Dear Stormworkers,

This week is announcement week, with last week and next week being content updates.

Thank you to all the players who tried out the new Oil Drilling Major Update! It is great to see all the creative drilling rig designs and how players are engaging with the new mechanics.



For a long time now, players have got in touch from time to time asking about official merchandise. We have remained focused only on the video game software, and wanted to avoid being distracted by other stuff. However, we would quite like to wear some Stormworks merch, and it would be good to make it happen for the players who want it. It may not be too big a distraction using service like Red Bubble. Is this something that you may want? Let us know if this is something you are interested in, and if it is something that players want, then we can make it happen!



We are continuing to plan out the rest of the year. We are planning 15 more free minor updates spread across the rest of the year (one for every second week), a free major update in summer time, a new paid DLC around October, and another free major update in early 2024!



Not all of these updates are fully planned out yet, while others are deep in development! We look forward to your ideas and theories on what these updates might be :-)

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

Fix - Removed default coolant from fireboxes
Fix - Removed outdated info in wellhead description

Dear Stormworkers and Roughnecks,

The Oil Drilling Major Update is live now!

This new update introduces oil drilling to the world of Stormworks.

This update includes many new components and systems to allow players to design and operate oil rigs. Oil drilling is a massive business, with many different ways to drill oil, and loads of engineering. We have simplified oil drilling from real life to work with a set of blocks, but many of the design considerations, mechanics, and logistics remain. Lets talk about what this means:



Surveying For Oil

Players can just start drilling in the hope of striking black gold, but it's probably more sensible to purchase surveys. You can discover oil fields by purchasing survey data from the existing oil sites in game. Industrial Frontier DLC owners can also drill on land at any of the pre-established oil wells on the Meier Isles that include static workbenches for creating rigs.

Establishing A Well

The new oil well component is large and heavy. When placed down level and flat, it can be activated and will lock to the ground. This can be logistically difficult when drilling in the ocean, so you may need special purpose vehicles such as submersibles to assist in positioning the well.



Feeding Rods

The new drill rods are 10m lengths of drilling pipe. They can be stored in the rod holders, picked up and fed using the rod clamps, and threaded together using the rod threading clamp. You will need to thread together a long drill chain of rods as you feed it into your well.

Drilling

Once you have your rods assembled and fed into the top of your well, it is time to start drilling! For this you need to rotate the rods (by feeding them through a rod driver), and pump drilling slurry (using the rod pivot) into the rods to work as cutting fluid.



Extracting Oil

Once you have drilled down to the depth of the oil deposit, it is time to start extracting! For this you need the well pump, a huge piston type pump that needs to be actuated mechanically. Make a pump jack or otherwise drive the piston to pump oil!

Refining

Once you have extracted your oil, you can refine it in a tall custom tank with distillation. Heat the oil using a coal burner, or the new diesel burner or electric heater to 300C and the oil will start to separate. It can be extracted using the distillation taps which will condense jet fuel or diesel depending on their height in the column.



We can't wait to see what oil industry inspired creations players come up with and hope you enjoy these new components and mechanics! And we look forward to your feedback!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.7.0

Feature - Oil Industry Major Update

Oil drilling is a new late-game activity for Stormworks, with high start up costs but a large return on investment.
Oil can be found under oil rig workbenches or under random ocean tiles (Purchase survey data from an oil company to reveal them on your map)
Once you have located an area rich in oil it's time to set up an oil rig and start drilling!

Oil Survey:
- Randomly generated ocean oil deposits
- Oil Data Vendors which sell oil deposit location information
- Oil deposit below the static oil rig base
- 4 Oil Well locations on the Meier Isles (Industrial Frontier DLC)

Attach a wellhead to the terrain above an oil deposit (These are pre-placed on the Meier Isles)
Drill Rods can be fed into the top of this component with assistance from Drill Clamps and Connectors to pick up and join the rods.
A rotary table and swivel provide rotation and slurry flow which are required for running the drill.
Once the drill is spinning and has a supply of slurry, the rods need to be physically pushed into the wellhead to advance the drill.
Drilling will saturate the slurry with mud and stone, which can be cleaned and recycled using a slurry filter and fresh water.
After the drill arrives at the oil deposit, the oil can be extracted with a Pumpjack component paired directly to a swivel. The Pumpjack requires mechanical action to draw up the oil from the well.

Oil Drilling:
- Drill Rod Storage
- Drill Clamp
- Drill Connector
- Rotary Table
- Drill Swivel
- Wellhead
- Pumpjack
- New Fluids: Slurry and Saturated Slurry
- Slurry filter

Now that you have an excess of oil you don't just have to sell!
Fractional Distillation is the process of separating crude oil into its more useful components.
Heat up oil inside a contained volume to >300 degrees and use the distillation port to tap off diesel and jet-fuel fractions.

Fractional Distillation:
- Diesel Furnace
- Electric Furnace
- Distillation Port

We have deprecated the fluid filter in this update for a much more simplified version of the component to emphasize the design challenge of fluid system building.
When we deprecate parts they remain in the game files, and a replacement version is added; this means that your old vehicles will still work as usual, but the old version of the part will no longer appear in the edit inventory.

General:
- New Fluid Filter

Fix - #1698 Improved terrain at scxeech trading yard
Rework - #16315 #15892 Resource trading addon now has surge pricing
Rework - Temperature Sensor now uses compartment temperature if placed inside a sealed volume
Rework - Radar now ignores moveable class objects
Balance - Desalinator re-balance

Addon Lua:
- Added getOilDeposits()
- Added large keypad support to setVehicleKeypad

Dear Stormworkers & Roughnecks,

The Oil Drilling Update drops next week on Thursday 16th March 2023 at 5pm UTC!



This update includes loads of new components and systems to introduce oil drilling, designing and operating rigs, and refining your own fuel.

Please see the previous announcement on details of the various component types and mechanics.



Players can design their own ocean rigs to extract off-shore oil deposits. For owners of the Industrial Frontier DLC, we are also adding several static workbenches and pre-established well heads for convenient setting up of on-shore rigs on the Meier Isles.



We are really excited to release this new update and look forward to next week on Thursday :-)

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is a minor update week! We are adding new communication channels between add-ons and mods so that they can communicate with each other.

This is a useful new extension to the modding API to allow add-on creators to communicate between different add-ons. This means you can have add-ons that can extend each other, or otherwise just react.



We have been using this new API ourselves and now the hospital ships will travel to some missions where they can be useful. This means that you will have a floating hospital en-route to mission locations to assist in career mode.



As well as this new extension, we have implemented some fixes and improvements. Please see the patch notes below for full details.



We continue working hard on the new Oil Industry Major Update! It is almost ready and we can't wait for release.



Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.6.15

Feature - #8113 Cross script commands

This week's update features a new addon lua feature and 3 small fixes as we prepare for the release of the upcoming major update.
Cross script commands allow addon scripts to send commands to each other as if they were a player.
For this week's update we have also updated the default AI hospital boats to navigate towards emergency missions to provide closer hospital destinations for missions at sea.

Fix - #16497 #16886 #17848 Fix equipment not being dropped from characters respawning with the UI button before death
Fix - #16480 Removed non-functional clear axis button from gamepad controls
Fix - #16779 Buzzer sfx blending speed (volume near sfx start)

Addon Lua:
- Added server.command(message)
- Default ai now save their current paths
- Hospital boats navigate toward missions
- Hospital boats now wait for much longer at the end of their path

Dear Stormworkers & Roughnecks,

The Oil Drilling Update - our next major update, is due out on Thursday 16th March 2023 at 5pm UTC!

Drilling for oil is coming to Stormworks via a series of new components and systems to facilitate creating and operating rigs.

Oil drilling is very complex and there are a lot of nuances, and a variety of techniques, with differences between on-shore, off-shore, geology considerations, and generational changes. While Stormworks will simplify drilling, the principles remain, and our goal has been to encourage design with logistics and operation in mind. Lets talk about what that means:



Oil Deposits

Under the world of Stormworks there will be hundreds of oil deposits, of varying depth and size. Survey data for these deposits can be purchased from various oil sites.

The Well Head

Well heads will be a new component that form the starting point of a well. They can be established on any flat surface, above or below the ocean. They incorporate the drill head, and some plumbing, and act as the interface for the well.

Drilling Rods

Drill rods will be new 10m long physical rods that can be chained together to form longer rods. These rods can be fed into and recovered from a well.



Rod Handling

There will be various robotic parts for grabbing, handling, feeding, joining, separating, and driving rods. For example, you will need the rod threader to merge two rods together, and the driver is required to turn the rods for drilling.

