We've had a long standing problem with mass drops on our servers. After about 50 people have joined, and after a few hours, every few minutes everyone on the server would drop out.
This turned out to be a problem with how Lidgren (our low level network library) recycles packets. The list of packets was growing that large at times that it was affecting performance of the network thread - which periodically stalled and stopped sending out data, causing clients to eventually give up and disconnect.
This is another one of those bugs that we've been chasing our tail on for a long time unsure whether it was something we were doing or a ddos attack. It could have probably been avoided completely by using a tried and tested networking library from the start.. but I guess this is how network libraries become tried and tested.
Missing Lock Weirdness
This is a tricky one to explain, so I'm not going to bother. Sometimes on the client locks that we on doors weren't actually showing on the door, they'd show at the center of the world instead. And sometimes when saving we'd lose the fact that the lock was attached to the door. This meant that when loading that save the lock would stay on the door but the door didn't know it was there so didn't use it. Meaning anyone could open the door.
This is fixed. Finally.
New Jacket
Xavier got a bunch of new jackets in. For now we've only put one in the game because we don't have UI to handle reskins yet, but there's a lot of verirty there for the future.
Assault Rifle
Paul, Tom, Goosey and Helk have got the assault rifle in game. It's an AK47, but I don't think we're calling it that in game for some reason. Maybe because it's got a shovel handle.
Bear Trap
Will kill animals and players, should be fun to see how this plays out with base defense, eventually it’ll actually trap things instead of kill them but lets see how this plays out, corpses of any object that trip it will stick around for quite a while so you can revisit your traps and see what they caught!
Airdrop Fixed
The airdrop was dropping an impotent package right in the middle of the map. The package it drops is now potent, and it drops it somewhere randomly on the map.
The package also has higher value loot than can be found in the other loot spots, and you don't have to pay for it.
Blueprints
Like legacy, you now start with the limited ability to craft items. You need to find and study blueprints to be able to craft new items. We're still tweaking which blueprints you start with and which you have to find so please let us know.
The blueprint data is decoupled from the map save data. So if your server administrator likes, he can wipe the map but keep your blueprint states. In the future I want to look at making the way this data is saved my available to server mods so server providers with multiple servers can share blueprint/player data between them.
Radtowns
Let me start by saying that this is all placeholder art. We got a bunch of models from the asset store and put them together. We're figuring out what works and what makes sense using this placeholder art before fully committing to creating our own art. We want more internals, we want you to be able to enter any building you see.
The towns work very much like in legacy. There's buildings, there's respawning loot, there's radiation.
Things might look a bit weird initially because we're still experimenting with telling the procedural system how and where to place these, and to modify the terrain around them so they look like they've been there for a long time. We have big ideas for Radtowns.
Random Loot Barrels
This is a bit of a placeholder which will be replaced/removed once we have more loot spawning monuments. Around the map you'll find barrels spawn randomly. Break them to get their contents which can be items or blueprints.
This is part of the radtown strategy to give people more of a purpose to roam the island, and make it possible to acquire new blueprints. They won't be barrels forever.
Everything Else
Aiming down the sight provides a recoil reduction, crouching further reduces recoil, weapons have higher recoil in general now Bolt rifle now has no aimcone - bullet goes where you aim + gravity Fixed player corpses not spewing their contents when destroyed Fixed bug where lootables could become permanently occupied Fixed code lock not displaying its status in the world Fixed unducking when opening menu Tweaked how positions were updated over the network - clients should get more up to date information now
Linux
Many apologies to the linux guys. There's a bug currently affecting the current Unity 5 Beta that is causing a crash on startup. Hopefully this will be fixed in next week's update, all we can do right now is apologise and let you know we are thinking about you.
Summary
An awesome week. We're really flying now, making some great progress. The game is definitely fun to play again right now. When we aren't getting EAC and Steam Auth Timeouts the servers are performant and stable - even with 200 players. This is all awesome.
Next week, bug fixes and balancing. I'm aiming to replace all of the old UI with new stuff, because we've been putting up with this shitty stacking/splitting system for long enough. And damage, drowning, on fire and bleeding overlays, so you know when bad things are happening to your body.
We've had a long standing problem with mass drops on our servers. After about 50 people have joined, and after a few hours, every few minutes everyone on the server would drop out.
This turned out to be a problem with how Lidgren (our low level network library) recycles packets. The list of packets was growing that large at times that it was affecting performance of the network thread - which periodically stalled and stopped sending out data, causing clients to eventually give up and disconnect.
This is another one of those bugs that we've been chasing our tail on for a long time unsure whether it was something we were doing or a ddos attack. It could have probably been avoided completely by using a tried and tested networking library from the start.. but I guess this is how network libraries become tried and tested.
Missing Lock Weirdness
This is a tricky one to explain, so I'm not going to bother. Sometimes on the client locks that we on doors weren't actually showing on the door, they'd show at the center of the world instead. And sometimes when saving we'd lose the fact that the lock was attached to the door. This meant that when loading that save the lock would stay on the door but the door didn't know it was there so didn't use it. Meaning anyone could open the door.
This is fixed. Finally.
New Jacket
Xavier got a bunch of new jackets in. For now we've only put one in the game because we don't have UI to handle reskins yet, but there's a lot of verirty there for the future.
Assault Rifle
Paul, Tom, Goosey and Helk have got the assault rifle in game. It's an AK47, but I don't think we're calling it that in game for some reason. Maybe because it's got a shovel handle.
Bear Trap
Will kill animals and players, should be fun to see how this plays out with base defense, eventually it’ll actually trap things instead of kill them but lets see how this plays out, corpses of any object that trip it will stick around for quite a while so you can revisit your traps and see what they caught!
Airdrop Fixed
The airdrop was dropping an impotent package right in the middle of the map. The package it drops is now potent, and it drops it somewhere randomly on the map.
The package also has higher value loot than can be found in the other loot spots, and you don't have to pay for it.
Blueprints
Like legacy, you now start with the limited ability to craft items. You need to find and study blueprints to be able to craft new items. We're still tweaking which blueprints you start with and which you have to find so please let us know.
The blueprint data is decoupled from the map save data. So if your server administrator likes, he can wipe the map but keep your blueprint states. In the future I want to look at making the way this data is saved my available to server mods so server providers with multiple servers can share blueprint/player data between them.
Radtowns
Let me start by saying that this is all placeholder art. We got a bunch of models from the asset store and put them together. We're figuring out what works and what makes sense using this placeholder art before fully committing to creating our own art. We want more internals, we want you to be able to enter any building you see.
The towns work very much like in legacy. There's buildings, there's respawning loot, there's radiation.
Things might look a bit weird initially because we're still experimenting with telling the procedural system how and where to place these, and to modify the terrain around them so they look like they've been there for a long time. We have big ideas for Radtowns.
Random Loot Barrels
This is a bit of a placeholder which will be replaced/removed once we have more loot spawning monuments. Around the map you'll find barrels spawn randomly. Break them to get their contents which can be items or blueprints.
This is part of the radtown strategy to give people more of a purpose to roam the island, and make it possible to acquire new blueprints. They won't be barrels forever.
Everything Else
Aiming down the sight provides a recoil reduction, crouching further reduces recoil, weapons have higher recoil in general now Bolt rifle now has no aimcone - bullet goes where you aim + gravity Fixed player corpses not spewing their contents when destroyed Fixed bug where lootables could become permanently occupied Fixed code lock not displaying its status in the world Fixed unducking when opening menu Tweaked how positions were updated over the network - clients should get more up to date information now
Linux
Many apologies to the linux guys. There's a bug currently affecting the current Unity 5 Beta that is causing a crash on startup. Hopefully this will be fixed in next week's update, all we can do right now is apologise and let you know we are thinking about you.
Summary
An awesome week. We're really flying now, making some great progress. The game is definitely fun to play again right now. When we aren't getting EAC and Steam Auth Timeouts the servers are performant and stable - even with 200 players. This is all awesome.
