Hunters now no longer use grenades if they’re attacking players who are taking cover in their own base.
  
• Hunters will now react to grenades exploding new them at a greater range.
  
• Solar panels and wind turbines can now be placed on glass roofs.
  
• Many new (lower-poly) LOD models used for base items when viewing at range.
  
• Medicinal fluid stack size increased to 100.
  
• Fixed bug where loading a SP save game would load the player as the gender they were when the game was saved (rather than what they have selected in the character menu).
  
• Fixed glitchy splashing when entering/exiting water while crouched.
  
• Removed camera bob when rising or lowering in water.
  
• Fixed exploit of producing mass quantities of biofuel from the woodburner (thanks to a community member for spotting this one).
  
• Fixed bug with broken leg and bleeding icon occasionally not showing after loading a save.

Thanks for your patience while I worked through this one. I feel the new hunter behavior systems lay a good foundation for some interesting future updates. Also thanks to everyone that helped test the build on the experimental branch, it was a huge help.

Please let me know if you experience any issues with the update.

Hope you have a great weekend,
ColdGames

You can follow the official Twitter @playSubsistence and Facebook page.

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs


Russian (FRAME)
Turkish (Çağla GURBET, Dogukan Yilmaz)
Dutch (Patrick Oostindjer, Damster_NL)
Spanish (David Lascasas)
Portuguese BR (Thiago Schumacke)
German (Sebastian Künzel, Jazz Jay)
French (Anthony Charrault)
Hungarian (Erb Ármin(Reaper))
Norwegian (Christer Djuvik)
* Please let me know if I missed anyone.

Hi everyone! This new update has been focused on addressing some long-standing, big-ticket items that have been on my list for a long time.

This is a feature that has been consistently requested since launch so I’m really happy to have it in place. I feel this will add greater diversity to the visuals during gameplay (especially for co-op) and finally give players the choice to play as their desired gender.

I attempted to repurpose the male skeleton for the female model but wasn’t happy with the results, so I rigged her model to a new skeleton. This meant I needed to redo/update all the existing animations for the new skeleton. Technically she's certainly not perfect, but I’ll be continuing to make improvements over time.

All of the existing clothing items in the game will fit on the female character, and each has been remodeled for her physique.

I initially implemented a static model for the female hair but the appearance was just too stiff. So I experimented with the Apex cloth physics engine, and managed to achieve a fairly convincing effect. The hair will sway with the motions and actions of the character. I was careful to ensure this is performant and should have a very low impact on system performance.

There are all-new damage skins for the new character. I’m also now using normal maps to give injuries more depth to the geometry. It can look pretty gnarly if the character takes heavy damage during battles and attacks.

Players can select their desired gender from the new Character screen in the main menu. This can be done at any time and will take effect on all existing profiles (no restart needed). You can even update your gender during multiplayer games.

Currently the only option is simply a gender-select. However, there is room for expansion here, such as skin-tones, face-types, hair-styles, etc., but I’ll wait to hear back from players to see how much interest there is in these types of customization before starting work on anything.

Finally Subsistence now supports several languages (10 now in total including English). This was where most of the effort this sprint was spent (and why the update is later than usual). I had to pay the price for years of rapid prototyping and neglect for a proper localization system.

Here are the newly supported languages (with more currently in the works):

• German
  
• Spanish
  
• Italian
  
• Portuguese (Portugal)
  
• Portuguese (Brazil)
  
• French
  
• Norwegian
  
• Hungarian
  
• Czech

You can switch to your desired language at top-left of the main menu:

International players from many nations came together to help make this happen. I’m deeply grateful to all those who participated and for putting in the time and care. I was truly touched to see the response when I reached out about translation support. It was a true pleasure to work with you all! I will credit below the individuals who helped make this a reality.

This is just an initial launch, so I’m sure there may be issues with context etc in certain parts of the game. If you’d like to contribute with corrections, edits or to help support additional languages, please reach out to me at playsubsistence@gmail.com.

Since the dynamic weather system was added, I’ve wanted to incorporate weather into base operations and to give an upside to stormy days.

Wind Turbines are now craftable within the BCU. They provide an alternative means of supplemental power (in addition to solar panels). While solar panels only generate power during daylight hours, wind turbines generate power during windy/stormy days, regardless of the time of day.

I think they add a cool aesthetic to base designs, and also give an visual indication of incoming storms by the increasing speed of the blades.

