Feb 5, 2015

Subnautica - UWE.Strayan (NS2HD)

A giant drive-able submarine featuring a submersible launch bay, dive chamber, and more is now available in Subnautica. Play with it now by purchasing Subnautica on Steam. The Cyclops is over 50 meters long, has multiple decks, and enables you to explore the ocean further and deeper than ever before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgAh5FTcF-E

Build a Cyclops submarine using the Constructor. Craft a Constructor at the Fabricator on your Lifepod, and then feed the required resources into the Constructor. The Cyclops will form above the water surface, before crashing down ready for you to board.

The Cyclops has two decks. The lower deck houses the dive chamber, a modular storage compartment, a Seamoth submersible docking bay and a companionway in the stern that leads to the engine room on the main deck. The main deck includes the bridge with helm station, a large compartment ready for the installation of modules, the entry hatch for docked Seamoth submersibles, and the engine room with main engine and propshaft.

Inside the Cyclops you will find quite a bit of space that is not currently used. This is deliberate, and allows you to customize the submarine with your own desired fit-out of modular components. At the moment, the only module available is the Fabricator. As Subnautica Early Access progresses, more modules will become available.

Despite all that, there is so much fun to be had with this massive underwater machine. Below a depth of 100 meters, collisions may cause hull breaches, causing the submarine to flood and forcing you to repair damage using a Welder. This race against time, with sirens blaring and warning lights flashing, can be seriously intense.

Deep and remote areas are much more accessible with the help of a Cyclops submarine. It currently features an infinite oxygen supply, allowing you to use it as a home base for crafting and repair during adventures in caves, canyons and plateaus far from the Lifepod fabricator and oxygen from the ocean surface.

If you purchased Subnautica Special Edition, you may now place your Special Edition hull plate, complete with unique hull number and date of purchase. If you encounter issues with your Special Edition hull plate, please post them in this thread and Hugh and Lukas will help you out.

Of all the features so far added to Subnautica Early Access, the Cyclops is probably the most exciting and complex. It is brimming with gameplay potential and is open to all sorts of expansion as Subnautica develops. We hope you have a blast playing with it as it is developed! Sign up to the development mailing list to receive word on updates, get a copy of Subnautica on Steam, and check up on development team progress by visiting the Subnautica Trello board.

Feb 5, 2015

Cyclops Sub Released!

Subnautica - Hugh

Jan 30, 2015

Cyclops Progress

Subnautica - UWE.Strayan (NS2HD)

Setting ambitious objectives is a great way to push yourself harder. Even if a high-jumper hits a high bar, they are likely to have jumped to a greater height than if they had set a conservative goal. That’s a good analogy for where the Subnautica development team is with the Cyclops today. We originally wanted to deliver you a massive submarine this week, but we haven’t quite completed sea trials yet. We’re not sure when it will be finished, but we think it’s very likely that the Cyclops will arrive in-game next week.

The Cyclops is a beast. Multiple decks, compartments, a docking bay for the Seamoth submersible: This is the big daddy of underwater transportation. At the moment, it is very close to being ready for prime time release. The 3d model is substantially ready, many animations are in and working, many gameplay elements work… But not all of it. We’re having some trouble with the damage system – Small collisions are causing complete flooding, and some components, like the Seamoth retrieval manoeuvre, are not working well enough yet.

Speaking of damage – Dealing with a hull breach on the Cyclops is… Well it’s just awesome. Hit something too hard, like the seabed, a rock formation or a large creature, and you risk bringing the ocean onto the wrong side of your hull. Alarms sound, warning lights activate, and the vessel AI gets quite upset. Only quick action to find and weld all the leaks can save the Cyclops from becoming a new reef for fish to explore.

Pretty much 100% of the team’s effort is going into the Cyclops right now, but some other stuff is being worked on too. Not all of it will make it into Update 9, but you can rest assured that lots of goodness is waiting in the wings. For example, there’s a new main menu coming, environmental hazards such as the Geyser have been improved, and huge new cave systems are almost ready for you to explore.

You can see exactly what we’re working on to get the Cyclops ready by visiting the development tracker on Trello. If you want to tinker with the Cyclops now, in its unfinished state, switch to Experimental branch on Steam. Get a newsletter when the Cyclops is ready to dive by signing up to the Subnautica mailing list.

Jan 30, 2015

Cyclops Progress

Subnautica - Hugh

Jan 21, 2015

Cyclops Coming Soon

Subnautica - UWE.Strayan (NS2HD)

Until now, the only way to brave Subnautica’s ocean depths has been in a divesuit, a Seaglide personal-water-craft, or a Seamoth submersible. None of those are very big. Soon, that will all change. The Cyclops submarine is a massive underwater machine: It is capable of diving to great depths, providing on-board supply replenishment, construction, and repair, and the launch and retrieval of smaller vehicles like the Seamoth.

To get an idea of the scale of the Cyclops, look at the screenshot above. The Seamoth submersible, itself much bigger than a diver, is visible about 30 metres in front of the Cyclops. At the heart of the submarine is the propulsion unit, housed on the upper deck towards the stern. Here is a screenshot taken from a work-in-progress model a few weeks ago:

At the moment, we are planning on having the Cyclops available in game in an update within two weeks. When ready, the Cyclops will be available for creation at the Constructor. It will require significant resources to build one. Here’s a concept piece for the construction process:

The ample on-board space means there is plenty of room for the storage of equipment, supplies, and installing new machinery to enhance the Cyclops’ capabilities. In the concept piece below, you can see a compartment on the upper deck, with the space marked out for an upgrade allowing the launch and retrieval of a Seamoth submersible:

Of course, we can’t be sure that the Cyclops will be ready within two weeks. It’s a huge and complex task. Outside the deeper technical systems underlying the game, like the voxel terrain engine, the Cyclops is probably the most complex discrete gameplay element we’ve yet tackled. To give you an idea of the scale of the work, here is a task tree that shows many of the things we need to do:

(Full interactive version here)

Follow the development of the Cyclops submarine on the Subnautica Trello board[url], and subscribe to the [url]development mailing list to be notified when it is released. We can’t wait to bring it to you!

Jan 21, 2015

Cyclops Coming Soon

Subnautica - Hugh

Jan 16, 2015

Dev Update 8

Subnautica - UWE.Strayan (NS2HD)

The Stasis Rifle, Save & Load, the experimental Terraformer, Bleeders, Bonesharks, and more: A new Subnautica update is available on Steam! Grab a copy of Subnautica Early Access to play. Here’s a video that runs through some of the major additions:

http://youtu.be/qMB-0n6tlzk

Tell us what you think about Update 8 here on the forums, via the in-game feedback system, on Twitter, and wherever else you can find us!

The Stasis Rifle allows you to fire a stasis field, freezing any life form trapped inside. This is pretty useful for getting around dangerous creatures!

The terraformer is an experimental tool that allows you to mess with Subnautica’s voxel terrain. Hold shift and right click to gather material, and then right click to place it almost anywhere you want.

We’ve rebuilt the guts of the main menu. It still isn’t very pretty, but the rewrite lets us do cool stuff like have a functional news section, and, that’s right, load saved games.

Subnautica now has save & load functionality. To save, press escape to open the in-game menu, and hit save.

Pipes can be placed to create a chain of air leading down into the depths. You can use pipes to supply air to keep you breathing underwater for longer…

… For example, you could supply air to a cave system!

Craft beacons, and carry them with you while you explore. When you find an interesting place you’d like to revisit, you can deploy a beacon. The beacon will then show up on your hud as a pinger, much like the life pod.

The new Airbladder allows you to control your bouyancy. Activate the air bladder when you want to quickly return to the surface – For air, or perhaps to escape a hostile life form.

There’s a new dangerous life form lurking in the deep. Watch out for bleeders: Get to close, and these critters will suck the blood right out of your arm.

Tweaks under the hood of the inventory system make dumping unwanted loot much easier.

Spend some time exploring some of the ocean’s deeper areas, and you’ll probably encounter the new Bone Shark. Just don’t get too close, as like the Stalker, this guy wants to take your head off.

Craft a Compass and put it in your inventory to bet a North South East West indicator on your Head Up Display.

Speaking of the HUD, revamped elements now give numerical feedback on health and oxygen status. This also makes it easier to see how much oxygen equipped tanks are providing.

Building a current generator lets you direct streams of water wherever you want: They’ll push you around, and any creatures caught in the flow too!

As always, this post doesn’t capture everything that went in to the update. Check out the Trello board and Checkin & Changes list to see a full smorgasbord of everything that changed between Update’s 7 & Update 8. Sign up to the Subnautica Dev Update mailing list to get notified when Update 9 is released

Jan 16, 2015

Dev Update 8

Subnautica - Hugh

The Stasis Rifle allows you to fire a stasis field, freezing any life form trapped inside. This is pretty useful for getting around dangerous creatures!

We’ve rebuilt the guts of the main menu. It still isn’t very pretty, but the rewrite lets us do cool stuff like have a functional news section, and, that’s right, load saved games.

Subnautica now has save & load functionality. To save, press escape to open the in-game menu, and hit save.

Pipes can be placed to create a chain of air leading down into the depths. You can use pipes to supply air to keep you breathing underwater for longer…

… For example, you could supply air to a cave system!

The new Airbladder allows you to control your bouyancy. Activate the air bladder when you want to quickly return to the surface – For air, or perhaps to escape a hostile life form.

There’s a new dangerous life form lurking in the deep. Watch out for bleeders: Get to close, and these critters will suck the blood right out of your arm.

Tweaks under the hood of the inventory system make dumping unwanted loot much easier.

Craft a Compass and put it in your inventory to bet a North South East West indicator on your Head Up Display.

Speaking of the HUD, revamped elements now give numerical feedback on health and oxygen status. This also makes it easier to see how much oxygen equipped tanks are providing.

Jan 9, 2015

Subnautica: Early impressions of Minecraft under the sea

Subnautica

I ve crashlanded in an alien ocean, the sole survivor of a terraforming mission. My life pod floats, luckily, and comes equipped with a high-tech 3D printer and a storage locker. For me to survive, I ve got to pillage the bounties of the ocean floor while trying not to starve to death or get eaten myself.

Subnautica is… well. I could dance around a bit, but it s underwater Minecraft. Reductivity is frequently not a virtue, and describing one game in terms of a recent mega-success always feels a little icky. Like when every startup company describes themselves as Uber for [other thing]. Even so, Subnautica, developed by Natural Selection 2 devs Unknown Worlds, features crafting, digging, monsters, hunger and thirst, exploration, procedurally generated vistas, and dangerous creatures that come out at night. It s Minecraft, except underwater.

That s not a bad thing, though. Minecraft s oceans were always a little sparse, populated by doofy octopi and sand. As massive and uncharted as real oceans are, they deserve the attentions of an entire game. Subnautica is on its way to being a lovely sandbox of underwater exploration.

Sea food

In its current state, Subnautica features two modes: survival and freedom. They are basically the same, but the freedom mode removes the game s hunger and thirst mechanics, and doesn t empty your inventory when you die. I found that, as in Minecraft, once I no longer struggled to survive, I quickly lost interest in the game. Subnautica is a game that begs to be explored, so I appreciate the option to simply turn off the survival mechanics.

In survival mode, a lot is riding on a successful first day. From the moment I wake up in Subnautica, I have a few minutes before I starve to death, and few more before I die of thirst. The immediate business of the day is outfitting myself with salt, freshly caught alien fish, and some gear.

All of the crafting in Subnautica takes place on a 3D printer inside my floating lifepod base, and the progression of raw materials to finished gear is immediately familiar: Organic matter gets printed into raw carbon. Carbon and zinc get printed into a basic battery. A battery and some glass become a flashlight, and now I can see what s going on at night.

It s predictable, sure, but it s still incredibly satisfying. Building a self-propelled, armored, deep-sea capable submarine feels so good because I put it together, piece by piece, while swimming in a sea of predators.

Sunburn

Though it is fun already, Subnautica does suffer from some technical problems. Terrain has a habit of popping in, especially when I got my souped-up submarine to full speed. On one occasion, I drove straight off the edge of the world because the next cluster failed to load. This locked up the game and, because saving and loading isn t implemented yet, I had to start a new game without that badass sub.

In addition to subs, Subnautica has a few interesting toys to play with. Flashlights and seascooters and location beacons are all available to help navigate the alien waters. My favorite gadget is the gravsphere, a plantable trap that captures fish. Deploy it, go hunting for scrap metal and minerals, then come back to a fresh fish dinner. It s that kind of high-tech creativity that draws me away from Minecraft comparisons and makes me hopeful that Subnautica will bring new ideas to the survival sandbox genre.

Surviving can be a struggle in the early days, but a little luck meant I had extra supplies after a half hour. Once a surplus was safe, that was my cue to start pushing myself, diving deeper, swimming farther from the safety of my lifepod. Discrete biomes like mushroom forests, coral reefs, and cave complexes feature local resources and creatures, and they re all amazing to look at.

The designs and art of the alien sea creatures also deserve some praise. I found exploration to be a simple joy, but pulling a double-take when I spot a new animal is more rewarding than locating a new type of terrain. There are fish shaped like boomerangs, trout with one giant eye, razor-toothed predators, and blowfish that explode. My favorite part is that I never know which animals are dangerous. I ll spot a giant, slow-moving whale and watch it, circling, trying to suss out if it s the type to swallow me whole or ignore me completely. The feeling of being an alien interloper, that I am swimming on a world that is not my own, is complete and unlike anything else in the genre.

End game

Eventually, though, my well-stocked inventory started sapping the tension from the situation. Without a clock ticking down to a starvation death, I began having much less fun. My hope is that an end-game goal—be rescued, find land, build an underwater city and proclaim myself king, etc.—will add direction to the parts of the game that follow immediately after don t starve to death.

Another limitation of the current build is that you re effectively tethered to the life pod. You can take your sub miles and miles in any direction, but if you want to cook food ever again, you re going to have to turn around and drive back to the fabricator. I m hopeful that the devs plans for larger submarines will include one with an on-board fabricator to really set you free. Unknown Worlds also has plans for more animals, more crafting recipes, deeper biomes (accessible only with deep-diving subs), and more raw materials. The team is taking the idea of open development seriously, managing its to-do list on a public task board. Players can scroll through and see that the missing inventory icon for the Hoopfish is already fixed, and will be updated in the new build scheduled for January 15.

With an experienced developer at the helm and a limitless variety of the oceans to play with, it s going to take a lot for Subnautica to go badly wrong. As the toolbox gets deeper and the shape of the end-game gets set, Subnautica will be a unique example of the ways survival can be tense, rewarding, and fun.