Next week, bug fixes and balancing. I'm aiming to replace all of the old UI with new stuff, because we've been putting up with this shitty stacking/splitting system for long enough. And damage, drowning, on fire and bleeding overlays, so you know when bad things are happening to your body.
Default behavior for giving items to other players is now the entire stack. Hold Control to give one at a time
You will no longer trade items directly into another player’s active cursor, and the trade will cancel rather than dropping on the ground if their inventory is full
Players can now right click to start cooking with a Crock Pot when it is closed and ready with ingredients
When Steam goes offline, users who have played recently will be able to continue to log in, join and create online worlds during the outage
Snapshots can now be enabled/disabled globally in the Settings screen. They can also be disabled per server in the Manage Server screen by setting the interval to OFF (0). If you had previously disabled snapshots through settings.ini this change will be preserved.
Added [network] secure_listings = true/false as a settings.ini option. This is useful in some rare situations where unsecured requests are being redirected by a ISP/3rd party.
Bug Fixes
Pressing [Enter] to chat no longer picks up the item under your mouse cursor
Fixed a bug where the camera may end up zooming indefinitely
Muted players’ chat will no longer show up over their heads
Non-player entities, such as the Meat Bulb (Lureplant), will now drop inventory on death as expected
Fixed a bug where Pig men were unable to find light sources at night
Fixed some threading related connection issues.
LAN servers ignore server_port override. This override broke LAN discoverability.
Fixed server side only mods from being left enabled when clients join a server without the mod.
Fix a rare crash when saving snapshots
Force LAN servers to use the default port, LAN servers on the non-default port can not be discovered through the server browser.
Default behavior for giving items to other players is now the entire stack. Hold Control to give one at a time
You will no longer trade items directly into another player’s active cursor, and the trade will cancel rather than dropping on the ground if their inventory is full
Players can now right click to start cooking with a Crock Pot when it is closed and ready with ingredients
When Steam goes offline, users who have played recently will be able to continue to log in, join and create online worlds during the outage
Snapshots can now be enabled/disabled globally in the Settings screen. They can also be disabled per server in the Manage Server screen by setting the interval to OFF (0). If you had previously disabled snapshots through settings.ini this change will be preserved.
Added [network] secure_listings = true/false as a settings.ini option. This is useful in some rare situations where unsecured requests are being redirected by a ISP/3rd party.
Bug Fixes
Pressing [Enter] to chat no longer picks up the item under your mouse cursor
Fixed a bug where the camera may end up zooming indefinitely
Muted players’ chat will no longer show up over their heads
Non-player entities, such as the Meat Bulb (Lureplant), will now drop inventory on death as expected
Fixed a bug where Pig men were unable to find light sources at night
Fixed some threading related connection issues.
LAN servers ignore server_port override. This override broke LAN discoverability.
Fixed server side only mods from being left enabled when clients join a server without the mod.
Fix a rare crash when saving snapshots
Force LAN servers to use the default port, LAN servers on the non-default port can not be discovered through the server browser.
Have a loyalty reward that you've been wanting to get? Get it now while the Loyalty Reward Counter is handing out DOUBLE points for every purchase! Time is ticking, so double up on points before the promotion ends January 19th at 11:59 AM PST.
Have a loyalty reward that you've been wanting to get? Get it now while the Loyalty Reward Counter is handing out DOUBLE points for every purchase! Time is ticking, so double up on points before the promotion ends January 19th at 11:59 AM PST.
(Samples of the new 4-Cubes Background & 3 of the VR themed Backgrounds)
ːQːbehːnegative1ː:The ːatlasː has six all new emoticons and six new backgrounds for you to unlock and discover! From the iconic floating tree ːfloatingtreeː to all four main cubes grouped together ːqbehsː, as well as the power giving energy cube ːenergyqbehː, you will have all new ways to emote your first person puzzling experiences! Start collecting and trading for them today!
Don't forget - all the critically acclaimed experiences found within Qbeh-1 is available on both Windows PC and MAC!