I’ve added several new quality-of-life changes to shift clicking. Player can now shift-click:

• Meats and canteens into the woodburner and campfire.
  
• Water and fertilizer into plantbeds.
  
• Seeds into plantbed grow-slots.
  
• Fuel into the power generator.
  
• Fat into the fat-renderer in the woodburner.
  
• Animals into the animal housing.
  
• Food and water into the animal housing.

This should remove some of the tedium in tending to regular chores around the base.

Heavily requested by players; gameplay will now freeze when the player brings up the main menu during single-player. Sorry this wasn’t added sooner.

Pressing the “cycle-camera” key will now toggle a moveable camera view of your character. Player movement is limited during this view. The intention is so players can get a better view of their character while gearing-up. It should also give some flexibility when setting scenes for screenshots. I may add expanded tooling for content creators at a later date.

You may have noticed hunters never set up base on the far western side of the map, on the shores and forest areas. This was due to some technical complications on their base-locating logic that I couldn’t address in time for the last map expansion. They can now utilize all of the new area (this includes rogue camps).

Previously I was spawning all loot items in crates around the map the moment the crate spawned. This led to needlessly increased item (actor) counts in the game at any time, resulting in memory overhead. I now only spawn the loot once the crate is opened. This means there is a lighter memory footprint.

Prompted by a player suggestion, you can now extract multiple seeds when working with a stack of vegetables. Small change, but should save a lot of right-clicking while farming.

• Optimized save-game logic to require less data be written to disk during saves.
  
• Fixed progress bar not showing while upgrading weapons in the workbench.
  
• Many minor tweaks to existing male character animations (this is ongoing).
  
• Halved the craft time for bandages.
  
  
• Death message now shows actual mapped keybindings.
  
• New sound for accessing the refinery.

I understand that some players (those that only play solo, English-speaking and as the male character) may feel disappointed by the main features on this release. I hope you will appreciate that these are necessary steps to move the project forward and fulfill promises made to players since launch. I’m excited that there is now a female character and I’m excited that players from other nations can now join our community while playing in their native language.

Thanks for everyone’s patience while I worked on this one, and another huge thanks to everyone who contributed to the translations. If you haven’t already, come and join the community on the official Discord (invite below) and steam forum. You can also follow the official Twitter @playSubsistence and Facebook page.

Hope you have a great Friday,
CG

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs

Spanish:
• José Gabriel Rodríguez González
  
• Toni Racing
  Hungarian:
  
• Erb Ármin(Reaper)
  
• Bodó Ádám (Dyxon)
  Portuguese (Brazil):
  
• Marcos Lacerda
  
• Thiago Schumacke
  
• Robson Prioli
  
• Luiza Gimenez
  
• Rafael Ahab Squarça
  
• Lucas Lima
  German:
  
• Sebastian Künzel
  Portuguese (Portugal):
  
• Sandrine Magalhaes
  
• Claudia Rocha (Xena)
  Italian:
  
• Federico D. Ravagli
  French:
  
• Anthony Charrault
  Norwegian:
  
• Sven Geissler
  
• Svein Tore Stegemoen
  Czech:
  
• Petr - Dílna U mnicha

(really sorry if I missed anyone)

Hi all! Today's update introduces a dynamic weather system into the world. This is something regularly requested/suggested by players since launch, and something I’ve been eager to work on for a long time.

The new system impacts both the world and player, and obviously provides much more varied visuals while exploring and living in the world, as well as extra survival considerations and consequences.

I’ve put algorithms in place to control when fronts move in/out, and at what strength and ferocity. Players starting out a fresh profile won’t experience any bad weather until they are past their second day. This is to give the chance to get basic shelter up.

Existing profiles that are many days in will likely experience a full weather front very soon. This is just because of the way the algorithm works, it will consider one long overdue.

Even subtle changes in weather will affect the overall temperature within the world. Prior to the update temperatures would change based on time of day and altitude. Weather now adds an additional factor into that equation for the player to consider. A heavy weather front can drop the temperature by up to -8 degrees. Being caught up in the mountains, late in the day, with a storm front moving in could be costly if ignored. So dress for the occasion.

There is now a new system to calculate how sheltered the player is at any moment. Previously it was either fully sheltered or not at all. Please take note of the temperature changes from moving in, out and around your base. There is a fair amount of warmth given from a fully enclosed base (even one without a lit woodburner).

