Dec 21, 2023

Penkura - LionsArt

Dev-Com

Greetings members of the Accord!

In our last dev-log, we mentioned that we are moving the entire project from Unreal Engine 4.27 to Unreal Engine 5.3. We are happy to announce that it was a full success, not only we were able to improve performance, but we also used this opportunity to implement all the fixes, changes and improvements we wanted to add but weren’t able to because of the fear of damaging the save files.

As we mentioned in the last dev-log all saves before this update will be unusable, as the entire game engine has changed how items, buildings, and even entire levels are ID’d in the game, completely breaking all saves. Our hope is that we have made enough improvements to the save system to make sure players won’t lose any progress in the future.

We managed to implement over 260+ improvements to the background code of nearly every possible feature in the game, from dialog system through mission system all the way up to the base building and NPC.

Some players are worried that Penkura will stop working properly on older systems or their performance would drop significantly after the Unreal Engine 5.3 transfer. We worked over 2 months straight to make sure we bring same or better performance to our community. This included a lot more work than we originally planned but we are happy to report that performance is even better than it was on the Engine 4.27.

Penkura is tested on 2 computers:

The first machine is 12 years old computer that contains GPU GTX 660 and i7-2600 CPU 3.40Ghz.

The second machine is a bit newer, a 6-year-old computer that contains GTX 1080 and Intel Core i7-6700K 4.00 GHz.

Penkura on Unreal Engine 5 works without any problems on both machines.

We will provide more details on each test we took in our upcoming dev-log and provide information on the main problem we encountered while converting Penkura to a newer engine for those that are interested.

We also receive questions about DLSS and its use in Penkura.

For the moment Penkura is not using DLSS system. We do plan to add DLSS to Penkura but first we want to make sure we are providing the best possible performance with old fashion game optimization. The moment we feel that it’s the best we can provide at the current stage of development, and/or improving would take months of work for a minor 1% -/+ gain, we will start to work on the implementation of DLSS to Penkura, which of course will be optional.

Now, let’s talk about the changes we made to the game.

As of this patch, we added fatigue system to the game. The Fatigue system will allow players to sleep based on fatigue level, rather than restricting sleep between 21:00 (9 PM) and 06:00 (6 AM). Lack of sleep will of course end with negative buffs to the player, at the first stage it will trigger the “tired” state, which will slightly slow down player movement. If the player won’t lower his fatigue (by energy drinks, or medicine) it will change to the “exhausted” state, which will lower the movement speed even more, and it will weaken the player limiting his carry capacity.

We are also adding a new monster to the game. The strongest in the Metos family, the Royal Guard. The biggest and strongest Metos which spawn specifically at brood area and near the Metos Queen (which we will be added at a later date). We strongly advise not to challenge these rare creatures.

We are also implementing a new type of handheld items called throwables. For the moment these will be flares which will provide a nice source of light in dark areas of the game. In the near future, we plan to also add distraction gadgets and of course explosives.

With the handheld addition to the game, we are now allowing you to throw any item that can be picked up using the middle mouse button. To add even more to the system, we will be changing the behavior of some items when damaged to allow synergy with both systems. For example, from now on Battery-ST1 when shot will spend its entire energy in a violent burst that will damage anything in a close proximity.

With the project moving to Unreal Engine 5 we also used this opportunity to convert animations scripts to use Multi-Threaded calculations to smooth switching between different animation types, drastically improving their blending. Thanks to the multi-threading we are able to move some of the heavy math from the main thread to another layer which will not only improve performance but also lower the amount of frame spikes players may encounter.

Speaking of frame spikes, thanks to the massive amount of code improvement or how we call it lowering the “development debt” we eliminated nearly all the frame spikes, frame drops, and frame lose. We are very happy and proud of this work. This is something we wanted to do for a long time and finally had an opportunity to do so.

We wanted to add even more content with this patch but with the amount of changes made to the code, this required us to slow down for at least 2 weeks and make sure that everything works properly. Unfortunately, all the code is done by a single person and the entire game is also tested by the same person. That means that there are certain things that were missed, that require fixing. We will keep an eye on any report made by the players, and we will once again test out all the systems from the ground up.