Slurry

Slurry, or drilling mud, is required for drilling. Slurry must be pumped down the rods into the drill head to lubricate drilling and transport the cut stone and material away from the drill head. The slurry must be circulated and cleaned in mud scrubbers to remove the debris and keep the well drilling.

Refining

We are also adding some new parts to allow fractional distillation of oil into diesel and jet fuel!

We are really excited to launch this new update and look forward to sharing it in a few weeks. In the mean time we have next weeks minor update, and we continue work on finishing this update and many others!



We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this new update!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

Today we release the Physics Sensor Minor Update! This includes the new physics sensor, which is a new component giving composite logical output including positional and rotational information.



This data output is particularly useful for microcontroller designers who are interested in building their own gyros and other motion control systems, which should now be much easier and practical.



This component is in response to player requests on the issue tracker and we continue to enjoy hearing your thoughts and ideas and implementing them when possible!



As well as this new component feature, we have several useful fixes and improvements! Please see the patch notes below for full details.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.6.14

Feature - Physics Sensor (#10065 #10119 #3793 #4465)

The physics sensor component combines functionality of several other sensors into a convenient single block.
The sensor outputs position, rotation, linear and angular speeds over 14 composite channels detailed on the component.

Fix - #16642 Wheel secondary physics issues for clients
Fix - #17831 Seafloor generation issue
Fix - #15856 No longer convert rescued survivors to static NPCs, instead update their display name to 'Rescued'
Fix - #13931 Ai boats/aircraft now track damage and despawn after 2 mins if above threshold
Fix - #13936 Return value of getZones not including Zone parent vehicle data
Fix - #14017 Added editor arrows for wings
Fix - #14835 Fixed teleporting under the map through very tall terrain
Fix - #13078 Rotor physics mirroring issues
Fix - #14848 Metal ore foundry mesh issues
Fix - #14851 Gold foundry mesh issues

Addon Lua:
- Added setCharacterTooltip and setCreatureTooltip for renaming non-player Characters and Animals

Dear Stormworkers,

It is announcement week! Next week is minor update update week, and next week we will be releasing the recently announced physics sensor, as well as other fixes and improvements.

A new major update is on the way! We were hoping to announce this week, but as always, we are very cautious to announce anything until it is ready, and there are some more improvements that we want to get finished.



Our Update Announcement Strategy

Big updates are exciting, and when you are working new features, it is very easy for developers to get carried away with enthusiasm. We are no exception, and it is thrilling to see things come together and think about the new possibilities that this new work unlocks! We would love to share every step with players, but this can result in an overall negative player experience, as players would see the many ideas that don't work out, get cancelled, or de-prioritized. We are also big believers in doing rather than talking, and the focus has always been about the product and real value, rather than words or promises.

So, our strategy is to get new features to a stage where we are happy, then share the news to players with the confidence that we can deliver.



Studio Plans and Development Strategy

Stormworks released on Early Access on 28th Feb 2018, almost 5 years ago! And we had the invite-only beta 6 months prior. For years we released updates every week, and now every 2 weeks. There have been dozen of major updates and even two DLCs. Players have amassed over 6000 years of playtime.

We are very fortunate that Stormworks is a popular game, and making updates for players and seeing their reactions is very rewarding. This is something that must continue and we want to do our best to serve our players as best we can.

The challenge we are increasingly facing is that after 2 years of pre-release development and 5 years of servicing, the code becomes more and more fatigued. The Stormworks source code excluding third party libraries and comments is over 15 million characters. On top of this, we have made all the easy updates, and a lot of the not-so-easy ones. Stuff that should be easy turns out to be very complex to integrate with those 15m characters of existing source code. What is left tends to be difficult to deliver.

Our current strategy is to just get on with it and do the jobs, no matter how difficult. Obviously, this is a short term strategy and in the long term, there are better ways to serve our players.

So, our long term strategy is a new game and we have some very ambitious plans. Moving forward is important, so the new game won't be Stormworks 2, but it will be design and vehicle building game, taking lessons from Stormworks and from what our players have told us. We are discussing a lot about player authorship, modding, gameplay and purpose, and a lot of things never done before in a game.

Stormworks updates will continue, and we will work on our new game in parallel.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback! Catch you next week for the minor update.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is update week and we have added 24 new occupation themed outfit items for your characters!