Players will now get wet, either from swimming or being out in the rain. An icon will display to indicate when you are wet:

The impact of being wet is that it drops your tolerance to cold (by 4 degrees below what is listed in your clothing profile), which also reduces your strength regeneration rate. Once in the dry, the player will start drying. Being near a campfire or lit woodburner will accelerate the drying by 2x. Being wet is fine if the temperature is mild, but be careful when at high altitudes, at night or during weather fronts.

Previously the ambient sounds of the world would be unchanged as players entered their base. This always bothered me and hurt the feeling of immersion when entering your base from out in the world. You will now notice ambient sounds phase in and out, based on how enclosed you are. I think this makes a big difference in terms of immersion.

From a technical perspective (in a world where players can build enclosed structures wherever they please) it’s challenging to handle weather effects (such as rain) transitions between interior and exterior. Some games simply disable the fx as players move inside.

However I really wanted players to be able to look out on a stormy day from the comfort and warmth of their base (especially with the glass structures). So I coded something to handle this. It’s not perfect, but I feel does achieve the “cosiness” effect I was after.


Previously players were able to add other players to their base without their consent. Due to other changes (keep reading), players now need to use the BCU to send invites to players.


Tying in with the new invite system; bases in co-op games will only auto-generate power and mass if all base members are not part of another base which is auto-generating power and mass. This is to prevent the exploit where co-op teams can create many satellite mini-bases to farm lockpicks/refine-ore/etc.
Many players were rightfully displeased when the removal of the Wellhead left water procurement difficult for bases in arid areas of the map. There’s now a water option to the mining drill.

I’ve finally added proper error handling for clients joining servers. Now if the connection fails, the reason will display in a popup, allowing players to resolve the issue more easily.

Previously, players that chose to host public games had very limited control over their server. I’ve added a set of admin commands to give server admins more insight into their game-worlds and control to keep their servers clean and welcoming to other players.

The console can be opened using the “=” key. To list available commands type “help”. I also updated the visuals and color scheme (now transparent so admins see what’s happening when open).

Available commands:

• ListPlayers (list all players currently on the server)
  
• KickPlayer [player name/id]
  
• KickBanPlayer [player name/id]
  
• ListBans (list all active bans on the server)
  
• ClearBan [player id] (clear a specific ban for a player id)
  
• ClearAllBans
  
• ListBases (list all player bases on the map, will show number of base members and how many currently online per base)
  
• DeleteBase [base id] (delete a specific player base on the map)

There is also a new bindable key (available only to server host) to delete player built base items on the map (it's unbound by default).

The idea is to allow server hosts to clear abandoned bases in their world and keep things clean. I would kindly ask server hosts to be considerate when using these tools.

• Dropped kit despawn time has been increased (10 mins in normal, 15 mins in easy).
  
• Hunters will now switch bases that they are targeting based the status of the base.
  
• Bottles of water can be used to fill canteens. I see this a temporary workaround to allow for drilled water to be used in the oven recipes.
  
  
• Replaced place-holder model for player dropped kit (and new sound for accessing it).
  
  
• Plantbeds get a small amount of water from rain (if they are not covered).
  
  
• Fixed bug that could cause player’s dropped kit spawning inside rocks and trees (really sorry for anyone who lost upgraded weapons to this bug).
  
• BCU and workbench now have extra inventory slots and larger craft list sizes.
  
• Added new underwater particle fx.
  
• When accessing player dropped kit, you can now see all slots.
  
• Added ambient glow for floodlight faces.
  
  
• BCU now has the option to disable it’s base beacon.
  
  
• Alt-F4 now works for exiting the game.
  
• Password fields in the co-op hosting and joining menus are now hidden (so streamers don’t need to worry about people crashing their servers).
  
• Whole chickens can now be cut into smaller pieces of premium meat.
  
  
• Random (non-bed) spawns will avoid spawning players at high altitudes during storms.
  
• New death sounds for killing chickens in your inventory.
  
• Eating when full now takes into account whether the proteins/fruits-veg bars can accommodate eating the food item. So if you’re hunger is full, but your fruits and veg are low, you can still eat tomato soup etc.

I think that covers all the main features and changes. Please know that the new weather system is almost certain to change. The frequency of weather fronts and the balance in terms of the effects on the player is something I’ll be listening heavily to the community about when tweaking.

Please let me know your thoughts on the new changes on the Discord (invite below) and steam forum. You can also follow the official Twitter @playSubsistence and Facebook page.

This one was quite a challenge, and a lot of fun to work on! I hope everyone’s having a great weekend!

Cheers,
CG

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs