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

Hi all! This new update aims to expand on the later-game subsistence mechanics, bringing greater depth to player self sufficiency, while adding a progression mechanic to the overall health system.

There are now 3 new types of collectable plants that spawn in the world; wild carrots, potatoes and onions.

While these plants can be found from day one, they are fairly rare and not meant as a reliable source of early-game veggies (although they are a fair supplement). In fact much of the time they will only yield a seed for the given plant type, requiring the player to plant and grow their own crops.


The new seeds can all be used in the plantbed to grow an abundance of vegetables in your base.

Each seed will yield 3 veggies of its type, and each vegetable can be used to yield a single seed. Meaning, technically, players only need a single seed to mass-produce vegetables of its type.

I slightly decreased the amount of water and fertilizer each plant uses while growing in the plantbed. However be aware that overloading plantbeds puts heavier demands on water and fertilizer, so try to only grow what you can afford.

Players can now craft an oven in the BCU. This is a powered device that provides an assortment of new food recipes for players to cook.

The oven is designed as a later-game item, and requires the workbench as well as expanded power/mass storage capability to craft.


In order to use the oven. Several types of pans are required, which can be crafted at the workbench.

Each pan unlocks its own tier of recipes. There are 3 tiers: Fried, Boiled and Baked. Some recipes even require pre-cooked ingredients from other tiers. The pans increase in cost across the 3 tiers.

The oven requires power to use. It can queue recipes (much like crafting in the workbench or BCU) and deducts the power required for each recipe when the player queues the item. Queued recipes can be cancelled, which refunds the ingredients and power.

The oven will visibly show heated hobs, steaming pans, etc to indicate which recipe types are cooking at any given time.


The oven can be upgraded to increase its power efficiency. There are two separate upgrades, each reducing the power cost of each recipe by 15%.


There are a total of 10 new cooked food items. Many of which required reared animal produce and home grown vegetables.

Makes use of the new vegetables while pairing with the base-grade meats and chicken eggs.


All of the boiled recipes require a canteen of clean water. I’ve added a mechanic to empty only the contents, leaving the empty canteen in the player’s inventory. If the player cancels the recipe, the clean water will be administered back into the empty canteen (if the player is still holding it).


Considered the more elaborate cooked recipe items, which offer the greatest benefits to the new health system (explained below). These recipes take the longest to cook, and the required baking pan is the most expensive of the three pans.


Once a chicken levels up to level 10, they will now yield a whole raw chicken when butchered, which can be roasted in the oven (currently the highest tier cooked meal).



All of the new cookable recipes are in place to support an overhauled player health system.

Players start with a specific max health and max strength (which differs across difficulty modes). These values can be viewed in the updated health hud:

Under both the health and strength meters, you will notice a small sub-meter indicating the progress of boosting another level to the max value.

Different cooked food items will boost these meters. Some basic cooked items will offer very little boost, while other more elaborate cooked meals will add substantial boosts.

Each time you fill the sub-meter of health or strength, it will boost the max value. There is currently a max cap of 125.

The intention behind this system is to put greater emphasis on raising animals, farming crops and producing higher quality foods. Also a sense of your character slowly growing stronger and more agile if you are living well.

It makes sense that there should greater reward to eating a hot homemade tomato soup, over eating 10 raw kelp straight out of the lakes.

Finding the correct balance to this new system will take time, so I strongly welcome opinions and suggestions once you’ve had a chance to try it out. It is intended as a subtle progression system to tie-in with later-game progression, not a race to hit max levels.

Dying will deduct progress on max health and strength (easy/normal == -5, hardcore == -10). Untreated/prolonged illness or cold exposure will also have a gradual negative impact on these levels.

Many of the cooked meals can only be eaten if the player is hungry enough. The player’s hunger bar needs to accommodate ⅓ of the total provided by the meal. I thought it was necessary to put some restraints on the new system to avoid it being spammed. Lets see how it plays out.

I needed to update the old item hover tips to better display the new stats. They now show larger/higher-detail item images, and layout the stats in a cleaner format. They are also responsive to screen location (so they won’t display partially off-screen, like previously with the clothing hud slots).

Food items that offer a health/strength boost will display these stats in green (see image above).

The Wellhead was added as a means of acquiring water prior to lakes/rivers being added to the game - which some of you may remember. It soon became redundant when the first Lakes update dropped, which was a shame as it was a cool device and I put in a lot of care when implementing it.

I decided to repurpose it into the Mining Drill. While mostly operating the same, players can now select a specific ore-type to target and slowly mine that one ore-type.This should be handy for when players are running low on a specific ore-type.

• Eating low-grade raw chicken and rabbit now causes illness.
  
• Antidotes now require raw liver (not cooked/burnt/rotten).
  
• Fixed bug that could cause hunters and animals to spawn outside the fence (at the 90° fence corner by the new expansion).
  
• Jumping and landing in shallow river water now triggers appropriate splashing sound.
  
• Players can now mouse-hover + use-key on the canteen to fill it with water.
  
• Fixed splashing footsteps not playing at the lower section of the new wide stream.
  
• Increase max stack counts of many items (too many to list), to accommodate for growing number of item types.
  
• Fixed rare bug that would cause clients of network games to not lose stamina and health stats.

I think I’ve detailed all the key points of the new changes. I’ve touched many of the core systems, so I fully expect to make required balancing tweaks moving forward.

I welcome all feedback on the update. If you haven’t yet, please join myself and other players on the official Discord (invite below). You can also follow the game on Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks to all the community for the support, it means a lot. Hope everyone has an awesome week!
CG

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

Hi guys! Today’s update brings a vast expansion to the west side of the map. A new forest type hugs the mountain slopes and stretches out around the large central lake. Waterfalls, streams, lagoons and cliffs offer new points of navigation and locations for interesting base designs.

I’ve implemented new tree and foliage types to give the new areas a distinct aesthetic from the previous regions of the world. The increased foliage density may affect the difficulty in finding resources. Let me know what you think once you’ve tried it out.


The large central lake is now fully accessible from all sides. It always bothered me to have to fence off the central section of the lake, so I’m pleased to have this opened up.

The expanded lake area also means there are much greater areas of deep water. These depths aren’t currently accessible due to oxygen capacity. I definitely want to explore some ideas so that there are reasons and means for players to explore these depths in a future update.



Players can now choose the hunter attack setting that best suits their taste. There are 3 settings:

1. Normal attack patterns:
   Hunters will launch periodic attacks on player bases and revenge attacks.
   
2. Only revenge attacks:
   Hunters will only attack player bases if they are avenging a player attack against them.
   
3. Never attack:
   Hunters will still guard their territory, but will not launch attacks on player bases.

These new settings should give players better freedom to customize their own games. This setting can be changed whenever when launching a profile.

Many players have mentioned that the predators are too overbearing (no pun intended) in easy mode, and I have to agree. It’s not very welcoming to new players looking to get a feel for the mechanics to be bombarded by attacks. The reduction is close to 20%, so not a total nerf, but should make a positive impact for players of this mode. Note: This does not affect cougar spawns.


Given the much larger space for players to explore, I’ve implemented a basic compass as an additional tool of navigation. This has been notably requested by co-op players, new to the game, to help locate one another.

This isn’t currently a craftable item, and simply displays as default in top-left of the hud. It didn’t seem worth making it craftable until there is a map implemented.

Up until now interior base lights have been quite expensive on fps. This is due to their expensive dynamic shadow casting. It looks really cool, but could get needlessly taxing on system resources when there are many lights on at the time. I’ve implemented a system to dynamically toggle their individual shadow casting based on the current fps, so it should scale appropriately while maintaining a stable fps.

Due to the expanded map size, there are now slightly more rogue squads on the map at any given time. I’ll be keeping a close eye on how this balances out. I appreciate any feedback on this in the forums or discord.

• Fixed bug that caused predator to group-up at one particular spot on the map (details for those interested: https://steamcommunity.com/app/418030/discussions/0/2561864094348880301/).
  
• Fixed bug/exploit where clients of co-op games could build overly close to hunter bases (thanks GameEdged, Ohno, Emma, Selebear, Dread for finding this one ;) ).
  
• Added splashing particle effect for players running through water.
  
• Sinew removed from grenade recipe.
  
• Updated sound for upgrading structures to armor-plated.
  
• Glass roofs now require glass to repair (was previously wood).
  
• 9mm ammo now stacks to 50 and 7.62 stacks to 25 (included in prior hotfix).
  
• Added system to ensure more even spread of deer in the world.
  
• More pronounced hairs on wolves and bears.

Some players may feel that focus should have been on balance and expanding on gameplay mechanics. It’s important the map continues to grow incrementally to accommodate for future mechanics (there will certainly be more expansions in the future). I want travel and exploration to start to play a greater role as the game continues to grow. This month I had family visiting, so it made sense for me to take the opportunity and commit to a large map expansion for this particular sprint.

After such an art-heavy sprint, I’m really looking forward to moving onto many other pressing tasks. All with a much larger world to work within.

Thanks for everyone’s patience on this one. It means a lot to see support from players on the forums and discord. Please come and join the discord if you haven’t already (link below).

Hope you have a great weekend.
CG

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

It’s been a while since any new animals have been introduced. You will now find wild deer roaming the landscape. The idea being to add greater diversity to the wildlife population, while adding a non-aggressive, elusive and agile animal to hunt.

Unlike the other animals that stay somewhat localized to their territory, deer will traverse the entire world while grazing and dodging predators. They are stealthy and spook easily, so players should be careful while hunting.

They are coded to understand where they’ve previously been and to explore new areas, so you may find one wandering into your backyard or into unexpected areas (so keep an eye out). Their hearing and sight sensitivity differs across easy/medium/hardcore.

Predators will now chase and kill deer. It has been tricky to balance the predator/prey life-cycle, so i’ll be keeping a close eye on how this balance plays out and will make adjustments as necessary.

Because of how quick deer can flee, focus on landing a headshot to ensure a kill. The vanilla 9mm won’t kill on a single hit, but all other weapons (including the bow) will.

Harvesting deer will yield antlers (as well as meat and cloth). Antlers can crafted down with biofuel and ash to create a strong adhesive.

Adhesive is now used in several of the advanced crafting recipes (especially glass structures which now require less scrap).

A new ladder hatch can now be found in the default crafting menu (under wood ceilings). Placed like any normal ceiling, it can be opened and closed to gain access to floors in your base without the need for stairs.

The ladder hatch can also be upgraded to armor-plated using the hammer.


Players can now craft claymores at the workbench. These can be placed around your base perimeter to help deal lots of damage during hunter attacks.

Here are their rules:

• Players that place them will be safe from triggering them.
  
• Teammates of a player who placed them will not trigger them (so don’t forget to add your teammates to the player list in the BCU).
  
• Animals will not trigger them, so there are primarily intended to defend against hunter attacks.

They can be moved and/or disassembled, much like buildables. They can also be shot to trigger a detonation, which may come in handy during a fight.


Hunters can also now use claymores. Once their base becomes large enough, they will start placing them to ward off raids (so watch your footing).


I’ve added three new glass roof buildables (compact, slanted and curved). These can be found in the default player crafting menu.

My hope is this will give players a bit more freedom with their base layouts, and lead to some interesting and cool looking designs.

I’ve finally gotten around to adding an inverted variant of the corner stairs, which many players have politely asked for for a long time. While I was at it, I also added armor plated variants for each.


There have been a lot of small improvements to the hunter AI.

• They now use a deeper tree of pathing decisions while travelling large distances across the landscape.
  
• I’ve reworked their swimming behavior. They no longer flip and spin on their back while crossing water. They now smoothly swim across bodies of water. This also means they reach their destination quicker, making them less vulnerable to fire while swimming.
  
• I’ve fixed many of their odd quirks while in combat. Such as; they no longer aim away from their target and spin at the last moment to take shots, instead taking time to aim at their target, allowing players time to react. I’ve slightly reduced their firing frequency to balance these changes.
  
• They now use new pathing to find dry land while in deep water (this is also applied to animal AI).

Please note: The hunter AI is very much a work in progress, and I know they still need a lot of work. I have a lot planned for them to make them capable and believable adversaries who are fun to fight. It will take time.

I’ve spent some time trimming out a lot of unnecessary network calls during co-op play. Digging through various systems I managed to find a great deal that were needlessly using up bandwidth. Netcode is something I’ll be continuing to improve as the game evolves. The plan is to soon support dedicated servers for greater stability.

Some players have reported lag spikes during auto-saves. While I investigate the cause of this issue I’ve added the ability to disable auto-save from the options menu (under the gameplay tab). Please note that this does not disable the auto-save on death (in normal and hardcore). If you choose to disable auto-save, please don’t forget to save manually (using F8) and the “Save and Exit” when leaving the game.

• Fixed bug that prevented players from picking up items or harvesting animals in shallow water.
  
• Inflicting a headshot now gives the player obvious audio feedback, regardless of distance to the target.
  
• Fixed bug that would cause the camera to get stuck if using co-op text chat while butchering animals.
  
• Added in-game option to toggle windowed mode (found in the graphics option menu).
  
• Animal AI now will now choose to cross bodies of water if they cannot find a dry route to their destination.
  
• Scrap metal now stacks up to 50 (previously 40).
  
• Cougars now do slightly more damage to base structures.
  
• Added some of the new items to the loot tables for hunter bases and locked crates.
  
• Increased the color saturation of grass in the green meadows.
  
• Prevented animals playing out suspicious animations while swimming.
  
• Staggered the workload of the save system to reduce system demand during saves.
  
• Fixed bug where hunters would build their campfires on river surfaces.
  
• Fixed issue of hunters sometimes spawning on the wrong side of the fence. If you currently have hunters outside the fence, you can either reset them, or destroy their base with a BCU cracker.
  
• Placing a second BCU now lights up the BCU build sphere on the original, so it is easier to know when you are linking them.
  
• Fixed audio feedback not playing when upgrading base buildables.

Thanks as always to everyone that’s been supporting the project. It’s great to have you joining the discussion, making suggestions and reporting issues. It feels pretty amazing to be working on the project full-time now. I’m excited for the future and to truly start shaping and expanding the game.

If you haven’t already, please join myself and other players on the Discord server, and on the Steam forums. Please let me know if you experience any issues with the update. I’m sure there will be balancing tweaks needed.

Have an awesome weekend.
CG


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

It’s been a while since any new animals have been introduced. You will now find wild deer roaming the landscape. The idea being to add greater diversity to the wildlife population, while adding a non-aggressive, elusive and agile animal to hunt.

Unlike the other animals that stay somewhat localized to their territory, deer will traverse the entire world while grazing and dodging predators. They are stealthy and spook easily, so players should be careful while hunting.

They are coded to understand where they’ve previously been and to explore new areas, so you may find one wandering into your backyard or into unexpected areas (so keep an eye out). Their hearing and sight sensitivity differs across easy/medium/hardcore.

Predators will now chase and kill deer. It has been tricky to balance the predator/prey life-cycle, so i’ll be keeping a close eye on how this balance plays out and will make adjustments as necessary.

Because of how quick deer can flee, focus on landing a headshot to ensure a kill. The vanilla 9mm won’t kill on a single hit, but all other weapons (including the bow) will.

Harvesting deer will yield antlers (as well as meat and cloth). Antlers can crafted down with biofuel and ash to create a strong adhesive.

Adhesive is now used in several of the advanced crafting recipes (especially glass structures which now require less scrap).

A new ladder hatch can now be found in the default crafting menu (under wood ceilings). Placed like any normal ceiling, it can be opened and closed to gain access to floors in your base without the need for stairs.

The ladder hatch can also be upgraded to armor-plated using the hammer.


Players can now craft claymores at the workbench. These can be placed around your base perimeter to help deal lots of damage during hunter attacks.

Here are their rules:

• Players that place them will be safe from triggering them.
  
• Teammates of a player who placed them will not trigger them (so don’t forget to add your teammates to the player list in the BCU).
  
• Animals will not trigger them, so there are primarily intended to defend against hunter attacks.

They can be moved and/or disassembled, much like buildables. They can also be shot to trigger a detonation, which may come in handy during a fight.


Hunters can also now use claymores. Once their base becomes large enough, they will start placing them to ward off raids (so watch your footing).


I’ve added three new glass roof buildables (compact, slanted and curved). These can be found in the default player crafting menu.

My hope is this will give players a bit more freedom with their base layouts, and lead to some interesting and cool looking designs.

I’ve finally gotten around to adding an inverted variant of the corner stairs, which many players have politely asked for for a long time. While I was at it, I also added armor plated variants for each.


There have been a lot of small improvements to the hunter AI.

• They now use a deeper tree of pathing decisions while travelling large distances across the landscape.
  
• I’ve reworked their swimming behavior. They no longer flip and spin on their back while crossing water. They now smoothly swim across bodies of water. This also means they reach their destination quicker, making them less vulnerable to fire while swimming.
  
• I’ve fixed many of their odd quirks while in combat. Such as; they no longer aim away from their target and spin at the last moment to take shots, instead taking time to aim at their target, allowing players time to react. I’ve slightly reduced their firing frequency to balance these changes.
  
• They now use new pathing to find dry land while in deep water (this is also applied to animal AI).

Please note: The hunter AI is very much a work in progress, and I know they still need a lot of work. I have a lot planned for them to make them capable and believable adversaries who are fun to fight. It will take time.

I’ve spent some time trimming out a lot of unnecessary network calls during co-op play. Digging through various systems I managed to find a great deal that were needlessly using up bandwidth. Netcode is something I’ll be continuing to improve as the game evolves. The plan is to soon support dedicated servers for greater stability.

Some players have reported lag spikes during auto-saves. While I investigate the cause of this issue I’ve added the ability to disable auto-save from the options menu (under the gameplay tab). Please note that this does not disable the auto-save on death (in normal and hardcore). If you choose to disable auto-save, please don’t forget to save manually (using F8) and the “Save and Exit” when leaving the game.

• Fixed bug that prevented players from picking up items or harvesting animals in shallow water.
  
• Inflicting a headshot now gives the player obvious audio feedback, regardless of distance to the target.
  
• Fixed bug that would cause the camera to get stuck if using co-op text chat while butchering animals.
  
• Added in-game option to toggle windowed mode (found in the graphics option menu).
  
• Animal AI now will now choose to cross bodies of water if they cannot find a dry route to their destination.
  
• Scrap metal now stacks up to 50 (previously 40).
  
• Cougars now do slightly more damage to base structures.
  
• Added some of the new items to the loot tables for hunter bases and locked crates.
  
• Increased the color saturation of grass in the green meadows.
  
• Prevented animals playing out suspicious animations while swimming.
  
• Staggered the workload of the save system to reduce system demand during saves.
  
• Fixed bug where hunters would build their campfires on river surfaces.
  
• Fixed issue of hunters sometimes spawning on the wrong side of the fence. If you currently have hunters outside the fence, you can either reset them, or destroy their base with a BCU cracker.
  
• Placing a second BCU now lights up the BCU build sphere on the original, so it is easier to know when you are linking them.
  
• Fixed audio feedback not playing when upgrading base buildables.

Thanks as always to everyone that’s been supporting the project. It’s great to have you joining the discussion, making suggestions and reporting issues. It feels pretty amazing to be working on the project full-time now. I’m excited for the future and to truly start shaping and expanding the game.

If you haven’t already, please join myself and other players on the Discord server, and on the Steam forums. Please let me know if you experience any issues with the update. I’m sure there will be balancing tweaks needed.

Have an awesome weekend.
CG


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


Edit (hotfix): I needed to release a hotfix (at 6pm PST 10th April) to fix a reported bug that could lead to animals not tiring when giving chase.

Ever since the release of co-op, players wishing to host were forced to forward ports to allow their friends to join. This was always a huge pain and resulted in many players not being able to play with their friends.

I’ve implemented a new system that will detect when your Steam friends are playing, and allow you to join them (without the host needing to forward any ports). It’s still early, so I expect there may be some issues. However this should hopefully allow many players who were previously unable to play co-op to now play with their friends.

Players need to be Steam friends to see each others games in the new menu. Players also need to be visible in Steam (so not appearing offline).

Hosts should use the same in-game host menu as before. Once launched, their friends should see them popup in the “Join/Friends” menu, and can join from there.


I’m still yet to implement proper error reporting for when joins fail. As such it’s not always clear why a client would fail to join. Please ensure you set the required amount of open slots when launching the game. There’s also an issue where sometimes it will report that it failed to join, but then go in after anyway. I’ll be working to improve this and add better error messaging.

The existing server list is still in. Players that wish for their games to be publicly listed (so non friends can join) will still need to forward their Steam port (27015). Eventually I plan to add dedicated server support.

Several players mentioned they were unable to play with their core group of friends due to the player cap. I’ve increased the cap to 8.

We should treat this as an experiment to see how the netcode scales with more players, so let me know if you experience issues in games with higher player counts.


I've created an official Discord server for Subsistence players to meet, play and discuss. If you are looking for players to team-up with, please come and join us in the Discord. I haven’t yet set up moderators etc, so will get that ironed out over the coming days. I’ll be on the server fairly often to help troubleshoot and discuss development.

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

• I’ve updated the placeholder wood log image:
  
  
• I’ve added a glass doorway after a few players mentioned they needed one for the their builds. No glass door yet, but that will come.
  
  
• Dismantling upgraded walls now returns half the upgrade cost back.
  
  
• Fixed hammer not functioning correctly for clients of co-op games (previously only the hosts could use it to upgrade walls).

The goal of this update is to attempt to make it much easier for friends to play together. This is just an iteration and still needs more work (and I imagine there will still be players experiencing networking issues). If you do, please post on the forum or discord so that myself and other players can help troubleshoot any issues.

Hope you have a great Friday and weekend!
CG

Ever since the release of co-op, players wishing to host were forced to forward ports to allow their friends to join. This was always a huge pain and resulted in many players not being able to play with their friends.

I’ve implemented a new system that will detect when your Steam friends are playing, and allow you to join them (without the host needing to forward any ports). It’s still early, so I expect there may be some issues. However this should hopefully allow many players who were previously unable to play co-op to now play with their friends.

Players need to be Steam friends to see each others games in the new menu. Players also need to be visible in Steam (so not appearing offline).

Hosts should use the same in-game host menu as before. Once launched, their friends should see them popup in the “Join/Friends” menu, and can join from there.


I’m still yet to implement proper error reporting for when joins fail. As such it’s not always clear why a client would fail to join. Please ensure you set the required amount of open slots when launching the game. There’s also an issue where sometimes it will report that it failed to join, but then go in after anyway. I’ll be working to improve this and add better error messaging.

The existing server list is still in. Players that wish for their games to be publicly listed (so non friends can join) will still need to forward their Steam port (27015). Eventually I plan to add dedicated server support.

Several players mentioned they were unable to play with their core group of friends due to the player cap. I’ve increased the cap to 8.

We should treat this as an experiment to see how the netcode scales with more players, so let me know if you experience issues in games with higher player counts.


I've created an official Discord server for Subsistence players to meet, play and discuss. If you are looking for players to team-up with, please come and join us in the Discord. I haven’t yet set up moderators etc, so will get that ironed out over the coming days. I’ll be on the server fairly often to help troubleshoot and discuss development.

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

• I’ve updated the placeholder wood log image:
  
  
• I’ve added a glass doorway after a few players mentioned they needed one for the their builds. No glass door yet, but that will come.
  
  
• Dismantling upgraded walls now returns half the upgrade cost back.
  
  
• Fixed hammer not functioning correctly for clients of co-op games (previously only the hosts could use it to upgrade walls).

The goal of this update is to attempt to make it much easier for friends to play together. This is just an iteration and still needs more work (and I imagine there will still be players experiencing networking issues). If you do, please post on the forum or discord so that myself and other players can help troubleshoot any issues.

Hope you have a great Friday and weekend!
CG

Hi guys. It’s been a while since any new base construction options were added. Today’s update introduces an assortment of new glass building pieces, which are now crafted from the default player crafting menu. These pieces will snap onto other wood and metal building pieces.

The glass is fairly tough and will withstand a fair amount of damage. However, just as with all structures, will require repairs to maintain. I’ve added damage skins (cracks) to indicate the health of any piece. The strength sits between that of wood and armor-plated.

I’ve added a subtle distortion to the glass material and a very slight tint. This is to give the sense of enclosure when inside your base looking out. Let me know if you think the effect is too much.

My hope is these new building pieces will open up a ton of possibilities for creative base designs, as well as adding further depth to later-game building. Looking forward to seeing some creations.

The game is configured to understand light passing through the new panels, meaning that glass rooms can be constructed to act as protective greenhouses for plantbeds.


It’s now possible to find sandstone ore nodes beneath the water in the various lakes. They can be harvested with the pickaxe (or axe for less yield) and refined down into glass fragments in the refinery.


The glass fragments can then be crafted down in the workbench to glass panels, which in turn can be used to craft building pieces. Note: Raw glass fragments are required for repairing glass structures.


It’s always bothered me that windows were just empty holes. This lead to otherwise cosy and secure bases to feel cold and exposed.

Players can now craft glass windows for both the flat and curved windowed-wall variants. The new windows are fully animated, allowing for player to quickly open/close them while defending against attacks.


While working on the window animations, I also finally added a animation for the door (which was long overdue).


I’ve never been overly happy with the underwater visuals. The water surface would become opaque once submerged (meaning players were unable to spot potential dangers when surfacing) and the image was fairly static.

I’ve added a ripple/distortion post-process effect and updated the water surface material to handle translucency when submerged. I think it looks way better and more immersive when swimming, but let me know what you think.

New players starting out are offered little guidance on how to make progress, often leading to frustration and repeated deaths. I’ve added some basic ‘getting-started’ tasks to better inform new players during the early game.

For experienced players (or those that want to figure things out on their own), these task lists can be disabled in the options under gameplay.

While building this feature, I implemented a substantial system to track detailed stats on player activities (stats are only stored locally in profile saves). I plan to expose these stats for players to view in a future update.

Having to always right-click on an item to open it’s actions, and then click on the use action can be annoying (especially when in combat or in a hurry). I’ve added a quick-use function that allows players to simply hover the mouse over an item and click their ‘use’ key.

It will attempt to perform the primary ‘use’ action for said item (if the item has one). This will improve and quicken player inventory management.

I’ve updated the hunter bases to incorporate the new glass buildables. I’ve also updated the loot drops in their bases to include many of the new items that were added in the last few updates.

Hunter loot drops, and locked crates have also been updated to include the new items (including a chance of fish oil on hunters).


Finally potassium can be used as a rich fertilizer for plantbeds. This should ease the fertilizer demands for players that choose to refine the ore down.

• Fixed exploit that allowed empty canteens to be pre-heated and then sterilize water when filled.
  
  
• Fixed exploit that allowed players to build in hunter bases.
  
• Fixed delay on items disappearing from inventory when dropped for clients of co-op games.
  
• Added sound and blood-spurts effect for hitting dead animals/humans with melee weapons.

As many of you know, Subsistence has always been a passion project I work on by myself in my spare time, alongside my full-time job. I’ve finally made the decision to leave my employment to focus on the game full-time. I’ve never worked on such a challenging, creative and enjoyable project, and i’m so excited to dedicate myself to its continued development.

It’s been a tough journey to reach this point, and I wouldn’t have got this far without the support and encouragement from such an awesome community, of which I’m deeply grateful. There’s still a long road ahead and tons of work needed, and I’m looking forward to it!

Have a great weekend, and please let me know about any issues with the update.
CG