In the upcoming dev-log we will, as mentioned , above provide much more detailed information on tests made on Unreal Engine 5, changes made to the game and our plans for the very near future.

As always, for more information regarding the latest technical support, patches, and updates please join our Discord Community.

LINK ----> https://discord.gg/2ukYHQm

Till the next Dev-Com over and out.

Penkura Main Branch Adjustment

-------------------------
⊞ Bugs | Errors Fixes ⊞
-------------------------

◈ Metos spawner didn't properly check the maximum amount of possible Metoses in a close proximity, ending in the creation of more Metos than allowed.

◈ Ore Refinery sometimes didn't properly display its content on the main screen.

-------------------------------------------
⊞ Improvements | changes | additions ⊞
-------------------------------------------

◈ Moved entire project from Unreal Engine 4.27.2 to Unreal Engine 5.3.

◈ Added new item:
- (Damaged) Battery-ST1
- Med-Adhesive
- Standard Flare
- Emergency Flare
- Signal Flare
- Laser Scalpel
- Small Medical Plate
- Large Medical Plate
- Bio Sample Container
- Basic Medical Kit

◈ Added a new monster to the game Metos Royal Guard.

◈ Added Fatigue system to the game

◈ Fatigue is now visible on the Bio-Ring

◈ Sleep is now dependent on the fatigue of the player. (The player can go to sleep at a minimum of 50% fatigue)

◈ Added new positive effect to the game:
- Well Rested.

◈ Added 2 negative effects to the game:
- Tired
- Exhausted

◈ Added new UI elements to RTS mode.

- The player is now able to see buildings that are being constructed, halted, or require dematerialization.

◈ Added 13 new sound effects for items.

◈ Added new animations to Metos Warrior.

◈ Battery-ST1 can now be damaged, and on destruction, it will violently discharge its energy.

◈ Added 21 new player animations to improve blending (making player animation movement less stiff).

◈ Added shake effect when using Portable Geological Extractor.

◈ Added new dialog lines for Sara.

◈ Recreated half of the Temple Base.

◈ Improved spawn code of all items in the game. (removing minor hitches when items are being spawned).

◈ Player is now able to throw any item that can be held using the middle mouse button.

◈ Distance of thrown item is determined by player speed + item weight + item amount.

◈ Portable Geological Extractor can now damage living things if used at a range of 3 meters.

◈ Improved Portable Geological Extractor user interface.
- PGE now showcases a rough estimate of cluster content.
- Improve interface visibility

◈ Completely recoded building spawn system, removing all collision errors, invisible assets triggers, or not properly loading all the assets within the building.

◈ Improved building hatches spawn and connection checks. (removing minor hitches when buildings are being spawned and moved to the correct position).

◈ Improved save time by roughly 30%.

◈ Improved UI indication and sound effects when discovering new locations.

◈ Optimized save files, lowering their size by 15%.

◈ Added water to the game, and water interaction (for the moment only sound).

◈ Added 4 new sound effects related to interaction with water.

◈ Improved Depth Fog render quality, very bright objects will now be properly saturated by fog.

◈ Improved Dialog UI to make it a bit more readable.

◈ Updated Save/Load system UI with new built-in debug messages.

◈ Improved Save/Load Level transition UI.

◈ Added Lens Flares to the game.

◈ Added option to disable Lens Flares in the Game Options.

◈ Ore Extractor will now consume 6 energy lowered from 8 in normal extraction mode, and 15 in Extensive extraction from 23.

◈ Improved ID check of all buildings in the game, and their components, improving load time.

◈ Bio-Recycler will now provide around 65% of bio-chemicals from organic matter rather than 50%.

◈ Some items can from now on have a fraction value (for example 0.01 Bio-Chemical rather than fix 1).

◈ Improved post-processing effects (improved sharpness, coloring, color blending) / (minor performance boost).

◈ Improved foliage spawn system.
- Spawns flowers, and mushrooms much smoother, and further away from the player.
- Removed background calculations for object respawn. (minor performance gain).

◈ Increased Metos Drone spawn rate by 70%.

◈ Lower the Spawn health range of Metos Drones from 6-15 to 5-10.

◈ Muscle density DNA will now improve player melee damage.

◈ Improve melee combat, (the collision trigger of the actual hit is now equal to the size of the weapon/fist).

◈ Item weight (IP cost) balance changes:
- Solid Construction Component from 8 to 6.
- Crystalized Construction Component from 8 to 10.
- Xavoc Crystal from 1 to 0.8.
- Refined Polan Crystal from 2.5 to 2.
- Vivi from 9 to 7.
- Expired Vivi from 9 to 7.

◈ Construction cost changes:

/// Crystalized Construction Component
- Refined Polan Crystal from 5 to 4
- Refined Xavoc Crystal from 5 to 4
- Noble Metal Bar from 8 to 6

/// TRX Ammo
- 1 Solid Construction Component changed to 2 Heavy Metal Bars
- Noble Metal Bar from 2 to 1
- Bio-chemical Ercore from 5 to 10

◈ Change the name of items:
- Metal Bar to Normite Bar
- Metal Ore to Normite Ore
- Noble Metal bar to Aristolite Bar
- Noble Metal Ore to Aristolite Ore
- Heavy Metal Bar to Therium Bar
- Heavy Metal Ore to Therium Ore

Oct 8, 2023

Patch Merging Part 4.5, fixes, quality of life improvements, and minor content.

Penkura - LionsArt

Dev-Com

Welcome, members of the Accord!

As mentioned in the previous Dev-Com, this will be hopefully the last patch for Penkura on Engine Version 4.27, and tomorrow we will start to move to Unreal Engine 5 which should take about one month.

In this patch, we are introducing a lot of quality-of-life improvements, some new content, and sound effects.

First of all, our sleep UI had a complete overhaul, we added player character statistics to the window to better inform the player of his current state, improved the clock, and provided another numeric clock.

We also started to add new sound effects to the game, mostly player voices. We do know that some players prefer their protagonists to be completely silent, or they prefer to have voices in some places but not in others. That's why besides adding new player voices to the game, we also implemented new sound options, allowing players to disable those extra sounds.

Not all voices are yet implemented but we are already providing options to them to showcase what else we plan to add.

And we added some eye candy to our C.A.T. by making him not only more visible at night, but also provide a better indicator that something is wrong in the RTS mode.

As always, for more information regarding the latest technical support, patches, and updates please join our Discord Community.

LINK ----> https://discord.gg/2ukYHQm

Till the next Dev-Com over and out.

Penkura Main Branch Adjustment
---------------------
⊞ Bugs/Errors ⊞
---------------------

◈ Thunderstorm sound was taking the player's position to the player (always 0) to calculate the time needed for the sound to be heard from the location of the lightning strike. It's now correctly set from the lighting strike location to the player location.

◈ Small Habitation Module did not accept input keys that were already attached to player actions (for example Interact) while setting up ownership name.

◈ When crouched, if the player stabs the ground, it will loop the crouching animation.

◈ After the load, the construction queue list added ghost buildings (duplicated building data).

◈ Fixed jump function not registering if player jumps and lands mid-jump on any surface.

◈ The C.A.T Online/Offline button didn't properly trigger state change for the construction bot.

-------------------------------------------------
⊞ Improvements / changes / additions ⊞
-------------------------------------------------

◈ Added two new "day music" to the game.

◈ Added one new "night music" to the game.

◈ The player is now able to turn on/off lights in the set buildings:
- Command Center
- T-1 Storage
- Small Habitation Module
- Tirix Fusion Power Plant
- Hydrogel Purificator
- Medbay
- Manufacturing Platform

◈ Optimization and rendering update to all 3D Widgets (Interactable Holograms/Computer Screen etc.) (performance boost)

◈ Collision detection check improvement to all doors. (minor performance boost).

◈ Added appear and disappear animations to the doors 3D user interface.

◈ Added player voice sound:
- 5 Male Jump sound.
- 5 Female Jump sound.
- 5 Male hit sound.
- 5 Female hit sound.

◈ Added swing sound effect, when swinging non-combat items.

◈ Player can now disassemble:
- Dark Matter Cola Original
- Dark Matter Cola Extreme
- Dark Matter Cola Neuron Breaker
- Dark Matter Cola Sour

◈ Added sound effect of picking up an empty can.

◈ From now on after drinking any Dark Matter Cola, it will spawn an empty can in the player inventory. Unless the player is drinking from a container, then it will spawn an empty can in that container.

◈ Added 4 new items to the game:
- Dark Matter Cola Original Empty Can
- Dark Matter Cola Extreme Empty Can
- Dark Matter Cola Neuron Breaker Empty Can
- Dark Matter Cola Sour Empty Can

◈ Entire sleeping UI is remade to showcase player status while sleeping.

◈ C.A.T (Construction Assistance Tool) will now provide a light when flying to the target (at night only).

◈ C.A.T (Construction Assistance Tool) will now provide a red blinking light when encountering a problem (lack of power or resources) that resets every 5 seconds.

◈ Added new option to Options > Game & UI > Game Behavior, toggle on/off if Left Mouse Button should automatically equip "At Hand" tool/weapon.

◈ Drasticly improve data collection and memory refresh system. (The game should clear unused data much more smoothly).

◈ Bio-ring will now change colors of the holographic representation of health, turning orange from green at 50% and red at 20%.

◈ From now on, Ore Extractors won't consume power (even when turned on) if their container is full.

◈ Minor changes to text, to fix spelling errors.

◈ From now on "Interaction" input won't leave RTS mode, in case it is used by another RTS input key, set by the player.

◈ Feedback and Bug Report system will always clear text after sending the report.

◈ Visual and technical improvements to RTS mode User Interface.

◈ Pressing Enter while typing the name of the new save, will now be considered as "Accept Save".

◈ Double-clicking a save slot will now load it.

◈ Added appear and disappear animations to building stats computer screen.

◈ Left click to remove item at "At Hand" / "Mod Slot" is changed to double left click.

◈ Small and Large Depot, will now double-check player position after being built to activate its panel controls if a player is nearby.

◈ From now on "At Hand" and "Mod Slot" are dragable.

◈ Mugs, Cups, Forks, and Spoons, will now provide 1 Metal Bar when dissemble, this is a temporary change as we will soon change integers of items into floats. (from 1 to 1.0 to allow us to provide a part of the full item, for example, 0.1 Metal Bar).

◈ In the depot set name UI, "Set Base Name" was changed to "Type Name Here".

◈ You can now drag the "At Hand" item directly into the inventory, or at "Quickslot" to make a reference to it.

◈ You can now drag the "Mod Slot" item directly into the inventory, this will disable all the effects made by the mod and put it back in the backpack.

◈ Maintenance Platform, will now check bot power and integrity even after it finished working.

◈ Minor changes to the Day/Night Cycle, Nights are now 1.7% longer, but days are 9% longer.

◈ Minor change to Main Menu buttons animation.

Oct 4, 2023

Dev-Com #3 Upcoming patch and Unreal Engine 5.

Penkura - LionsArt

Dev-Com #3

Greetings members of the Accord.

This report will be cut into two pieces, the first will be about the upcoming patch, and the second part will be about our experimentations done on Unreal Engine 5.

In 3 days we will be releasing a small patch to Penkura, it will contain fixes, code performance improvements, widget (3D interfaces) performance improvements, a lot of quality-of-life additions, new music, new sound effects, and minor content additions. This will most likely be the last patch we will release on Unreal Engine 4.27.2.

Now, let's move on to the next part of the report. Unreal Engine 5 experimentation and transfer.

For the last 5 months, we have been experimenting with the Unreal Engine 5, but unfortunately our project "AS IS" was losing around 60-80% of its performance when moved to the newer engine.
We of course consider this an unacceptable loss, and we didn't want our community to lose so much performance.

We are looking to move to Unreal Engine 5, not only is it a high-end engine capable of doing incredible things, but we wanted to be up to date with the tech and use some of the tools that can be only found in engine 5.0+. Those tools will greatly speed up our workflow, and who knows what else Epic Games will add to the Engine that could possibly help us with the development of the game.

This is the screenshot of Penkura on our test machine within our Custom Unreal Engine 4.27.2.

In the heaviest part of the game to render with all settings on max we were getting a stable 105+ fps.

In Unreal Engine 5.0 with the project "as is", we were getting roughly 35+ fps in the same area.

This does not mean that Unreal Engine 5 is incapable of getting the same performance as Unreal Engine 4. It just means that we would need to do a lot of work to get that performance. We will not move to Unreal Engine 5 until we are sure that our community will get a similar performance at the very least.

To provide players with better performance we created our own in-house tools and systems that not only boost performance but also simulate certain high-end features at the lowest cost possible.

Those systems are:

LionsMat (our octahedral mesh painting system)
LionsNav (Long-range navigation system for NPC, Bots)
LionsLight (our non-ray trace Light and shadow system that allowed us to create pitch-black rooms and caves even when the outside of the entire level is fully lit by the sun).
LionsHide (our occlusion system for 3d widgets, shadow quality switch based on hidden objects)

and dozens of other minor systems that each improve performance by 0.5 to 1% but add up to a bigger effect when working simultaneously.

We knew that all of these systems needed to be moved to Unreal Engine 5 in order to get better performance.

After reading the documentation and testing out our project with various solutions, we are now certain that we WON'T be using the Unreal Lumen system, Nanite system, or Virtual Shadowing system. No matter how amazing they are (even though we have to admit it is one of the best techs we have seen). The reason is very simple, people with graphics cards lower than RTX GeForce 20 series will just suffer.

We are happy to report that we were able to move the LionsMat system, LionsNav system, and LionsHide system without major issues (as only a few systems were changed in Unreal Engine 5).
Unfortunately, the LionsLight system was almost completely broken. It took us some time and heavy coding to fix this system to an "acceptable" rate.

After all the experimenting on Unreal Engine 5, we are happy to showcase the performance improvement we have been able to make since the first transfer.

We still need to fix many minor issues but already we can see that it not only got to the level of Unreal Engine 4, but we actually achieved a little bit better performance! We got to roughly 110+ FPS.

Because of this, we want to inform everybody that we will spend the next month not only moving the entire project to Unreal Engine 5, but we will also clean and streamline a lot of background code. Which will make our work A LOT easier going forward. All of the code has remained untouched because any major code that we wanted to make to assets could potentially break the saves files of the player.

After all of this, we need to talk about the negative side. We want to inform all of you that it is very likely this will be the last patch where your current saves will work. We spent over a week creating a system that would allow us to smoothly transfer saves from the 4.27 to 5.3 engine, but the metadata difference between files made on Unreal Engine 4.27 and 5.3 are very different. This means the current saves would be unreadable on the new version of the game.

We will use this opportunity to change and most of all improve the entire code in the game that needed to be improved a long time ago. Since we were able to prepare for this for quite some time, we expect to complete this in a single month.

Lastly, because of the request made by some players, we will start to place our Dev-Coms on Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/Penkura/ Steam and of course Discord. We were also requested to make a classic-style forum on our website, but since our community is still very small, and we have a lot on our plate already, we will do our best to improve our Discord by adding forum-style channels.

Till the next Dev-Com over and out.

Sep 9, 2023

Patch Merging Part 4.4 improvement, and fixes.

Penkura - LionsArt

Dev-Com

Hello, world!

In this small update, we are adding full crosshair customization.

Players from now on will be able to change the size, type, color, outline color, and opacity of the crosshair.

We also improved the UI with quality-of-life changes.

Item name print, in MMC and Industrial MMC item recipe list.

And the confirmation button in RTS dematerialization.

All three changes were added per requests made by players using our in-game feedback system.

As always, for more information regarding the latest technical support, patches, and updates please join our Discord Community.

LINK ----> https://discord.gg/2ukYHQm

Till the next Dev-Com over and out.

Penkura Main Branch Adjustment
---------------------
⊞ Bugs/Errors ⊞
---------------------

◈ Fix bug in Ore Refinery UI, where Button turning off Ore Refinery in the middle of work, could not trigger if it was in the process of calculating power.

◈ Industrial Molecular Matter Converter Storage didn't correctly activate after build and required to reload to properly function.

◈ New Dialog System had two mission triggers set incorrectly, added adjustment system to make sure the player that had the dialog will get the proper mission.

-------------------------------------------------
⊞ Improvements / changes / additions ⊞
-------------------------------------------------

◈ Added new Crosshair customization system to the Options > Game & UI.
- The player can change the size of the crosshair.
- Type of the crosshair.
- Color of the crosshair.
- Color of the outline of the crosshair.
- The player is able to activate wireframe mode for crosshair.

◈ From now on, when the player hovers over "quickslot" icon, it will provide the name of the item.

◈ Improved rain particle effect. (should obstruct vision a little bit less when at full strength).

◈ Minor improvement to Storage and Inventory UI, to make sure that IP number don't pass their container window.

◈ Minor improvement to Bio-Ring holographic health and energy indicators.

◈ From now on the player is able to hover over the item in the requirement recipe at the M.M.C and Industrial M.M.C interface, to get the full item name.

◈ Minor visual improvement to the message user interface.

◈ Added warning to demoralization button in RTS that needs to be confirmed before activating.

Sep 3, 2023

Patch Merging Part 4.3 improvement, and fixes.

Penkura - LionsArt

Dev-Com

Hello, world!

This a small update to fix an issue found by our community, and the addition of small changes/content.

And as always, for more information regarding the latest technical support, patches, and updates please join our Discord Community.

LINK ----> https://discord.gg/2ukYHQm

Till the next Dev-Com over and out.

Penkura Main Branch Adjustment
---------------------
⊞ Bugs/Errors ⊞
---------------------

◈ Bots could sense and react to pain/damage, even if disabled.

◈ When repeatable switching scanning type on Multi-Purpose Scanner, it could create an error in the scanner type name.

◈ At the end of the conversation, if the player had been forced to holster his weapon/tool, it was not brought back up automatically.

◈ At the first creation of Bio-Profile, if the player exits, or glitches out of the screen, it won't be possible to continue the bio-profile creation until reload.

◈ Possible fix for the player having a chance to block his ability to jump. (More testing required).

◈ Mission "Do Bots Dream Of Electric Sheep?" was not properly sent to missions completed part of the journal after completion.

◈ Minor fix to mouse sensitivity loading incorrect mouse range sensitivity.

◈ The player was able to spam-click the level transition trigger, resetting the fade-out effect.

◈ Ore Refinery properly saved its state but didn't turn itself back on if the player was not close enough to trigger the work check state.

◈ Industrial Molecular Matter Converter, duplicated its Construction List after the second load.

-------------------------------------------------
⊞ Improvements / changes / additions ⊞
-------------------------------------------------

◈ The save and load system can now save the player flashlight state (on/off)

◈ The save and load system can now save the player crouch state.

◈ Changed sound effect on Multi-Purpose Scanner scanning type switch to softer and a little bit more quiet.

◈ When players use their keyboard to type down the password on the locked door, it will now trigger the sound effect of pressed buttons.

◈ Added General Trashcan to the Command Center.

◈ Improved Fade In effect in the Main Menu.

◈ From now on, if the player won't cancel the adjustment/creation of bio-profile, the stats or data set in it, won't reset unless the game was exited out of and loaded back in.

◈ Transportation between the temples is now smoother.

◈ Transportation end effect turned from white to black.

◈ Speedup logo intro at the start, by 35%.

◈ Changed field of view min and max range from 90 - 110 to 85 - 125.

◈ Changed the location of the first base from the South Pole to the South Geomagnetic Pole.

◈ Improved foliage deletion below buildings.

Aug 28, 2023

The Big Patch Merging Part 4 (new buildings, Industrial M.M.C, and more)

Penkura - LionsArt

Dev-Com

Hello, world!

I'm happy to present the last big patch before the release of 0.2.0, even though this is not yet the big 0.2.0 it is still the second biggest patch we ever released to Penkura.

In this patch, we will present three new buildings, a new disassembly system, graphical improvements, rebalance of items, changes to missions, improvement to tutorials, a drastically improved map system, new voice acting done to nearly 98% of all Sara Voice lines, improved items physics-based collision, and dozens of small changes to improve the quality of the project.

But before we go into the patch, we did our best for players to not need to reset their saves, but we aren't 100% certain that all the mission logs and dialog triggers will be reactivated properly. In case of any problems with the game (mission progress, dialogs not triggering, events not happening) always feel free to contact us via, in-game building Bug Report or here on Steam, I will do my best to fix the issues as fast as possible.

Let us begin with the three new buildings.

The first two buildings we want to present are the Small and Large Depot, we had a few requests made by players, asking us for a location where they can store large amounts of items that they could build for example near the ore extractors or growbeds.

Those two buildings aren't directly connected to the C.A.T so items stored there won't be taken by the RTS system. They are treated as a typical container which means in the future bots will be able to be programmed to use them to store items or take items out to the nearest M.M.C to help with the production. Depots can be named, which will help players to organize their items.

The third building we want to present is the Manufacturing Platform. This key structure contains two very important machines.

First is the Industrial M.M.C with a massive 1500 IP depository, allowing players to build many more items, and second is the Disassembly Unit, which will allow players to take items apart to their basic components.

Thanks to this addition we will slowly start to implement "world-building" items, that won't have much use for the player BUT will be able to be disassembled for useful components. Not only this will make the world feel much more detailed, but it will also balance the early and mid-game.

The new disassembly system will allow players to take any non-organic item and deconstruct it into basic components.

Any organic material will be destroyed, but the system is smart enough to take out any non-organic component out of organic components if there is such a possibility (for example metal container will turn to metal bars but liquid inside the metal container if organic will be destroyed).

Now let's move to changes made to missions, lore, and immersion.

First of all, we want to report on the massive amount of work that went into creating a new voice for Sara, not only it is much more organic (as it was created based on a real voice) but our new system allows us to add much more voices to the game than ever before. For the moment all the changes are around 98% of Saras' voice lines. In the future, we want to add many more voices (for example to some of the messages that players can find in the game world).

We also improved the beginning of the game by adding a tiny intro which will ease the player into the world, and over 58 tiny changes that will make it easier for the player to immerse himself, those changes are, additional voice lines, additional sounds effects triggered by certain events, changes to buildings state to better present their condition and more.

Another major change is to the fog system, we always wanted to add a volumetric fog system to bring even more depth to the entire effect, unfortunately, volumetric fog is very heavy (performance-wise) and that was the main reason we didn't implement it.

Finally, after some work, we created shader-based fog (a mix of materials + post-processing and 3D trickery) which gives nearly the same effect that volumetric fog would add (all the depth changes, color alteration, size+distance+light based density) with 1/4 of the performance cost. We have to admit that we are very proud of this improvement.

Speaking of improved look, we wanted to showcase our improved map system, even though the map is now able to show boulders, rocks, cliffs, and similar objects, the performance requirement of the map dropped by a whopping 64% (on our testing machine). We were also able to present caves a little bit better and in the future, exist on the map.

Lastly, before we go to the detailed patch notes, we want to inform that we improved the physics-based collision of all the pickable items in the game. We did receive reports that there are occasions where tiny objects (for example TRX Ammo box) fall through the ground. That was quite a complex problem to deal with, as we are talking about overall Engine-based collision, its physics system, collision triggers, and more. Fortunately, we were able to boost certain systems within the engine allowing us to drastically narrow down the collision detection.

In our testing environment, we tested 1000 tiny pickable objects falling from 10 meters down to the ground, in the old system 91 items fell through the ground, in our new system 0.

Lastly, we want to report that we plan to release a few small patches before the big 0.2.0, which will contain changes to our bug report system, and object creation/spawn. More on that in the upcoming patch.

Oh before I forget, as we were asked about this by a few of our amazing players, from now on, you can write your name on the doors of the Small Habitat Unit. ːsteamthumbsupː

And as always, for more information regarding the latest technical support, patches, and updates please join our Discord Community.

LINK ----> https://discord.gg/2ukYHQm

Till the next Dev-Com over and out.

Penkura Main Branch Adjustment
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⊞ Bugs/Errors ⊞
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◈ When (MOD) Backpack Object Segregation System was activated when saving the game, on load, it would not be taken into account when calculating overburden, thus leading to players having an overburden effect if their IP was above the default number (before MOD installation).

◈ On load, buildings that were in production weren't properly added to the CCC queue indicator.

◈ Holographic connectors in RTS mode didn't properly reset, after switching between the holographic projections of unconstructed buildings.

◈ Fixed light bleeding through the walls visual error in T-1 Storage.

◈ Possible fix for equipable items disappearing.

◈ Holstered items didn't show back up after holstering the map.

◈ On load, bots didn't properly shut down and were floating disabled in the air.

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⊞ Improvements / changes / additions ⊞
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◈ Added 3 new buildings to the game.
- Small Depot
- Large Depot
- Manufacturing Platform

◈ Added new reload sounds for:
- Pener-07
- IMP
- Molecular Reconstruction Tool

◈ Added new Unloaded gun trigger sound effect.

◈ Massive improvements to the collision system of all items affected by physics, items should now NOT fall through landscapes or other objects.

◈ Added a new game function "Object Disassembly".

◈ Most of the in-game items will now show their full name on hover rather than a shortcut.

◈ Minor and Major bleeding, Lesser and Extensive Poisoning, Minor and Major Regeneration, and overdose now all provide a text indication of their activity.

◈ Improved visibility of important Holo Signs.

◈ Added Computer UI to Small Habitation Module.

◈ Added a new type of fog system.

◈ Added acceleration system to the player character, from now on, the player won't start movement at 100% but would need 1 second to get from 0 to 100% of its movement speed.

◈ M.M.C interface errors, will now be more visible.

◈ Improved fog coloring (night and day).

◈ Added Industrial M.M.C

◈ Improved Map system.

◈ Players are now able to see rocks, boulders, and cliffs on the map.

◈ Improved cave indicators in the map system.

◈ Improved border indicators on the map system.

◈ Added world direction indicator in the map system.

◈ Improved performance of the map system.

◈ Improved map interface.

◈ Improved stats, buffs, and debuffs calculations. (minor performance boost).

◈ Added new goals to the mission "Into The Void".

◈ Added a new item to the game, Neuro Stimulant.

◈ Improved UI of all P.D.S.

◈ Added interactable/destructable vines.

◈ Implemented the new voice of Sara.

◈ Improved ambient in Underground Research Base.

◈ Added additional Ambient sound effects.

◈ Added additional tutorials to the Underground Research Base to improve the game flow.

◈ Improved tutorial on Punch/Bash and added destructible objects to interact with.

◈ From now on, the player is able to set the owner of the Small Habitation Module.

◈ Player max oxygen lowered from 30 minutes to 20.

◈ Basic M.M.C Depository lowered from 650 back to 500.

◈ Added new icon to the RTS mode, (Show Buildings List). The player will now have access to the list of all buildings he already constructed, clicking on any button on the list will focus the camera on the building and automatically activate its interaction window.

◈ Improved Gemini Tram to increase visibility.

◈ Small improvement to Saras' Avatar.

◈ Improved tutorial on hitting/punching.

◈ Added tutorial on Object Disassembly.

◈ Some items are no longer possible to be created in basic M.M.C, and are moved to Industrial M.M.C.
- (MOD) High Compression Oxygen Tank
- (MOD) Legs Supporting Micro Springs
- (MOD) Backpack Object Segregation System
- (MOD) Improved Filter Cleansing
- Pener-07
- Molecular Reconstruction Tool
- IMP
- Fuel to Molecular Reconstruction Tool
- Polan Crystal (Refined)
- Xavoc Crystal (Refined)
- TRX Ammo
- Crystalized Construction Component
- Portable Geological Extractor