These new outfits can be accessed and tried out via the wardrobe in game. These new outfits are based on workplace attire and include clothing from surgeon and nurse uniforms to park rangers and fishermen.



This update also includes several important fixes and improvements. Please see the patch notes below for full details.

We have a big announcement to make next week about a new update so please be sure to come back for that!



We look forward to your thoughts and feedback on this new update!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.6.13

Feature - 24 New Occupation Themed Outfit Items

Rework - Steam Train Wheels balance and fixes (#16227 #14723 #14697 #16960)
Rework - Updated and improved the default cargo containers (#9615 #10724)
Rework - #7841 Updated the Helicopter preset vehicle and added a Default Container preset
Fix - #5126 #4135 Fixed various hangar door sounds, indoor zones and airstrip lights
Fix - #12983 Police station door and other physics fixed
Fix - #15564 Fixed thin tile physics issue
Fix - #16221 Prevented memory leak caused by LODS when there are no tile sin LOD range
Fix - #14595 Rope length output node now updates dynamically
Fix - #15169 Sync resource storage data on game join
Fix - #16146 SpawnVehicleRope using the wrong data for loaded vehicles
Fix - #16288 Respawn issues when respawning under delayed damage
Fix - #16404 Ski mirroring issues
Fix - #16184 Coal hopper network events for sub-bodies

Added new sound effects for the Wildcat and [REDACTED]

Addon Lua:
- #16090 setVehiclePosSafe behavior reworked to avoid unreliable internal data
- #3854 Added setAudioMood which allows setting the audio mood to a higher level for a peer which naturally decreases over time
Added setAudioMood calls to the default missions script
- #15918 Add support for map label type 0 to prevent crash

Dear Stormworkers,

This week is announcement week, with minor updates happening last week and next week!

This week, we discuss the Stormworks community, as well as provide a short overview for newer players.

Stormworks now has over 500,000 players. As a designing and building game, many of our players have passion and enthusiasm for making things, or have interest in mechanical sciences, and a fascination for how things work. Our players can be any age, but even our younger players are often mature and thoughtful. The community is so often a bright, positive, and engaged place, and we pay tribute to all the kind and talented players who make it what it is.

As a developer, it is hugely rewarding to have a role in a positive, intelligent community, and see players teaching and learning, creating and thinking. We find the creation aspect of making software to be rewarding, but to see this community grow from just a piece of software means so much more, so thank you to all players.

If you are driven to create, or otherwise interested in simulation games and vehicle operation, we recommend checking out the community and sharing your experiences with others.



Official Discord Server: https://discord.gg/stormworks

The official discord server is a great place to share what you are working on, check out other people's creations, and chat and learn from the other 50k players on the server. There is the vehicle showcase, which is an image only channel where people post images of their creations, and is awesome to browse and source ideas and inspiration. There is also a dedicated channel for discussing lua in Stormworks, as well as add ons. There is even a fan-art channel (although this is mostly Stormworks memes!).



Official Issue Tracker: https://geometa.co.uk/support/stormworks

The official issue tracker is where players can report bugs and request features for Stormworks. This is the best way to reach out to the developers. We review all requests and have frequent meetings where we discuss new and old issues. Players can only log in to the official issue tracker through the game menu but can browse with the link above. With over half-a-million players, the issue tracker has been essential to managing the volume of communication and requests, and lets us order and organize. It's actually version 2 and there is an old issue tracker which we replaced to improve player experience and our own efficiency.



Steam Community: https://steamcommunity.com/app/573090

The Steam community has some great content, and you can browse players screenshots, videos, guides, and more, as well as see the news (where this announcement gets posted!). These posts are weekly, and are the place for official announcements!



Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/app/573090/workshop/

The workshop is just incredible and brings the entire dev team so much joy. The creations that players have made are breath taking and you can add them to your game with just a single click. Many items have taken players hundreds of hours to create, and the top items can have over 50k subscriptions! Thank you to all the players who have shared their creativity here.



Unofficial Communities

There are also loads of unofficial communities, including other Discord servers, sub reddits, Youtubers and their subscribers, and more. The above is only the tip of the iceberg.

If you want to get involved, please treat others with respect and be positive!

Next week we will be bringing you new outfits and other improvements in the minor update! And we are still working on other updates including the next minor update which we will share info on soon!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers