Oct 16, 2019
Oxygen Not Included mods: the 12 best ONI mods in the Steam Workshop
Oxygen Not Included - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Ollie Toms)

Oxygen Not Included mods, it turns out, can tell you a lot about the game itself, and how phenomenal it already is. Most of the really good mods out there opt for the “making life better” route, rather than the “tonnes of new features” route like the mods of most other games. It’s a testament to the brilliance of Klei and their endlessly enjoyable suffocation simulator.

But even so, I rarely play without the below Oxygen Not Included mods. This is a game I come back to time after time, and so I’ve spent years pouring over what new nuggets of excellence the modding community has brought out. These 12 mods are the very best ONI mods of all, and if you’re looking to make your time micromanaging dupes so they don’t drown in your water supply even more enjoyable, you’ve come to the right place!

(more…)

Oct 16, 2019
Games like Minecraft 16 best games like Minecraft from the past ten years
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Ollie Toms)

There have been a great many games like Minecraft over the past decade. Which is to be expected, because who wouldn’t want to capitalise on the runaway mainstream success of the decade, and the best-selling video game of all time? There are many things that are very special about Minecraft, and remain more or less unmatched even ten years later; but we’ve done our very best to condense all that specialness down into a simple list of six criteria, and from there, we’ve compiled our list of the 16 best games like Minecraft out there right now.

Some of these games you might look at and think, “But Ollie, my dear fellow! You must be crazy! This game looks nothing like Minecraft!>” Bear with me, and I’ll explain exactly why each game on this list has earned its place there. Each of these games are well worth a try if you enjoy Minecraft for whatever reason. And who knows? You might find your new favourite game within this very list…

(more…)

Oct 2, 2019
[Game Update] - 371502
Oxygen Not Included - Klei-JoeW


Hello friends!

I'm pretty excited about this patch: We've done a big performance pass and removed a lot of spikes, leading to a smoother experience in every colony we tested. We've been working on some new internal performance profiling tools, and they've given us some great insights into new areas of the code that have been causing slowdowns and stutters. The trickiest part of optimization is that there's rarely ‘One Big Fat Slow Thing’ that we get to make faster. Instead, there are usually dozens of small, unrelated algorithms that only cause problems in certain situations, and whose problems aren't visible until other systems access them, and so forth. Because of this, the new tools have allowed us to track down a lot of nonoptimal code that we weren't able to find before.

We've also fixed a number of other bugs and crashes, as well as taking a serious pass on the organization and presentation of the codex.

We will continue working on performance and bugs for the live release even while we're busy crafting the next phase of Oxygen Not Included. Thank you so much--as always--for taking the time to bring issues and concerns to our attention, and for being part of this game.

Optimization
  • Improve performance updating the Build menu
  • Improve performance updating which categories and buildings have been unlocked by research
  • Pokeshells don't check every pickupable to find an egg to guard.
  • Don't update animations when the game is paused. This also fixes a bug which greatly improves framerate right after loading a map.
  • Remove unused Animators from various UI elements which were processing every frame.
  • Use simplified animation for UI elements.
  • Improved performance updating world navigation data.
  • Improved performance for updating animation render groups.
  • Avoid needless calculations when an animation is removed from the scene.
  • Pips looking for seeds search among Plantable Seeds, not all pickupables
  • Fix math error causing many animations to believe they needed updating every frame when they did not.
  • Improved performance when many items are marked for sweep and drawing their sweep icon.
  • Improved performance when animations are rendered with offset positions. This has an especially big impact on rocket launches, which are now much smoother.
  • Large optimization to the way textures are loaded and freed, improves many colonies.
  • Cost of calculating whether materials are available for delivery is spread out over multiple frames, to prevent a spike every second.
  • Ore which is not marked for sweep no longer tries updating its status text every frame.
  • Also, ore which _is_ marked for sweep no longer tries updating its status text every frame.
  • Pressure vulnerable plants and critters no longer triggering "safe" messages continually.
  • Pressure vulnerable checks are spread across multiple frames, instead of spiking once every second.
  • Optimized the way achievements track stats on buildings, e.g. temperature, building type, and so on. Removes significant performance spikes across frames.
  • Prevent achievement tracker from performing excess calculations when the framerate starts dropping.
  • Many status items are faster to add and remove.
  • Drowning checks are spread across multiple frames instead of spiking once every second.
  • Temperature vulnerable checks are spread across multiple frames instead of spiking once every second.
  • Changed how "building uptime" data is calculated and stored, this should cut down on the size of data stored drastically.
  • Autosave will wait until the mouse button is released before triggering, so no more crazy pipe constructions.
Visuals
  • UI image for various ores is no longer blurry.
  • Reduced the red/green saturation of the various sensors and switches.
  • Improved linework on hats with logos.
  • Added missing hats to some animations.
  • Made the arrows on Transformers more visible.
  • The logo on the Power Station matches the other electrician logos.
  • Fixed the position of the Grilled Pacu artwork.
Database and UI
  • Tips and Information renamed to Lessons
  • Lessons page moved into a grid of imaged buttons
  • Tutorial Videos are pulled out of the big list of Tips, into their own section of the Lessons page
  • Big list of links to Tips has been compiled into one big article so you don't have to constantly tab back and forth to read the tips.
  • “Plumbing and Ventilation” tutorial video is renamed to “Connecting Pipes”, and is triggered by placing a building that has either a piped input or output.
  • “Morale” tutorial video is now triggered by applying your first Skill Point, or when a Duplicant dips into negative Morale.
  • Hitting "Reset Tutorial Messages" repopulates the list of possible tutorial messages, not just restores messages the player has intentionally hidden.
  • “Digging For Resources” tutorial video is delivered the first time a building is requesting a material that the colony has not yet discovered, OR 7 minutes into the game otherwise if it hasn't happened yet.
  • If a Tutorial Message contains a video, its message gets a Video icon.
  • Rename “Morale” tutorial video to “Duplicant Morale” for consistent spacing.
  • Database search bar can now search for sub-entries like critter morphs, etc.
  • Database entries with only one SubEntry no longer show a table of contents of SubEntries.
  • Reformatting to Critter Database pages to be more readable.
  • Entries (x/y) formatting in the Database is now translatable.
  • Hook up icons for Elements menu in the Database.
  • Building Requirements and Effects in the Database are presented more similarly to how they are displayed elsewhere in the game.
  • Add tooltips to Requirements/Effects for buildings in the Database.
  • Fix build menu recipe details on cooking buildings.
  • Database entries for fabricators display their recipes in a grid
General
  • Remove research requirement on Royal Flush achievement
  • Duplicants weren't properly dead while in containers. This fixes them causing crashes from getting sick but also being dead (and in a container). (Still need to figure out what they are doing in containers...)
  • Fix plants showing "Blocked" after a load.
  • Less flickering when there is a rogue bit of gas floating around plants.
  • Clarify that all mods are being disabled due to a single error, not because they're all broken.
  • Fix bug where transformers stop dissipating after a save/load.
  • Finish construction of replacement tile if underlying object is deconstructed first.
  • Updated Korean translation.
  • Tweaks to Chinese translation.
  • Temperature/Disease Sensors no longer become unresponsive when in a vacuum or no element in conduit.
  • Temperature Sensor initializes network to current value immediately.
  • Conduit Sensors update based on the last value measured when no elements is in the conduit.
  • World name is shown on the load screen.
  • Colony coordinate on the new game screen accepts typed/pasted coordinates.
  • Add the full coordinate and a "copy" button to the worldgen seed on the pause menu
  • Tooltip for Lit Area in Light Overlay no longer erroneously says that working in lit areas improves Duplicant Morale.
Worldgen
  • Won't crash if a worldgen has a difficulty value outside of the range of descriptors.
  • Allow spawning worlds that have no start location (new map settings for modders).
HOTFIX - 371951
  • Improved performance of tracking "Finely Tuned Machine" achievement, reduces periodic lag spike
  • Fixed the case where a large blue crackly texture would cover up the colony
  • Fixed a crash in the crash reporter when trying to report a crash (thanks for the reports).
  • Fixed a crash if a save with modded settings was loaded with mods disabled.
HOTFIX - 372041
  • Fix for the load screen claiming that older saves on default worlds were "corrupted".
  • Fix crash caused by changed codex unlocks
Aug 27, 2019
Oxygen Not Included guide: how to ace your first 30 cycles in ONI
Oxygen Not Included - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Ollie Toms)

Oxygen Not Included is one of my very favourite games. And it’s also just recently been released, which means a whole wave of bright-eyed players have just begun their own journey into this hilarious, beautiful, infernally complex suffocation simulator.

So, to all those players: this is the Oxygen Not Included guide that I wish I had when I was first starting out. Updated for the full release of ONI, I’ll go through all the problems you’ll have to solve in your first 30 cycles step by step, and show you how to use this first month to create a beautiful, elegant, and fully functional base.

