Hi everyone,



This build features a new Mining Tool and Minable Resources! There’s a new tool – the Refined Pick and two new minable resources – Rock and Clay. You can use the Pick to harvest the new resources which can be found around the islands. Rock is generally found on the islands, while Clay can be found under the water around the islands.

We’ve been receiving emails about players not having user permissions to write world or map data. There’s a few possible causes for this error, but the most common seems to be when the game is installed in the Program Files folder and the user account doesn’t have sufficient privileges or security settings. So from this build we’ve changed the location of the game’s save data. You will need to do a simple copy-paste to move your old save folder to the new location. A quick guide can be found here ---
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=892983896
This also allows players with multiple users (brothers, sisters, friends, etc) to have their own unique save game data if they have their own user account on the PC.

Another small tweak in this build is that crafted items will automatically be picked up or stored in your backpack if possible. This saves unnecessary craft-pickup-craft-pickup scenarios.

A small note for Mac users: In testing we have noticed that the game needs to be launched from the Steam app or a desktop shortcut created by Steam. If the game is run directly from the .app file, Steam fails to register as initialised and you will see an error message in the game.

That’s it for this update. In the next week or so we’ll be moving the latest experimental updates over to the stable branch.

Have fun!

Stay Alive!
:: Beam Team
--

- Fixed Smoked Meat reverting when stored in Containers.
- Fixed item display names not persisting.

- Changed crafted objects to immediately pickup or store in backpack when crafted if possible.
- Changed world data and save file location to use user’s special documents folder.
- Changed Clay Waterbottle to start off empty.

- New Mining system!
- New Pick item!
- New Rock resource!
- New Clay resource!

- Reduced performance overhead when creating and initializing new items.

Hi everyone,



This build features a new Mining Tool and Minable Resources! There’s a new tool – the Refined Pick and two new minable resources – Rock and Clay. You can use the Pick to harvest the new resources which can be found around the islands. Rock is generally found on the islands, while Clay can be found under the water around the islands.

We’ve been receiving emails about players not having user permissions to write world or map data. There’s a few possible causes for this error, but the most common seems to be when the game is installed in the Program Files folder and the user account doesn’t have sufficient privileges or security settings. So from this build we’ve changed the location of the game’s save data. You will need to do a simple copy-paste to move your old save folder to the new location. A quick guide can be found here ---
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=892983896
This also allows players with multiple users (brothers, sisters, friends, etc) to have their own unique save game data if they have their own user account on the PC.

Another small tweak in this build is that crafted items will automatically be picked up or stored in your backpack if possible. This saves unnecessary craft-pickup-craft-pickup scenarios.

A small note for Mac users: In testing we have noticed that the game needs to be launched from the Steam app or a desktop shortcut created by Steam. If the game is run directly from the .app file, Steam fails to register as initialised and you will see an error message in the game.

That’s it for this update. In the next week or so we’ll be moving the latest experimental updates over to the stable branch.

Have fun!

Stay Alive!
:: Beam Team
--

- Fixed Smoked Meat reverting when stored in Containers.
- Fixed item display names not persisting.

- Changed crafted objects to immediately pickup or store in backpack when crafted if possible.
- Changed world data and save file location to use user’s special documents folder.
- Changed Clay Waterbottle to start off empty.

- New Mining system!
- New Pick item!
- New Rock resource!
- New Clay resource!

- Reduced performance overhead when creating and initializing new items.

Hi everyone,


This build features the new Roof Building System! The new Roof system is the final piece to constructing an authentic looking island hut! There’s two new types of roofing – Wood/Thatched and Clay/Brick. There’s 4 different roof pieces available so you can fill in most designs. We’ll get a guide up soon showing some examples of the different possibilities. Don’t forget that you can rotate building pieces with the Q and E keys when placing. It will be important to remember to use these keys so you can place roof pieces in the correct orientation with all the different placement possibilities. These keys can also be reassigned in the input settings.

We’ve removed the Structural Support mechanics in this build. From a developer perspective it is rewarding and cool for us to create a realistic structural support system but overall it has seemed rather unnecessary in the game. Contrary to popular belief, Stranded Deep is not intended to be a building simulator. We’ve found that players who don’t want to create unrealistic floating structures generally don’t. Those that want to build floating houses are doing no harm either. The final nail in the coffin was that the structural support system confuses and frustrates a lot of players. We get regular emails about failed placements with us pointing them to the guide. So starting from this build we’ve removed all structural support. The only minor structural support that remains is that doors on archways need to be removed before destroying the archway.

