Dear Stormworkers,

This week is announcement week, with minor updates planned for next week 8th December, and also every two weeks following as normal.

Next week is mostly fixes and improvements, but does include a minor new feature. While we are using the majority of our time for fixes, we are reserving a small amount of time to introduce smaller new features, and plan to add something new on average every 4 weeks.



We are also planning the usual free major updates, and next year should bring 4 of these. We are carefully listening to players, and next years majors will be highly requested features. We have plenty of work to do here, but we are really excited and expect they will make a huge difference to players.

We are not currently planning more DLC for Stormworks in 2024. Our focus will be on quality improvements and highly requested features.



Work continues on 'Not Stormworks 2'. If you are not familiar, 'Not Stormworks 2' is a new game that we are working on. Only one thing is known for sure: it is NOT a sequel to Stormworks! Stormworks will continue for a long time, and isn't affected by this other game. We will announce more info in 2024.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This week's minor update brings many fixes and improvements to Stormworks!

These are important fixes that players have requested on the issue tracker. Many thanks to all the players who shared their feedback!

In a couple of months, we are planning to merge the dedicated server into the main game installation rather than having a separate Steam product. This simply means that server.exe and server64.exe will be installed with Stormworks, rather than the separate Steam App where they currently exist.

To help server communities, there will be a long transition period and we will be listening to their feedback. As we understand, it should be a simple process to make minor changes to their install scripts. We will let you know when the transition period starts with more info on what to do if you run a server.



The reason for this change is to ensure that the server and the game updates at the same time, removing the risk of an error where the game and the server may have different versions for some period of time.

The other reason is that Valve have released some new security measures requiring 2FA via SMS to update the game on Steam. This means that automated pipelines can no longer push updates, and a person with the right permissions must be standing by with the phone to confirm each release for each app.



I am not convinced this makes any sense. The SMS confirmation isn't required for beta branches or workshop uploads which can also go live directly to players, and its broadly agreed that automated release processes are less prone to errors than those involving humans. However, we love Valve and we appreciate they are just trying to make Steam as safe as they reasonably can.

Please see the patch notes below for full details on this update!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.9.18

Balance/Rework - Wide scale adjustments to fluid pressure and flow through doors
Balance - Rebalanced water jet energy conversion to better match old behaviour
Balance - Reduced air scoop reaction to wind and velocity
Balance - #23038 Rebalanced engine cooling and heat
Balance - #22867 #22872 Reduced large firebox and diesel burner coolant capacity and reworked heat transfer to be higher in larger boilers
Fix - #22752 Improved flow in restricted scenarios, apply flow limiting after resolving fluid islands
Fix - Crash when attempting to offset the physics position of a group where not all vehicles were loaded
Fix - Turbojets no longer apply force in space
Fix - #22917 Weapons AI autocannon tanks not firing
Fix - #22510 #23023 Updated weapons AI boats and fixed AI captain raycasts colliding with character physics
Fix - #22191 Resolved default disaster siren not containing a battery (running out of electric)
Fix - #21163 Fixed sharks dragging characters through thin walls
Fix - #20947 Ordnance type default value
Fix - #23109 Keep active block functionality for vehicle groups
Fix - Flush addon script deferred events immediately before triggering initial autosave after onCreate
(Some addon data based on onVehicleSpawn callbacks missing if load initial autosave of a game)

Dear Stormworkers,

Next week we will be releasing another minor update focused on fixes and improvements.

Fixes will be included for the following topics:

Trading add-on, keep active blocks, enemy AI, large fire box, diesel burner, water jets, underwater doors, air scoop, turbo props.

We remain determined to clean up all these issues for good, and there is plenty of other stuff that we are also getting to, that players have reported on the tracker.



Thank you to everyone who have reported issues and helped us resolve these problems!

If you are experiencing an issue with a component not listed above, have not reported it yet, and have a simple example, please do get in touch via the in-game "report a bug" button. We want to make sure we are aware of all remaining issues so we can get them resolved as soon as possible.

With the above said, we have made huge progress, fixed the majority of problems, and fixes are for increasingly rare issues.

We are also working on the unit test system and should have this integrated into our process in the next few weeks.



Fixes and improvements remain the priority, but further ahead we are planning some great new content and features which are highly requested. 2024 should be a great year for updates!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

It is minor update week! As well as a long list of fixes and improvements, there is also a new feature - release rope input for rope anchors!



You can now detach ropes using logic on a vehicle. This new on/off logic node can be triggered to release the rope connections on an anchor for ropes.

The fixes list includes some important changes, including some fluid rebalances. These rebalances are tending to be smaller and finer in magnitude as the system is generally backwards compatible in most situations. Thank you to all the players who helped by posting issues on the issue tracker!



Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.9.17

Feature - Rope anchor "release rope" logic node

Fix - #22825 Resolved door/turret-ring flow and pressure issues
Fix - #22287 Default missions tow mission spawning error without DLC
Fix - #22483 Default missions repair missions using outdated function call
Fix - #21092 Crash when attempting to carry a creature-dragged character
Fix - #20876 Fix pressVehicleButton behaviour for toggle buttons
Fix - Predators no longer attacking
Fix - #20988 Default secondary equipment binding to R (prev B)
Fix - #21069 Fix buzzer audio layer volume initialization
Fix - #21117 Prevent vehicle fire damage ignoring vehicle damage setting when enabled
Balance - #21843 #21853 Balanced heat sources (Firebox no longer kills you, heaters twice as effective, burn damage and radius balanced)
Fix - Crash which rarely occurred when creating ropes
Balance - #21952 Adjusted liquid rocket fuel consumption
Balance - #22120 #22803 Rebalanced RCS thrust and consumption and clamped flow
Fix - #22799 Antennas not highlighting when in logic placement mode
Balance - #22849 Rebalanced diesel burner consumption and max temperature
Rework - #22911 Rescaled maximum ocean pressure to 30atm

v1.9.12

Fix - fixed dedicated server crash
Fix - fixed jet engines with inf fuel
Fix - limit fluid transfer through doors based on compartment size to resolve oscillating with very small compartments
Rework - liquid fuel engine internal capacity now based on engine size to improve flow
Rework - premade engine internal capacity now based on engine size to improve flow
Rework - increased modular engine fuel manifold capacity to improve fuel flow at low pressures
Rework - water jets now convert momentum less agressively to reduce power stall
Rework - reduced backflow threshold so that backflow only occurs with low or zero flow (improves pressure inside leaking compartments)
Rework - rebalanced diesel burner to heat up slower
Rework - reduced centrifugal separator internal capacity to make flow more responsive

v1.9.10

Fix - compressed gas tanks now fill completely
Fix - water jets thrust increased to match previous level
Fix - modular engines now work correctly with inf fuel

v1.9.9

Fix - fixed fluid jet particle trails
Fix - fixed water flow for handheld hoses
Fix - fixed jet engine combustion sound effects
Rework - reduced rate of leaks due to damage x10

v1.9.8

Rework - Reworked fluid system to be much more consistent with pre-space update behaviour. Fluid system now driven by delta pressure, and liquid is partially compressible to assist with flow. This update fixes steam, and other fluid component.
Rework - Rebalanced RCS to have lower power and gas consumption
Fix - fixed exhaust and steam particles

Thanks to all the players on #experimental who helped prepare this update.

Dear Stormworkers,

This week we are releasing a minor update with many fixes including some important quality improvements. Please see below for the full list of changes.

Thanks to the many players who have asked for player testing, we are bringing back the experimental branch! This can be accessed by right clicking on Stormworks -> Properties -> Steam Betas -> select Experimental in the drop down.



Experimental won't always be active, but will be used for a few days at a time while there is something that would benefit from testing. For example, currently on ⁠experimental is the new fluid system changes that we are trialing. While it is active, the channel will be visible on Discord and the info on what is being tested will be in the pinned comments.

Please provide any feedback in the #experimental channel on Discord if you would like to help test new changes.



Regarding the changes we are making, we are still working on the fluid changes. On experimental we have made lots of progress, but we are still making improvements and hope to release the experimental improvements as a hotfix soon.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.9.6

Fix - Crash caused by some dog halloween outfits
Fix - Fixed addDamage repair particle offset
Fix - #20593 Submarine base workbench typo
Fix - #20719 Small engine colour error
Fix - #20844 Nuclear plant colission issues
Fix - #21040 Updated main menu discord invite with official link
Fix - #21190 Beret colour issues
Fix - #21241 Floating train station at Uran Wind
Fix - #22546 Crash caused by spawnVehicle on an invalid path
Fix - Vehicles disappearing due to ai script teleports

Addon Lua:

Fixed general behaviour of setVehiclePos,setGroupPos, setVehiclePosSafe, setGroupPosSafe
Added new moveVehicle, moveGroup, moveVehicleSafe, moveGroupSafe functions
Fixed several documentation issues
Updated default ai scripts to use moveVehicleSafe as it better suits their behaviour

Dear Stormworkers,

Last weeks new Space DLC and major update released! The player creations and adventures across space are incredible - from new rockets, satellites and space stations to lunar bases and rovers.

The space race is real, with many players clearly building for hundreds of hours before the new launch, in preparation to be the best prepared. Congratulations to the many players with incredible new creations on the workshop! It is really inspiring.

This week we have an additional hot fix that addresses many important issues. Please see patch notes below for a full list of fixes. These changes include some very important fixes concerning cargo missions, weight of fluids, and vanishing vehicles. We are still working on a bunch of fluid and steam issues where we are improving the system to behave more like the old version and will get these improvements released soon.



As previously discussed, there were issues in the first day or so of the update. The main issue was that there was a change to gravity that effected many existing ships. We fixed this issue within a day, but we accept that it was very concerning to many players who felt like the hundreds of hours they had invested in building these creations was at risk of being lost.

We worked very hard to get the issues resolved as quickly as possible, with a fix live within 18 hours. However, it wasn't great that players had to deal with these concerns for any amount of time.

Let's discuss how we can stop the same problem in the future:

Unit Tests

We are planning a new "unit test" system in Stormworks. Unit testing is a common technique in software to write computer programs that verify if some code produces the expected output. In Stormworks, we plan to add new "data logging" components that we can add to vehicles to record a number or on/off value. Then, when our build server creates a new release, it can run Stormworks, spawn the "unit test vehicles", and record the outputs of all these logged values, and compare them to the previous release.

This will allow us to test most vehicle behavior. Any value in the logic system can be checked. For example, we can test buoyancy by logging the height of each corner of a ship with an altitude sensor. We can also be notified as soon as something changes.



Release Checklist

Simply having a written procedure of things to check before releasing a final build will ensure that we can check at least a few common ways that players play Stormworks. With the Space update, for the last few weeks before release, all our testing was focused on stuff between the launch pad and the moon. It is so easy to lose track of the bigger context when you are looking at a specific update, but having a written procedure to follow makes it much harder to be distracted.

The kind of stuff for the checklist will probably be testing some of the most popular workshop vehicles, testing the tutorial, playing a mission in multiplayer, etc.

Steam Beta Branch

Many players have suggested player testing with a beta branch on Steam, and we will consider it. However, when we have tried this before, there was an issue where many players played 'experimental branch' because they didn't want to wait for the release date. This created huge friction with the community, because some didn't want us to actually experiment and make changes based on player feedback, while they are trying to build something with the experimental components. Which public branch players decide to use is beyond our control, but we are looking at ways in which we can get this to work better.



Limitations

Stormworks is over 100Mb of code, and contains over 600 components. There is at least 200 million ways to place 2 components next to each other. It is not possible to test everything every 2 weeks. The above can certainly avoid a lot of problems in the future, but what else do you think we should do?

Community

As with many other sandbox games, Stormworks is highly dependent on user generated content. On the Steam Workshop, our players has close to the number of creations as the huge communities of more popular sandbox games. This also incudes player-to-player help and communication that we often see on our Discord server, forums, Steam guides, public wikis, and especially video tutorials and any other videos and streams on YouTube, Twitch and Discord.

We are endlessly grateful for all these players who keeps supporting the game and other players.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

v1.9.5

Fix - Solid rocket booster fuel amount slider now works for small nozzles
Fix - Cargo missions script fixed to function correctly
Fix - Mission vehicles sometimes teleported incorrectly which was causing other vehicles to vanish
Fix - Restored old equation for weight of fluid in a compartment
Fix - Split getVehicleData function loaded vehicle data to getVehicleComponents