(more…)

Aug 13, 2019
Oxygen Not Included guide: how to ace your first 30 cycles in ONI
Oxygen Not Included - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Ollie Toms)

Oxygen Not Included is one of my very favourite games. It’s also just recently been released, which means a whole wave of bright-eyed players have just begun their own journey into this hilarious, beautiful, infernally complex suffocation simulator.

So, to all those players: this is the Oxygen Not Included guide that I wish I had when I was first starting out. Fully up to date with the full release of ONI, I’ll go through all the problems you’ll have to solve in your first 30 cycles step by step, and show you how to use this first month to create a beautiful, elegant, and fully functional base.

(more…)

Aug 12, 2019
Steam Charts: Win A Free Car Edition!
Grand Theft Auto V Legacy - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (John Walker)

Hello, I’m high school sweetheart, John Walker. Welcome, if you can, to Steam Charts.

(more…)

Aug 5, 2019
Steam Charts: Silly String Edition
The Elder Scrolls® Online - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (John Walker)

Usually after the Steam summer sale horror show, the Steam Charts offer us some respite in the lull between AAA releases and allow us to celebrate the successful release of a bunch of indie games. But as you’ll have noticed if you’ve looked at 2019, nothing follows the rules of sense and decorum any longer. So it is that last week and this, we’ve had charts that feature only a single recently released game.

So this week we’re taking a trip!

(more…)

Aug 1, 2019
Oxygen Not Included: another sadistic banger from the masters of misery
Oxygen Not Included

Clearly, someone at Klei Entertainment is a stickler for punishment. Invisible Inc., Don't Starve and Mark of the Ninja all have a touch of the cutesy-cruel to them, in their own special ways, their sweetness or wit spread devilishly thin over some brain-wracking difficulty, and Oxygen Not Included is the same. A case of twee, quippy tone layered over a sprawl of systems that's at once intricate and maddeningly vast, it's a game that's constantly teasing you; constantly luring and lulling just before throwing out another crisis; constantly reminding you that you are, in fact, a bit thick. Clearly I'm a stickler for punishment, too, because I think it's brilliant.

You'll start Oxygen Not Included picking a planet on which to be marooned (a new addition for the game's recent move from early access to full release, which basically serves as a more flavoursome way of tinkering with the game world's settings). After that, you spawn in, underground on some foreign world, with three Duplicates, the name for the little cloned people that form the backbone of your colony, and you're off: survive!

That's about as much onboarding as you get, which again is great if you're up for a proper challenge, but intimidating as anything if you like a gentler start. It makes the discovery of some new best-practise positively thrilling, for the fellow technocrats out there, though it also means bad habits form as you learn on the fly - mining downwards, into air vacuums filled with your own CO2, without even knowing there's an entire overlay for oxygen levels, or constructing an outhouse (one of the few hints you're given early on) without a washbasin, so you think you've been smart but actually everyone is about to die of food poisoning because they didn't wash their hands.

Read more

Jul 31, 2019
Wot I Think: Oxygen Not Included
Oxygen Not Included - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Nate Crowley)

During its two year stint in Early Access, Oxygen Not Included often came close to becoming one of my major time sink games. It s a rich simulation of the kind I adore, with an enchanting art style, a unique atmosphere, and a labyrinth of features to discover. On a gut level, I love it. But then, for every time I ve booted it up, there have been three where my cursor hovered over the icon before flinching away, as if I d discovered mould on a sandwich or the HMRC logo on an envelope.

Brilliant though it is, ONI is an ordeal. It s satisfying, but it s stressful. I d even go so far as to say – and here I risk invoking the scorn of the Legion of Geniuses, who wait in the darkness beyond the comment section – it s a little bit too hard>. But before the swollen-minded wolves take my fingers, let me snatch back the meat and explain myself.

(more…)

Jul 30, 2019
Oxygen Not Included leaves Early Access
Oxygen Not Included

Klei's sci-fi survival sim Oxygen Not Included entered Early Access in February of 2017, and leaves it now just over two years later. If you've been holding out on trying this game of stranded "Duplicants" crafting a colony from scratch on unforgivingly harsh asteroids, now's the time.

Klei's forum post sums up how far it's come: "We started with a game that had little more than a few Duplicants and some pipes full of cold water. Since then we’ve added oil biomes and automation, Duplicant skill progression and tubes to zip around in, critter ranching and breeding, and more features than could possibly be named. Now Duplicants can even break through the surface of their rocky home and escape away into space… with your guidance, of course."

As is par for the course, they'll continue patching Oxygen Not Included to catch bugs and tweak balance issues.

Another of Klei's games, card-RPG Griftlands, is currently in playable alpha on the Epic Store and will enter Steam Early Access when it hits beta next year.

...