Main features

• ship combat is now possible across sector borders making sector transitions feel much more seamless
  
• you can now see ships in nearby sectors
  
• ships can now be targeted from other sectors
  
• bullets can hit ships in nearby sectors
  
• missiles can track across sector boundaries
  
• added a new module: artifact activator tier 2
  
• added a new gameplay mechanic: Artifacts. They are a new procedural form of loot with random attribute enhancements for your ship. They must be placed into an artifact activator and powered in order to function
  
• added a new dialogue as part of the process for unlocking the artifact activator module research
  
  
• we overhauled ship active systems with a new back-end framework which allows more data to be synchronized between the interior and exterior of your ship and allows control schemes for active ship systems to be more complex. This means the GUI for all active systems now allows individual systems to render their status in unique ways instead of requiring every system type to use a single progress bar for status
  
• added large set of new active modules:
  
• added a new active module which can create a remote temporary mine field
  
  
• added a pair of new active modules which will remove heat from reactors exactly the way radiators do, but which must be manually activated in order to dump the heat into space. These can help with active cooling of you ship and will be important in the future when we add stealth mechancis
  
• added a new active module which creates a delayed detonation at a location in front of your ship
  
• added two new active modules that entangle target in graviton web, slowing it down and preventing it from entering travel drive
  
  
• rewrote drone system logic to make use of the benefits of the new framework. Drones can now defend ships and the status display tracks individual drones.
  
• added a new active module which produces an inhibitor pulse disabling travel drive of nearby ships
  
• we trained the AI to use many of our newly added active modules against the player
  
• added a new active module which can be used to disrupt ship sensors for a limited duration
  
• added a new active module which fires a volley of slow but devastating torpedos that will deal massive damage if not dodged
  
• three new charged railgun turrets with delayed fire but small penetration effect

QoL, balance and other features

• added a new optional control scheme to make the game less difficult for keyboard turning players. It seems shaming them was not sufficient.
  
• added ability to allow extra interior zoom (can be turned on in settings)
  
• completely redid the loading screen
  
• beams now scale with beam damage rate modifier again
  
• overhauled ship system save data so that changes to ship system binary data can't damage save file formats
  
• changed ship system binary data for drone launchers, this will probably break any workshop items that include drone bays
  
• added new framework for highlighting quest ships on sensor overlay, this is currently mainly used for quest requiring to obtain shards for Pirate cove, we will implement it for more quests in the future
  
• new icons
  
• new framework for rendering fancy shockwaves, used for some of new modules
  
• more new icons
  
• turret code base was extended to allow dynamic behavior such as changing firerate or projectile spread over time. Game now also support turrets required to charge before firing.
  
• extended debuff system to allow automatic follow up states and improved several buffs/debuffs, for instance after ECM debuff expires, sensor fortification buff is applied to prevent infinite jamming.
  
• we modified loot tables in addition to blueprints related to new active modules
  
• all T3 reactors were assigned values to reflect their intended power level
  
• two sets of high end T3 turrets were added, they are accessible to modders, but will go through balance pass once they are integrated into campaign
  
• added animations for T3 engines
  
• decreased Interdict pulse distortion effect
  
• we messed with the procedural worldgen some but it shouldn't make any difference for Zero Falls story

Major bug fix

• fixed multi-threaded random number generation to actually support being multi-threaded. This was a source of some random freezing.

Note: for long time we had problem reproducing this freeze on our systems, however we know that this is 100% related to freeze occurring when switching from Interior to Exterior and when Visiting Tavern, also causing crash during saving. We further believe that this might be related to several quest bugs causing target ships to spawn on incorrect coordinates (0,0). We will appreciate feedback if you encounter any of these issue again.

Bug fixes

• fixed a bug where the game could crash if you delete the world saves folder
  
• fixed a bug where shady dealers had a loitering duration of 0 and would be gone as soon as you left the bar
  
• fixed display of credits in shops
  
• fixed display of credits in red floaty text
  
• warp gates are now saved in the database with the character profile instead of being part of world data
  
• the trigger that offers you research to increase your station capacity for credits will no longer repeat if you already have the research items in your queue
  
• fixed a bug with powered modules which could in rare cases allow them to try and take power from themselves
  
• fixed a bug with large shield boosters which prevented them for repairing any shields in cases where there were not enough damaged shield tiles to use all of the available energy
  
• fixed windowed mode screen centering on some systems

We also give you new opportunity to play again by killing your world saves, sorry, it couldn't be avoided. However your profiles will be fine and you will keep all your shiny stuff. Also worth noting: Artifacts won't exist in your old worldsave so you will want to make a new one either way.

Furthermore we are almost done with new Ion Beam controller, it will be very likely included in obligatory hotfix. We will also try to roll out some new ships using new modules as soon as possible into the world to provide new challenge.

There are few more things that had been added aren't going to be visible yet, for instance rendering was extended to allow cloaking buffs which will be used for T3 stealth modules later on.

Multiplayer will be free for existing Zero Falls owners.

That's the plan at least.

We don't know exactly how we are going to accomplish that, there is more than one way we can. Right now we are more concerned with making sure it works.

From our perspective right now the plan looks like this:

1. Get the core elements working
   
2. Get some testers playing it
   
3. Release a single player content patch for Zero Falls
   
4. ....
   
5. Figure out how to release multiplayer

It's hard to formulate a release strategy for a multiplayer game when you have never even stress tested a server to know how many people it supports.

Please be patient with us. We're like 2 guys and a cat doing this and neither of us likes social media (the cat isn't allowed to post because he's racist)

We did indeed tease multiplayer on april 1 as a prank. The plan was to tell you it was real in a way that nobody would ever believe, and then show you it was real in a way that nobody could deny in order to get people to talk about it. Unfortunately it seems my writing was too convincing, and many people were even more convinced multiplayer was fake when they saw the videos, so lets make things real clear.

April Fools prank: (These were not true)

• Adding multiplayer to Zero Falls would be as easy as changing one variable. - False. That's not how programming works and I hope you didn't believe that.
  
• We intend to make Zero Falls early gameplay more difficult for new players - False, it's difficult because the game has strong simulation elements which makes it hard to simply increase the power of the player relative to enemies
  
• We are releasing some new product soon named Vagabonds - Mostly False, we don't have a product to release nor do we have finalized release plans
  
• Zero Falls development is being cancelled - False, we absolutely intend to finish Zero Falls and we don't consider it finished.
  
• We are setting up an online cash shop full of loot boxes and micro-transactions. - False, we hate those things and said that as a joke

Actually Real: (these may have lead to some confusion)

• Multiplayer is real.
  
• People really did decompile our code and tell us we are programming wrong
  
• The variable openMP really does exist, it has since the game was multiplayer many many years ago, however that variable did nothing for years while we developed Zero Falls
  
• Multiplayer likely won't be coming to Zero Falls but will have to be an independent release since we spent years programming things into Zero Falls which we always knew would only work in single player
  
• The name...is kind of real. We use Vagabonds internally when discussing the project. We haven't decided if we will release under that name exactly

We always wanted a multiplayer game, which is why our original kickstarter was multiplayer. However, people didn't back that kickstarter. Also many people told us multiplayer was too ambitious and that we should refine our scope to single-player only and do another kickstarter. Well we did, and that's why Zero Falls was sold as a single player only game.

However I think at this point we have sufficiently proven that even a single player game can go way beyond scope and take forever to finish. It's made especially difficult by the fact that our plan was to fund continued development of the project by selling on early access, and our customers are all waiting for multiplayer to be added apparently because we'd be making more money flipping burgers.

Using a single player game to fund the development of a multiplayer game is backwards and dumb. We realize that now, and we aim to correct it.

To be clear though, multiplayer didn't start out of some greater realization of the error in our overall strategy...multiplayer started because I was in a really really crummy mood and decided I didn't want to work on NOT multiplayer anymore. I literally turned off social media for a week and hid in my developer cave working on it in secret. For many months, the rest of our team didn't even know I was doing this. I was working on both projects at once and I didn't show it to anyone until I was sure it would actually work. My only regret is that I eventually told them over Discord so I never got to see the look on their faces.


Lets be very clear here. It may be possible for me, as a single developer, to hide in my man-cave and make the Wayward Terran Frontier (engine) multiplayer compatible. After all, it did start with the concept of multiplayer functionality built into its spine. However it is not reasonable for me to magically apply multiplayer to years worth of single player only code that was built on top of that engine in the form of the (game) Zero Falls. As such, it was obvious to me from the beginning of my code-tantrum that if I wanted multiplayer, it had to be an entirely new game and NOT an attempt to change Zero Falls.

Aside from the engine and the combat, I decided I would do EVERYTHING different in this new project. Here are some examples.

The Economy:

• Zero Falls supports a dynamic living NPC economy based on supply and demand that can be completely broken by the player's actions. It is an attempt at simulating a real economy.
  
• Multiplayer will make no attempt at simulating real economics. Players will trade items

Factions

• Zero Falls has factions which are simulated government entities with motivations and goals that are custom designed to advanced a specific narrative that makes exactly 1 player feel important and meaningful.
  
• In multiplayer we will only have factions if we allow groups of players to form their own.

Story

• In Zero Falls you are a unique and special snowflake. Everyone is shocked by your uncanny ability to respawn after death and enact infinite vengeance against your enemies. You may even change the fate of the universe, who knows.
  
• In Multiplayer you are a generic Vagabond. (hence the name) Nobody cares what you do unless you find a way to do something extraordinary within the framework of the multiplayer sandbox.

Game world

• Zero Falls is a hand-crafted star system that aims to tell a story and challenge the player with deeper content than what can be made using procedural generation
  
• Multiplayer is an infinite procedural expanse where the depth will need to come from player interactions

Enemies

• In Zero Falls every enemy has a simulated life. Their faction allegiance, the cargo they are carrying, any damage on their ship, it all relates to things that have happened to them in the simulation itself.
  
• In Multiplayer endless hoards of procedural enemies will spawn for you and your friends to tear through looking for loot

So the short version is that we really are making a new game, and that game is multiplayer, and we don't know when or how or in what form we will release it, but we wanted to tease it because it's getting close to ready. The real release announcement is yet to come.

Zero Falls will remain a single player adventure with lots of narrative and characters and a sandbox that offers the type of depth that doesn't work in multiplayer so easily.

Multiplayer will be more of an action RPG loot grinding sandbox in an open world where you make your own narrative with friends.

We're releasing a multiplayer version of Zero Falls as a stand-alone game. Check out our blog post for more information!

For years now we have been developing a single player game because we were mistakenly lead to believe that a multiplayer game in an infinite persistent universe where the interior of every ship and station are simulated would be a challenging task. Indeed, we remained stuck in our beliefs even when the community pointed out that it should be totally easy, and perhaps there was just a way to "activate" the old netcode that existed in our (less than half working) multiplayer demo that we made before our multiplayer kickstarter failed 6 years ago. Some players were even kind enough to decompile our exe and tell us that multiplayer code was in there, but we were just too stubborn and blind to see it!

We should have listened.

Well today I have to apologize to all of you, because while stumbling drunkenly through the code at 2AM looking for a way to make the early game more punishing for new players I stumbled on a variable that I had never seen before:



Changing this variable leads to this...



I am going to have to re-learn everything I thought I knew about programming now because after setting this variable to true, the game is suddenly fully multiplayer, and I don't even understand how that's possible. Me and the team have been testing it extensively, and no matter how many times we enjoy an afternoon of totally sick co-op space battles against NPC battleships or other players in a pvp deathmatch, we just can't wrap our head around how the game could have been multiplayer all along without our knowledge. Sure the code was always there to send and receive messages, but that code wasn't working even when we wrote it, and we've added years of changes with no consideration to maintaining a stable network state. The chance that the bits in our codebase could simply align themselves to form working network code without our knowledge...well it seems absolutely impossible and has lead us to question our own sanity.

But boy do we feel stupid for telling you it would be impossible.



One must wonder, where do we go from here? How do we fix bugs in code that doesn't even exist? If we change anything will it stop working? There's even a fully functional chat and party system using UI elements that we've never seen before! Decisions like these require heavy drinking...

So it's official! Today on April 1st we are officially announcing Wayward Terran Frontier: Vagabonds, our new multiplayer action RPG sandbox game. It's got all the ship combat and world-gen features and items from Zero Falls, because it's just Zero Falls with a single bit changed from 0 to 1, but this time it's multiplayer, so we're selling it as an entirely new game!

Once again we are totally blown away by this new development, it's as shocking to you as it is to us. We don't even know the exact release date yet since we didn't expect to be revealing a second game any time soon. Obviously we will need to prepare the online cash shop and loot boxes before anything can go to customers for testing, but as of today we are reaching out to influencers on twitch and youtube who will hopefully try to convince you to buy it!



As you might expect, this means all single-player development for Zero Falls is simply canceled and that project is fully abandoned. Why would anyone ever want to play through a story when you could play battle-royal space ships arena? It's for the best.



So check out our stream, and tell your friends, because we finally have the game you have all been asking for and it's coming soon to an online retailer near you!

-George

Hi again everyone,

There's something I'm curious about. What is your favored playstyle?

Zero Falls is optimized for two different playstyles: trading and piracy. You can either optimize ships for capacity and storage and go the Han Solo space trader/smuggler route, or else you can outfit your ships with every Kill-O-Zap death beam at your disposal and blast weaker ships into oblivion.

I started a new save recently, and currently, I'm favoring piracy. Looting abandoned asteroids and space stations and selling your cargo for spare cash is all well and good, but for me the excitement in Zero Falls comes from piracy and the high-impact space battles. I'm still not far enough through the early-game to really be an effective pilot in a death match and I often pick battles that I don't end up winning, but it's still satisfying to see the other sucker explode into a thousand different particles which go flying off into the infinite black in every direction.

I'm also currently in the process of outfitting the Vulture and Eagle blueprints with extra rockets and autocannons. I'm not very good at it.

So what do you favor? Piracy or trading? Or a combination of the two?

Hi everyone,

We hope that you've been enjoying the new patch that came out a few weeks ago, and that the bug fixes that George and Jan have added have been making for a smoother gameplay experience.

We'd like to open the complaints department to feedback once again and ask for any general, constructive input you can give on how we can keep improving Zero Falls. Specifically, we'd be interested to know if there is anything we can do to make modding Zero Falls easier.

I put this question out a few months ago and expected more concerns about ship modding. It turned out that most of our audience seems to want the ability to mod other aspects of Zero Falls e.g. weapons, player character, space stations, ship components etc. I would like to corroborate this and see whether my observation is right and you'd like to be able to mod other parts of the game.

Incidentally, on the subject of modding, I have an announcement to make.

As you know, our lead artist Jan has made quite possibly the most dangerously useful normal map generator known to man (I am referring of course to ModLab). We thought that maybe more people should know about it, and we'd like your help to make that happen.

I'd like to start showcasing your ModLab/Steam Workshop creations every Monday through the month of March and beyond on our Twitter account @wtfdevs. I'll be asking for submissions both individually and in the Zero Falls General and Modding channels on Discord shortly. If you'd be interested in showing off your ModLab ship creations for the internet to admire, then you can also send them to me at my Reason Generator email address ttaborek@wtfrontier.com or send them to me on my Discord pickitupska79.

For the moment we're going to call it #ModLabMondays.

Thanks everyone, and have a great weekend.

Travis

ModLab Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/768970/ModLab/

ModLab Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lKMgj9lwKw

Patch 0.8.3.05 is now live.

• Fixed a bug with crew AI that could crash the game if a crew member tries attacking something while standing in an invalid position

• All scanners had their energy storage capacity drastically increased so scanner modules can work for longer without interruption in periods of low power availability

• Design screen: fixed max speed display value

• Fixed the rule for displaying credits via floaty red text when they are picked up via cargo scoop

• Fixed a framework issue that was causing one of our fancy new module animations to crash

Warning: Activation of Distortion field or TOBI device will cause crash to desktop, it is caused by .dll that went missing during upload, we are working on resolving the issue while fixing few more things. Patch should roll out within next 24 hours.

• fixed a bug causing research to not being progressed

• fixed a crash with AI pathfinding
  
• fixed some prices which were not displaying correctly in item shops because their internal data type was a float instead of an int
  
• changed speed for ships that are running away
  
• updated throttle control for AI ships (now also depends on the ship captain's personality)
  
• targeting with TAB hotkey is now more user friendly
  
• fixed one possible crash in AI code
  
• fixed incorrect dialogue in Survival Arena

• fixed the credit text in the relay quest to use the new number display format
  
• fixed a bug that caused the logistics screen to not refresh ships when unlocking a new hull
  
• unified all pixel dammage calculation code and fixed a few instances where damage was not calculated properly
  
• added a number of stats which can affect ship-wide performance and can be modified by effects and modules in the future
  
• fixed a bug with crew that could cause a crash if they died in an abnormal way and tried to drop loot
  
• fixed a bug that could cause the game to fail to load if it contains crew with the same faction as a dead ship
  
• Three new activated modules
  
• -Offensive teleport: causing damage when passing through ships
  
• -Distortion field: providing projectile dodge chance
  
• -Missile control array: lets you retarget missile mid flight
  
• Visual overhaul of most T1 projectiles
  
• Projectile speed increased for T1 autocanons and machineguns
  
• New impact effects
  
• Improved pulse weapon effects
  
• New T2.5 ship variant of Exorcist cruiser
  
• Fixed memory leak in Logistic screen
  
• Two T3 spinal weapons, yet to be assigned to modules
  
• New module icons
  
• New blueprints
  
• For testers: pressing "N" in inventory screen will guarantee blueprints for three new modules (debug mode only)
  
• new music added!
  
• fixed a bug with passenger deliver missions that was preventing the passenger from leaving after you completed the mission

We've just released another update: 0.8.3.00 Hollowed Dvorak


We've removed a pretty big item from our todo list with this update by making some pretty significant changes to AI so that the ships you fight will be a lot less dumb. The biggest part of this update was the work done on collision avoidance and pathfinding. Not only do the AI do a much better job now of avoiding terrain and plotting paths around it, but they also can do it while fighting and it's much less taxing on system resources.

The other significant change we're making is to give personality to individual captains. It's only a series of variables that determine their behavior, but it means different captains may behave differently when fighting in the same engagements. We can now tweak some numbers to make some captains more difficult to fight than others.

Here's a complete list of the changes we've made to AI:

• Ships now actively avoid collisions with asteroids (based on proximity)
  
• Ships now use pathfinding!!! (they are able to navigate complex asteroid fields, find paths around obstacles and follow after their targets almost anywhere)
  
• Ships now track more data internally about mounted weapons, beams, active modules and other subsystems. This allows them to make better decisions in combat about what tactic to use and which way to orient themselves to maximize DPS against their target. AI now should be able to use any ship design more effectively.
  
• AI (including friendly crew) should now be more effective at using Point defense turrets when targeting incoming missiles.
  
• AI Captains now uses better aiming behavior which allows them to target propulsion or weapons on ships. Some captains focus fire selected spots on their target.
  
• AI Captains will now use repair drones on themselves and friendly ships.
  
• AI Captains now use drone bays even when they are operating a gunnery console (previously drones were used only in navigation console)
  
• SSC Seraphim battleship (and any other ship designs with the module) will use Sinidal Cascade spinal weapon in combat
  
• Crew is now assigned Aggressivity and Cleverness stats which modify behavior in combat. Aggressive captains fight more up close. Clever captains make better decisions and use better targeting approaches(shooting at weapons or engines). Captains for each faction are assigned different values for these stats.
  
• Ships now use strafing for most of their movement during combat.
  
• Ships with missile factories on them are now considered missile boats and behave accordingly. They keep their targets at a distance and launch missiles (which are very effective at longer ranges).
  
• Ships now use different movement behavior in combat. They can choose to orbit, follow or do firing passes at their targets.
  
• Escorting behavior was improved (looks a little more graceful now)
  
• Ships can now decide to run away from combat. They will return to their previous task when they are safe.
  
• Docking ports unlocking behavior was changed - AI ships now need to take a certain amount of damage before they will open their airlocks. Before they would open on the first instance of damage making it too easy to capture some ships

We're making all the numbers look smaller! I'll do another blog post about it after this. Short version is that the numeric values are the same but they look smaller so they are easier to read and compare prices.

• the minimum speed for higgs drive was upgraded to be in line with the changes to travel drive speed
  
• the loading animation can now handle situations where animation has become completely impossible. You won't see the animation obviously, but the task (such as saving your game) will still complete
  
• added shields to everett ship design
  
• We have performed a visual rework of all credit cost values. The underlying values remain the same, however they will be displayed as lower values
  
• capacitor rate stat is now equal to capacitor capacity for all cases. If after releasing this change we can remember why this wasn't originally the case, we will revert it
  
• added shields to everett ship design and fixed white transparent pixels
  
• Design screen: fixed contextual tooltip when selecting armor or shield tiles
  
• Docking ports unlocking behavior was changed: for the ports to unlock when ship recieves damage, it must be either small enough or it already took some damage
  
• planets were re-added to procedural worldgen for the rest of the universe
  
• unlocked warp gates are now stored in the character database. This will override the existing method without requiring any change to existing saves. If you have a gate that stopped working in your save, just enter it again to unlock that gate via the database.
  
• fixed a bug that could cause terrain data to not be saved if you teleported out of a sector (or respawned after dying) while a long operation was happening inside of a ship. This would cause the game to load old out-of-date data for that sector leading to broken warp gates, missing quest npcs, or dopplegangers of the player character. Hopefully this is the only thing causing said bugs, but we will keep an eye on it.
  
• fixed secret quest removing itself with error message when ship dies
  
• Survival arena got its stages and rewards reworked. Reaching certain stages can unlock certain designs for ship designer.
  
• Ship Designer: minor fix to tile removal logic when shift deleting with modules
  
• Ship Designer: fixed some conduits not mirroring properly with copy paste
  
• Fixed wrong reward for final Tier 1 research milestone.