The next build will feature a new tool and a new way to gather some resources!

Have fun!

Stay Alive!
:: Beam Team
--

- Fixed occupied or invalid building connectors blocking valid connectors behind when placing.

- Removed Structural Support.
- Changed Steps placement to use rotating keys.
- Moved Wedge Foundations and Wedge Floors into Foundations and Floors crafting categories.

- New Roof building system!
- New Wood Roof Middle building piece!
- New Wood Roof Corner building piece!
- New Wood Roof Wedge Corner building piece!
- New Wood Roof Cap building piece!
- New Clay Roof Middle building piece!
- New Clay Roof Corner building piece!
- New Clay Roof Wedge Corner building piece!
- New Clay Roof Cap building piece!

Hi everyone,


This build features the new Roof Building System! The new Roof system is the final piece to constructing an authentic looking island hut! There’s two new types of roofing – Wood/Thatched and Clay/Brick. There’s 4 different roof pieces available so you can fill in most designs. We’ll get a guide up soon showing some examples of the different possibilities. Don’t forget that you can rotate building pieces with the Q and E keys when placing. It will be important to remember to use these keys so you can place roof pieces in the correct orientation with all the different placement possibilities. These keys can also be reassigned in the input settings.

We’ve removed the Structural Support mechanics in this build. From a developer perspective it is rewarding and cool for us to create a realistic structural support system but overall it has seemed rather unnecessary in the game. Contrary to popular belief, Stranded Deep is not intended to be a building simulator. We’ve found that players who don’t want to create unrealistic floating structures generally don’t. Those that want to build floating houses are doing no harm either. The final nail in the coffin was that the structural support system confuses and frustrates a lot of players. We get regular emails about failed placements with us pointing them to the guide. So starting from this build we’ve removed all structural support. The only minor structural support that remains is that doors on archways need to be removed before destroying the archway.

The next build will feature a new tool and a new way to gather some resources!

Have fun!

Stay Alive!
:: Beam Team
--

- Fixed occupied or invalid building connectors blocking valid connectors behind when placing.

- Removed Structural Support.
- Changed Steps placement to use rotating keys.
- Moved Wedge Foundations and Wedge Floors into Foundations and Floors crafting categories.

- New Roof building system!
- New Wood Roof Middle building piece!
- New Wood Roof Corner building piece!
- New Wood Roof Wedge Corner building piece!
- New Wood Roof Cap building piece!
- New Clay Roof Middle building piece!
- New Clay Roof Corner building piece!
- New Clay Roof Wedge Corner building piece!
- New Clay Roof Cap building piece!

Hi everyone,



In this update we’ve introduced a new Clay resource. This has opened up a few more crafting possibilities and helps with our goal to move towards everything being craftable in the game instead of only being able to find some critical items as loot. As a result, buckets have been replaced with the new Clay Water Bottle. The Steel tier has been replaced with a new Clay Brick tier. As awesome as the Steel tier might have looked SD is not a game like Rust, you never really needed to craft a Steel bunker... It also raised legitimate questions as to how a player would remove and transport huge chunks of steel and affix them! Yes, we still have Shipping Container Doors but they’re awesome. We still needed a top tier for progression so now the top tier is Clay Bricks. We’ve found the Clay Bricks actually feels more solid and homey than the Steel anyway which is good. The Water Distiller has been made obsolete and we’ve increased the collection rate of the Solar Still as well as fixing a small bug which had been increasing collection times of the still. We’re changing things up with the water collections side of things so bear with us while we make adjustments.

We have to emphasize that we’re not actually focusing on building at the moment. It’s more a result of getting smaller systems out of the way as we can while we work on the bigger more time-consuming systems. The next update will feature the new roofing system.

Have fun!

Stay Alive!
:: Beam Team
--

- Fixed Water Still resetting timer when re-entering an island causing much longer waits.
- Fixed Shipwrecks not spawning on Small Islands.

- Added Hammer mechanics to Tutorial.
- Added shadows to Crafting Ghost for better sense of placement depth.
- Increased Solar Still collection rate to every 2 game hours.
- Replaced Buckets with new Clay Water Bottle.
- Replaced Steel building tier with new Clay building tier.

- New Building Tier – Clay Bricks!
The Steel building tier did not fit the survival theme of Stranded Deep so it has been replaced with a Clay Brick tier. Clay can be found on islands and turned into Bricks with a Furnace and Brick station. Clay will be better introduced into the world later in development after testing.

- New Clay resource item!
- New Clay Water Bottle item!
- New Clay Bricks building item!
- New Brick Foundation building item!
- New Brick Floor building item!
- New Brick Wall building item!
- New Brick Half Wall building item!
- New Brick Windowed Wall building item!
- New Brick Arch building item!

- New Brick station!
- New Furnace station!

- New Great White Shark animal!

Hi everyone,



In this update we’ve introduced a new Clay resource. This has opened up a few more crafting possibilities and helps with our goal to move towards everything being craftable in the game instead of only being able to find some critical items as loot. As a result, buckets have been replaced with the new Clay Water Bottle. The Steel tier has been replaced with a new Clay Brick tier. As awesome as the Steel tier might have looked SD is not a game like Rust, you never really needed to craft a Steel bunker... It also raised legitimate questions as to how a player would remove and transport huge chunks of steel and affix them! Yes, we still have Shipping Container Doors but they’re awesome. We still needed a top tier for progression so now the top tier is Clay Bricks. We’ve found the Clay Bricks actually feels more solid and homey than the Steel anyway which is good. The Water Distiller has been made obsolete and we’ve increased the collection rate of the Solar Still as well as fixing a small bug which had been increasing collection times of the still. We’re changing things up with the water collections side of things so bear with us while we make adjustments.

We have to emphasize that we’re not actually focusing on building at the moment. It’s more a result of getting smaller systems out of the way as we can while we work on the bigger more time-consuming systems. The next update will feature the new roofing system.

Have fun!

Stay Alive!
:: Beam Team
--

- Fixed Water Still resetting timer when re-entering an island causing much longer waits.
- Fixed Shipwrecks not spawning on Small Islands.

- Added Hammer mechanics to Tutorial.
- Added shadows to Crafting Ghost for better sense of placement depth.
- Increased Solar Still collection rate to every 2 game hours.
- Replaced Buckets with new Clay Water Bottle.
- Replaced Steel building tier with new Clay building tier.

- New Building Tier – Clay Bricks!
The Steel building tier did not fit the survival theme of Stranded Deep so it has been replaced with a Clay Brick tier. Clay can be found on islands and turned into Bricks with a Furnace and Brick station. Clay will be better introduced into the world later in development after testing.

- New Clay resource item!
- New Clay Water Bottle item!
- New Clay Bricks building item!
- New Brick Foundation building item!
- New Brick Floor building item!
- New Brick Wall building item!
- New Brick Half Wall building item!
- New Brick Windowed Wall building item!
- New Brick Arch building item!

- New Brick station!
- New Furnace station!

- New Great White Shark animal!

Hi everyone,



This build transitions our latest work on the experimental branch to the stable branch – the new Storage system. In case you missed our rundown of the new feature in the experimental patch notes, the mechanics are very simple and fast – if you’re looking at a container, press [Tab] to open it to display a similar radial style menu as the backpack inventory. The basic radial mechanics are the same as the inventory, except now you will see a small backpack at the bottom that you can click on to toggle between your backpack and the storage container and vice-versa. Clicking on items in either ‘container’ will transfer the item to the other container. Most containers will be able to be picked up, but containers cannot store other containers.

Every couple of months we pause to revaluate the project to make sure we’re on the right track, listen to feedback and address outstanding bugs. We’ve made some adjustments in this build based on player feedback. A few players have requested the option to choose between toggling the new radial menus open vs. the existing ‘rocker’ functionality so we’ve added an option for that in the input settings. We’ve improved the Charging mechanic for projectile-based weapons so you can now stop charging a weapon without needing to wait for the charging animation to complete. It seems like a small tweak but all helps to add polish. The new Crafting menu now also keeps a bit more of a memory. Individual crafting category tabs will keep a memory of their last subcategory and scroll position until you change category. This should help speed up things like building in particular where you might use the same tab and combination multiple times. One of the bigger changes is that we’ve removed the polarizing Discovery Fog feature which you can read more details on in the patch notes below. We’re also actively working on bringing back the old Infinite Procedural Generation. Please bear with us while we work on integrating this system with the Cartographer. The Cartographer will still remain, providing a small starting world or ‘archipelago’ to start in. From there you can venture further out from the starting world and it will be infinite in any direction. We’re also working on an end game scenario which will require you to find rare items and put down roots on an island to piece together your recue.

We’ve noticed a lot of support emails coming in regarding missing subcategories in the new Crafting menu. 9.9/10 this is fixed by verifying the game files in Steam. It appears to be a problem with Steam’s version control between the updates as the problem is solved by verifying the files.

Have fun!

Stay Alive!
:: Beam Team
--

- Added reminder to craft a Shelter to Save in pause menu.
- Added option for Radial Menus to choose between toggle and rocker behaviour.
- Added ability to interrupt charging sequence for projectile weapons.
- Added edit and delete buttons to custom maps in the Cartographer.
- Added tooltip to view details of maps placed in the world when hovered over.
- Added Building rotation with new key-bindings.
- Added Billboard Density quality setting.
- Changed Inventory to show slot quantity permanently.
- Changed Crafting menu to remember last subcategory and scroll position.
- Changed to not freeze movement when opening inventory.
- Increased Fibrous Leave’s inventory stack capacity.

- Fixed Dragging not using current clicked position making dragging more difficult than it should be.
- Fixed animal Ragdoll bones only saving position not physics related data, ie: stop Sharks flying when loaded. This fix is not retroactive but will take effect after your next save.
- Fixed projectiles interfering with Ragdoll physics when killed.
- Fixed floating Containers when loading a Custom Map.


- New Storage Menu!

- New Building Mechanic!
Building has been expanded and broken down. Most building pieces now have 2 different stages of construction. Once the initial building piece has been placed you use your Hammer on the piece to finish off constructing it. This new mechanic will tie into player and weather effects in a future update. Incomplete walls and floors won’t protect you as well from the elements as completed pieces. Likewise, lower tiers will offer less protection from sun and rain than higher tiers. Weather effects will also deteriorate building pieces so you will have to repair your structures as they’re damaged. This provides a purpose and motivation to find better building materials that offer better protection and resistance to weather. The new system has been integrated with the Wood, Plank and Corrugated tiers. Driftwood and Steel are yet to be completed as we’re re-evaluating and finalizing the base and highest tiers. Existing building pieces also have additional LOD’s.

- New Loot Containers!
Added new Wood Crate, Small Locker, Large Locker and Console models. Added these new containers to Shipwreck and Sea Fort generation. Locker and Console containers are fixed and cannot be moved like Wood Crates. We will also be expanding these with craftable storage like woven baskets and a few more types of containers that you can find by exploring now that the new Storage system is completed.

- Removed Discovery Fog.
The Discovery Fog has been a polarizing feature. Some players liked it, others disliked it, others didn’t mind it and it just plain confused the rest. It did serve a technical purpose to hide un-generated islands and their billboards suddenly popping in. It also helped performance by having less billboards on-screen, however once you’ve discovered the islands in the area around you they all end up being drawn anyway. In any case, the feature has been removed. Now we generate the billboards as soon as a zone is visible and we’ve also added a Billboard Density setting to control the quality and amount of billboards generated for a zone for different systems. Further optimizations to this will be coming with our work on bringing back the infinite generation.

Hi everyone,



This build transitions our latest work on the experimental branch to the stable branch – the new Storage system. In case you missed our rundown of the new feature in the experimental patch notes, the mechanics are very simple and fast – if you’re looking at a container, press [Tab] to open it to display a similar radial style menu as the backpack inventory. The basic radial mechanics are the same as the inventory, except now you will see a small backpack at the bottom that you can click on to toggle between your backpack and the storage container and vice-versa. Clicking on items in either ‘container’ will transfer the item to the other container. Most containers will be able to be picked up, but containers cannot store other containers.

Every couple of months we pause to revaluate the project to make sure we’re on the right track, listen to feedback and address outstanding bugs. We’ve made some adjustments in this build based on player feedback. A few players have requested the option to choose between toggling the new radial menus open vs. the existing ‘rocker’ functionality so we’ve added an option for that in the input settings. We’ve improved the Charging mechanic for projectile-based weapons so you can now stop charging a weapon without needing to wait for the charging animation to complete. It seems like a small tweak but all helps to add polish. The new Crafting menu now also keeps a bit more of a memory. Individual crafting category tabs will keep a memory of their last subcategory and scroll position until you change category. This should help speed up things like building in particular where you might use the same tab and combination multiple times. One of the bigger changes is that we’ve removed the polarizing Discovery Fog feature which you can read more details on in the patch notes below. We’re also actively working on bringing back the old Infinite Procedural Generation. Please bear with us while we work on integrating this system with the Cartographer. The Cartographer will still remain, providing a small starting world or ‘archipelago’ to start in. From there you can venture further out from the starting world and it will be infinite in any direction. We’re also working on an end game scenario which will require you to find rare items and put down roots on an island to piece together your recue.

We’ve noticed a lot of support emails coming in regarding missing subcategories in the new Crafting menu. 9.9/10 this is fixed by verifying the game files in Steam. It appears to be a problem with Steam’s version control between the updates as the problem is solved by verifying the files.

Have fun!

Stay Alive!
:: Beam Team
--

- Added reminder to craft a Shelter to Save in pause menu.
- Added option for Radial Menus to choose between toggle and rocker behaviour.
- Added ability to interrupt charging sequence for projectile weapons.
- Added edit and delete buttons to custom maps in the Cartographer.
- Added tooltip to view details of maps placed in the world when hovered over.
- Added Building rotation with new key-bindings.
- Added Billboard Density quality setting.
- Changed Inventory to show slot quantity permanently.
- Changed Crafting menu to remember last subcategory and scroll position.
- Changed to not freeze movement when opening inventory.
- Increased Fibrous Leave’s inventory stack capacity.

- Fixed Dragging not using current clicked position making dragging more difficult than it should be.
- Fixed animal Ragdoll bones only saving position not physics related data, ie: stop Sharks flying when loaded. This fix is not retroactive but will take effect after your next save.
- Fixed projectiles interfering with Ragdoll physics when killed.
- Fixed floating Containers when loading a Custom Map.


- New Storage Menu!

- New Building Mechanic!
Building has been expanded and broken down. Most building pieces now have 2 different stages of construction. Once the initial building piece has been placed you use your Hammer on the piece to finish off constructing it. This new mechanic will tie into player and weather effects in a future update. Incomplete walls and floors won’t protect you as well from the elements as completed pieces. Likewise, lower tiers will offer less protection from sun and rain than higher tiers. Weather effects will also deteriorate building pieces so you will have to repair your structures as they’re damaged. This provides a purpose and motivation to find better building materials that offer better protection and resistance to weather. The new system has been integrated with the Wood, Plank and Corrugated tiers. Driftwood and Steel are yet to be completed as we’re re-evaluating and finalizing the base and highest tiers. Existing building pieces also have additional LOD’s.

- New Loot Containers!
Added new Wood Crate, Small Locker, Large Locker and Console models. Added these new containers to Shipwreck and Sea Fort generation. Locker and Console containers are fixed and cannot be moved like Wood Crates. We will also be expanding these with craftable storage like woven baskets and a few more types of containers that you can find by exploring now that the new Storage system is completed.

- Removed Discovery Fog.
The Discovery Fog has been a polarizing feature. Some players liked it, others disliked it, others didn’t mind it and it just plain confused the rest. It did serve a technical purpose to hide un-generated islands and their billboards suddenly popping in. It also helped performance by having less billboards on-screen, however once you’ve discovered the islands in the area around you they all end up being drawn anyway. In any case, the feature has been removed. Now we generate the billboards as soon as a zone is visible and we’ve also added a Billboard Density setting to control the quality and amount of billboards generated for a zone for different systems. Further optimizations to this will be coming with our work on bringing back the infinite generation.

Hi everyone,



The mechanics are very simple and fast – if you’re looking at a container, press [Tab] to open it to display a similar radial style menu as the backpack inventory. The basic radial mechanics are the same as the inventory, except now you will see a small backpack at the bottom that you can click on to toggle between your backpack and the storage container and vice-versa. Clicking on items in either ‘container’ will transfer the item to the other container. Most containers will be able to be picked up, but containers cannot store other containers.

The new Wood Crate in this build replaces previous loot containers. We will be expanding on this with craftable storage like woven baskets and a few more types of containers that you can find by exploring.

Have fun!

Stay Alive!
:: Beam Team
--

- Changed to not freeze movement when opening inventory.

- New Storage Menu!
- New Wood Crate storage container!