Apr 27, 2024

Penkura - LionsArt

Dev-Com

Welcome, members of the Accord!

We have made significant changes to the main level of Karenos Sector-4. While players will not be required to delete their saves or start from scratch, please be aware that due to the extensive nature of these changes, some players may find their characters spawning inside a rock or underground.

To address this, we remind everyone to utilize the unstuck function available in the Options > Help menu. This feature is designed to help you quickly resolve any issues with character placement caused by the recent updates.

In this substantial patch, we are excited to introduce a massive overhaul of the Karenos level, implementing changes that affect approximately 50 to 60% of the layout. These updates are based directly on player feedback, including insights gathered from gameplay videos and emails.

Key Improvements Include:
- Enhanced Navigation: The map has been restructured to make it easier for players to orient themselves and move through the environment.
- Improved Accessibility to Key Points: We've optimized the locations of critical points of interest, ensuring they are more accessible and clearly marked to facilitate progression in the storyline.

Our goal with these changes is to significantly enhance the player experience, making the game not only more intuitive to navigate but also more engaging in its storytelling and exploration elements.

We've expanded the game map with over a dozen new locations, including a strategically placed new base that furthers our ongoing storyline. Additionally, we are gradually introducing a global map feature that will allow players to travel between levels. Please note that this feature is still in development; currently, map exits may appear as invisible walls. We aim to fully implement and refine this feature within the next week.

We also added two new buildings to the game:

Suit/Armor Recharge Station: Based on player feedback regarding energy shortages, we've introduced the Suit/Armor Recharge Station. This addition is designed to significantly enhance the player experience by providing an energy boost.

Long Range Communication Array: This is one of the largest structures now available in the game. While it currently serves as a key story element, it will soon become essential for managing and moving bots between levels and controlling small outposts. These outposts will be crucial for transporting resources back to the main base.

We've made significant improvements to our bug-report and feedback system. Going forward, all messages sent to us will be automatically archived and also directly forwarded to the developers. This change ensures that we are always informed of any potential issues, enhancing our response times and overall game stability.

We apologize to players whose emails did not reach our server properly. Recently, a surge in email volume led to a server crash. We have addressed this issue to prevent future occurrences. If you notice that a previously reported bug is still present in the game, please resend your bug report. This allows us to archive it permanently until it is resolved.

Following several discussions with our community on Discord and Steam, we've decided to rebalance a number of items and systems, particularly those related to energy management. These adjustments are intended to streamline gameplay, making it smoother for players.

We will continue to monitor the impact of these changes closely and remain open to making further improvements as needed. Y

We also want to inform about the next patch.
The game grew to the size where it's very difficult for us to check every corner of the map and release the patch with certainty that we catch all bugs or visual errors made by wrongly placed assets. Because of that the next big update with new map, and new biome will be release not in one but two weeks, we need the extra amount of time to make sure the quality of the map will be at the level of Karenos Sector-4 or better.
In the meantime we will release a few smaller patches fixing found issues, and implementing other minor assets, such as new enemies, and items. Yes, items and enemies will be released before the next level patch, so players will have new things to enjoy in our project, while they wait for the big reveal.

We also want to thank all recent YouTubers that showcased our game to the wider audience. Thank you very much!

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 ⊞
---------------------

◈ Possible fix for Solar Panels sudden rotation when placed at an odd angle.

◈ The player was able to get stuck between barrels at the underground temple.

◈ Player saves, sometimes, didn't properly save its thumbnails and save slot information.

◈ Growbeds Biowaste inputs were always full.

◈ Fixed small gaps between rocks reported by players that could make them get stuck.

◈ Starting Beacon was resistant to player deconstruction, making it reappear after load.

◈ Split function in the inventory didn't trigger properly.

◈ Time of the day sometimes didn't properly save, and reverted to the start time of 06:30.

◈ PDS, at Archeological Base, keeps triggering the missions update of "In Search of Answers".

◈ Ore Extractor didn't properly tick a check if its container is full, and never stops digging until the player turns it off manually through the RTS mode.

◈ Fixed collision problems of small decorations, and shelves at underground base.

◈ Fixed errors in Neuro Stimulant description.

◈ On rare occasions, C.A.T could kill the player by flyby threw the wall.

◈ Connectors to the buildings didn't properly save their states.

◈ Fixed scan description of Blufloir and Subincar.

◈ Epsilon Base was discovered by default.

◈ Magnetic Wind Turbine C.A.T construction location was in the wrong location.

◈ Fatigue system didn't properly save, unfortunately, the fix will load the players being exhausted (my apology, but the good news is, the Med-Bay beds can from now on be used to sleep in).

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

◈ Added additional buildings to the Mining Outpost.

◈ Added lore to the Mining Outpost.

◈ Added two new buildings to the game.
- Long Range Communication Array.
- Suit/Armor Recharge Station.

◈ Added a new option to the Sound Options Menu, to allow players to set game sounds to play in the background when game windows loses focus.

◈ Improved bug report and feedback report system, which will now auto archive all messages and send them directly to the developer.

◈ All missions text was rewrite to make it more clear.

◈ Added new mission to the game.

◈ Added additional loot able boxes to Sector-4.

◈ Added new story messages.

◈ Added additional dialog options to Sara.

◈ Added 29 new types of sector assets (foliage, rocks, decoration type).

◈ Added 14 unmarked points of interest.

◈ Increase the map size of Karenos Sector-4 by around 22%.

◈ Added second base position.

◈ Added a temporary invisible wall at the sector entrance.

◈ Removed some of the buildings from starting base.

◈ Improved the look of the underground research base.

◈ Improved Level of Details of all Foliage, Rocks, and Boulders. (additional 4k-8k screen testing is required).

◈ Improved the Monorail Station point of interest with additional assets.

◈ Improved Ancient City with additional assets.

◈ Improved location of the second bot, with additional assets to make it easier to be seen from further distance.

◈ Improved location of the first Obelisk with additional assets.

◈ Improved the starting base location with additional flora.

◈ Added additional roads (covered with foliage) to the Karenos Sector-4 to make it easier for the player to find key points of interests.

◈ Improved tutorial text in the Manufacturing Platform PDS.

◈ Beds in the Med-bay can now be used to sleep when the player character is tired enough.

◈ Added Out-Of-Stuck beacons to player controlled Command Center, to allow players to teleport back to Command Center in case of improper building.

◈ Disassembly Unit progress bar will be blue by default rather than green, and after the work is completed, a notification will appear for 2 seconds that work is done, after which the progress bar will turn from green again to blue.

◈ Improved all tutorial text in the Command Center PDS.

◈ Flashlight power increases by 30%.

◈ Flashlight power consumption lowered by 50%.

◈ Sound of jumping to water lowered by 32%.

◈ Improved glass reflection effect.

◈ Items understand if they have fallen into the water (for the moment only sound).

◈ Polan Crystal and Refined Polan Crystal have strong effect when entering water (as per description).

◈ Improved tutorial text in the Med-bay Body Reconstruction PDS.

◈ Ore Refinery power calculation optimization.

◈ Extensive Extraction mode in Ore Extractor, cost lowered from 9 energy to 6.

◈ Lower energy consumption of Improved Extraction Data Core from 6 to 5.

◈ Ore Refinery max energy consumption lowered from 75 to 60, effectiveness unchanged.

◈ Improved missions order trigger. (thanks to this, no matter in which order player choose to do a mission, it will always be in the correct list in the player journal)

◈ Lowered the intensity of lens flares by 50%.

◈ Magnetic Wind Turbine minimum power generation risen from 3 to 5. (Maximum is keep at 16).

◈ Portable Ore Extraction power is now double from 0.1-1.0 to 0.1-2.0.

◈ Solid Construction Component energy production cost lowered to 450 from 600.

◈ Liquid Construction Component energy production cost lowered to 650 from 800.

◈ Normite Bar energy production cost lowered to 175 from 200.

◈ Aristolite Bar energy production cost lowered to 200 from 300.

Apr 21, 2024

Dev-Com #4

Penkura - LionsArt

Dev-Com #4

Greetings, members of the Accord.

As some of you may already know, 10 days ago a kind YouTuber named FloppySword featured Penkura in a video. This video generated enough resources for us to temporarily set aside nearly all our side jobs that were keeping Penkura alive, allowing us to focus full time on the game for the next two months.

We plan to maximize these two months by rolling out content originally scheduled for release over the next six to eight months. It will be a massive amount of work, but we are eager to use this rare opportunity.

Before we detail our plans for the upcoming patches, we need to address a small issue. With increased game visibility, we've seen a spike in feedback and bug report emails—from an average of two a month to over a thousand.
After three days of meticulous checking, we discovered that only about seventy of these were from legitimate copies of Penkura. Over 90% of the bug reports came from a nearly two-year-old version of the game. While we do not vilify piracy—understanding that finances are tight and people are cautious about spending on games—these inaccurate reports have significantly slowed our progress. It is error on our part, that we didn't predict such possibility but in the upcoming patch, we will modify the bug report system to more easily verify if the reports are from original copies of Penkura.

Now, regarding the upcoming patch:
In the last ten days, based on video review and conversations with players, we've remastered nearly the entire map to improve player navigation, added over a dozen new points of interest, expanded the lore, and increased the map’s size by about twenty percent with additional space for a second player base. We also resolved dozens of issues reported by players, enhanced the tutorial, and streamlined nearly all game texts for better readability by removing unnecessary filler words. Additionally, we've rebalanced some item production and energy generation and are introducing two new structures in response to player feedback. To heighten the challenge on the improved map, we will introduce two new creatures.

Unfortunately, due to the extra work required beyond what was initially planned, we must delay the release of this patch from April 20, 2024, to April 26, 2024.

Meanwhile, we are simultaneously developing three new levels, the first of which will be released about a week after the upcoming patch.
The second level will follow a month later, and we hope to release the third another month after that.

Below, we are showcasing a few teaser screenshots of the upcoming levels, featuring different flora and fauna and over a hundred new assets created over the past year. In the next two months, we aim to release all the content we’ve been working on, which will triple the game's size.

Between these major updates, we plan to release a small patch introducing the new language system, which allows players to program bots to help maintain their bases. This system should be ready in about two weeks. We are looking for players with little to no programming experience to test how user-friendly and functional it is within the game. Currently, three players are set to test this system, but we are open to more volunteers.

If you’re interested, please join us on our Discord channel at https://discord.gg/2ukYHQm and mention your interest in testing the new feature.

Thank you all for your time and support.

Till the next Dev-Com over and out.

Jan 28, 2024

Patch Merging Part 5.4

Penkura - LionsArt

Dev-Com

Welcome, members of the Accord!

In this latest update, we're enhancing the player experience through a series of key improvements.

Firstly, we've implemented a procedural animation system designed to dynamically adjust player bone positions and rotations based on physics, and in-process blending of two animations. This significantly enhances the overall game feel, introducing a more fluid and natural quality to character movement.
This improvement is also fully added to the entire player animation system, which means each new animation added to the game, will automatically use this addition without any additional work.

Responding to player feedback, regarding the flashlight's efficiency in outdoor environments.
Testing revealed that the issue is not with the flashlight itself, but how we rendered our foliage. To optimize performance, our grass/foliage system renders materials without relying on light normalizations.
This update includes an improved approach, to our foliage rendering, by altering how much light foliage absorbs, resulting in a brighter appearance at night while maintaining a darker appearance in the far view when not near any light source.

We are also adding our very own debug console system, this feature provides essential information for debugging complex aspects of the game. Activated by default with Alt + `, the console will improve our workflow and allow us to do more efficient troubleshooting in the 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 ⊞
---------------------

◈ The player was able to install Data Storage on another Data Storage in the Blueprint Repository, destroying the previously installed Data Storage.

◈ When the player installs a MOD on top of another MOD, it will destroy the previous MOD, now it will deinstall the first MOD, put it in the inventory, and install the new MOD on top of it.

◈ When Dynka or Metos Feeder explodes, there can be a very bright flash of light under a certain angle.

◈ If the player died while being poisoned by the Metos bug, the screen stayed black after respawning.

◈ When activating the game, Penkura does not load the proper saved resolution settings.

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

◈ Improved Crouch system, from now on when a player wants to uncrouch, rather than a simple line check above the player to see if there is enough height above the player to stand up, the game will check the entire space above the player to see if player entire body fits correctly. This system prevents the camera from glitching into minor gaps in collision mesh when trying to stand up.

◈ Improved rendering of all foliage in the game, from now on, textures on the foliage will decrease its light absorption depending on the time of the day and sun/moon intensity. Thanks to that, foliage will be brighter when lit by a flashlight or any other source of light, while still being very dark outside of any light source.

◈ Added procedural sway, shoot, and movement animation to the character.

◈ Added minor light aura around the player, that will gently lit the area of 5 meters around the player. This effect only works in very dark areas and provides only 1% of the light that a normal flashlight provides.

◈ To help players find small items in thick grass, all grass, and small foliage will now disappear when in close contact with items, and reappear when the item is removed.

◈ Added more items to the game world.

◈ Added additional lore content to the game.

◈ Minor improvements to the game Anti-Aliasing.

◈ Added debug console to the game.

Dec 21, 2023

Major Engine & Content Update Patch.

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.