Feb 4, 2022

Stationeers - sknightly

We’ve made some big decisions and big improvements which we believe set Stationeers up for a great year in 2022.

While we’ve been quiet for a while, this isn’t because we haven’t been working on Stationeers. Quite the opposite. In October last year we did a strategic review, and identified key areas of technical debt that if we took the time to redo would lead to big gains.

However, it meant we paused our monthly updates while we replaced some fundamental systems (such as networking). This decision did not come lightly but we felt it was best investment for the long-term success of Stationeers. Once we started refactoring the multiplayer we realised there was more work than anticipated, but it also created the opportunity to tackle other key systems and go more in-depth than originally planned.

While we don’t have a game update today, we can share what we’ve been working on and the results. This work will be a major milestone on our path towards Stationeers 1.0.

We are on the road to completing the biggest changes in the project since it began. This involved us rebuilding the way we handle multiplayer from scratch, adding a very efficient batched rendering approach for graphics optimization, and a massive cleanup of how memory is managed.

Rebuilt Multiplayer from Scratch

Stationeers was originally built using Unity’s High-Level Multiplayer API (HLAPI), a perfectly reasonable choice when the game was first made. However, as time went on and Stationeers grew beyond what we initially thought it would be, we found that the HLAPI became a bottleneck. We started to push the limits of what HLAPI could cope with. The effects of this could be seen when you had a save with a lot of things - every extra player would put a massive amount of extra load on the server, causing desync and failed connections.

In October last year we decided to stop, rethink and resolve this foundational issue. After serious deliberation of many different options we decided that, based on experiences on other RocketWerkz projects (such as Art of the Rail, which was designed for the tremendous scale like seen in games like Factorio), to build our own bespoke solution just for Stationeers.

The new system sends less data between players, will be more reliable to establish a connection and will allow larger groups to player together smoothly.

However, multiplayer was baked into how Stationeers was made from the start. This meant that even the task of removing multiplayer was already a big task. It turns out it was bigger than we originally anticipated!

Last year we successfully removed all traces of the HLAPI and had the game working again as a single-player experience. This year we’ve been busy doing the hard work of rebuilding multiplayer and the new system will be in the next game update.

Graphics Optimization: Batched Rendering

Screenshot from Masoneer#5778 Vulkan Base

Since we were not pushing monthly updates we saw this as a good opportunity to do further experiments in other problem areas of the game. One of those was that Unity’s batched rendering wasn’t doing the best job for how Stationeers is structured.

A Stationeers map can have thousands or even tens of thousands of things in the game, many of which are exactly the same item repeated. When these are sent to your graphics card to be rendered, if two things are the same with the same mesh and material then we can batch them and get performance gains.

We’ve been working on our own system that focuses on the high volume items in the game such as frames, cables and pipes and have had great results.

Metrics

These changes combine to double framerate on large bases!

To give you an idea of what kind of impact this work will have on Stationeers, we tested it out on community member Masoneer's large Vulkan base.

Removing the HLAPI saved 5ms from the time it takes to process each frame. This is approximately 14% of the time taken for a frame.

Removing redundant Animator components reduced the time to process a frame by about another 6.5ms (an additional nearly 20% optimization).

Additionally, the game was making significant memory allocations every game tick that would then need to be cleaned up. This is an expensive process that impacts performance in a big way. We reduced the amount of Garbage Collection from 500KB to under 1KB

Stationeers' Bright Future

You’ll get to try out these performance improvements and the new networking system in the next update (coming soon, once through testing).

Now that we have clearly defined technical boundaries we can start to define the gameplay boundaries through game design. We often discuss “what is Stationeers?” internally and “where do we want this game to go?” Over and over again these conversations ended in frustration over the uncertainty of the technical limitations. Now that uncertainty is being resolved we look forward to publishing regular updates again.

While we still don’t have an exact date for you, we’re all very excited to share this work with you and to get back to making Stationeers everything that it deserves to be.

Feb 4, 2022

Fault - Patch Notes: 0.15.1

Fault: Elder Orb - Baylix

BUG FIXES

General

Abilities

Fixed an issue on some stairs hindering the targeting of certain abilities.

Core

Fixed an issue causing deaths to the enemy fountain to credit the kill to the target.

Heroes

Feng Mao

Guardian's Shield (RMB)

Fixed an issue causing Guardian's Shield to do damage to heroes in stasis.

Reaping Dash (Q)

Fixed an issue allowing player to dash out of the fountain before the start of the match.
Fixed an issue causing ability to clip incorrectly on various objects.

Imperial Sentence (R)

Fixed an issue with Imperial Sentence only granting the first ability levels amount of bonus physical power after executing an enemy hero.
Fixed an issue allowing Feng Mao to recast his ultimate after the recast window expired if he was still aiming the ability.

Items

Radiant Poise

Fixed an issue preventing stasis from being used while spellshielded.

Nirvana Jewel

Fixed an issue preventing stasis from being used while spellshielded.

Minions

Super Minions

Fixed an issue causing double super minions to spawn even without all inhibitors destroyed.

‍

BALANCE

Favor

It has long been mentioned that we plan on a full overhaul of our Favor system, and so until we aren’t working on bigger and better things we will continue tweaking the current Favor system. The benefit that each Raptor was giving did not seem rewarding enough when compared to the risk to take them and the overall intent behind the objective, which is to provide a means in the early game to build up power and influence through successive acquisitions of the objective. Each point of Favor is roughly 50 gold worth of stats, so we are increasing the overall benefit given to an entire team from Favor from 750 gold to 1000 gold per Raptor.

Favor granted per Raptor kill increased from 3 → 4.

Heroes

The intent behind Basic Attack Carries is that they have limited influence in the early game yet scale heavily through the power of items, meaning as gold becomes more prevalent across the map as the game progresses and the more items they acquire, the more their influence builds and compounds itself. This contrast between weak and strong was not as evident as we’d like it to be, especially when Carries are in the offlane role, and so a portion of their basic attack damage has been redistributed from the early game and into the late game. Carry basic attacks should be roughly 9% weaker in the early game, but scale through hero levels more to reach the same end game potential as before.

Countess

Burst assassins are meant to deal damage in bursts to overwhelm and surprise their targets. When balancing the gameplay of these types of heroes, considerations need to be made regarding the outplay potential, and Countess was not providing enough of this potential through her ability to rapidly deal damage.

Dark Tide (E)

Added recovery time of 0.1s.

Blade Siphon (RMB)

Added recovery time of 0.125s.
Base energy armour reduced from 32 → 30.

Feng Mao

Base health reduced from 550 → 540.
Base energy armour reduced from 32 → 30.

Reaping Dash (Q)

Cooldown increased from 12/11/10/9/8s → 14/13.5/13/12.5/12s.

Guardian’s Shield (RMB)

Physical power scaling reduced from 100 → 85%.

Imperial Sentence (R)

Execution recast delay reduced from 20 → 15s.

GRIM.exe

FIRE.exe (LMB)

Base damage reduced from 58 → 53.
Damage increase per hero level increased from 2.8 → 3.09.

Murdock

X270 Rail Gun (LMB)

Base damage reduced from 64 → 59.
Damage increase per hero level increased from 3.5 → 3.79.

Sparrow

Arrow Shot (LMB)

Base damage reduced from 53 → 48.
Damage increase per hero level increased from 4 → 4.29.

Twinblast

Pistol Shot (LMB)

Base damage reduced from 47 → 42.
Damage increase per hero level increased from 2.75 → 3.04.

Items

Baleful Armor

Area of affect damage from passive changed to 24-58 (24 base plus 2 per hero level). Damage is increased by 50% against minions and monsters.

Demonic Embrace

Passive activation health threshold increased from 35 → 40% Maximum Health.

Matter Limiter

Slow increased from 25 → 30%.

Bracelet of Opulence

Now automatically evolves from Shiny Bangle.
Now grants 2 Health Regen.
Now grants 5 gold every 10s.
Health increased from 300 → 360.
Energy Armour increased from 10 → 15.
Physical Armour increased from 10 → 15.

Shiny Bangle

Now grants 3 gold every 10s.
Valor gain timer reduced from 45 → 35s.
Now evolves into Bracelet of Opulence for free once 750 gold has been gained from the item, including Valor stacks and its gold gained per 10s.

Scrying Stone

Now grants 3 gold every 10s.
Gold gained from Valor reduced from 25 → 20.
Now evolves into Scryer’s Obelisk for free once 750 gold has been gained from the item, including Valor stacks and its gold gained per 10s.

Scryer’s Obelisk

Now automatically evolves from Scrying Stone.
Now grants 5 gold per 10s.
Gold gained from Valor reduced from 30 → 20.
Energy power increased from 30 → 45.
Mana Regen increased from 0.2 → 1.

Titan’s Bow

Now grants 10 bonus damage to basic attacks against minions.

Titan’s Spellbook

Bonus basic attack damage to minions increased from 5 → 10.

Titan’s Armour

Bonus basic attack damage to minions increased from 5 → 10.

— Strange Matter Team

Feb 4, 2022

Entodrive Devlog #47

Entodrive - daydreamergamesofficial

What I've Been Working On :

+Continuation of the Time of Crisis Tie-in Event
+New Location the Red Jungle
+Acycie Mystical Battle

+New battle background
+New music for Red Jungle
+New rival battle w/ Mandervack the Dark
+Updated crew battle music w/ more instruments
+You can now enter Kendra's home and talk to her on Escher Road
+Splash FX now plays when entering water
+Improved Controller Button Navigation
+Restricted movement from clicking away from move selection confirmation to prevent accidently hitting escape.
+The start button on controllers now open the menu in addition to pressing Y
+Added functional on screen virtual D-Pad, A, and B buttons for Windows / Linux tablets in input menu
+Made sure all battle buttons function with touch screen

Dev Note : I had to upgrade the version of Unity I was using to be able to upload Entodrive to my source control. With that Unity broke the lighting in all the levels. I went back and redid the lighting in most if not all levels. I could have missed a level or small scene, so while playing if you notice any weird lighting let me know. The cave / interior levels seemed unaffected by the change. It is possible upgrading broke things that I am unaware, so if you encounter any new issues please lmk. Thanks everyone have a great weekend!

Completed Monster List :

What's Coming Next :

Dynamo City
Conclusion to the Time of Crisis Tie-in Event
Custom Server Tower
Updated Guides
Updated Report Stations

Feb 4, 2022

Community Crunch 302: Introducing Desmodus, EVO Event, and More!

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

Welcome to another edition of the Community Crunch!

This week we are excited to share the concept and dossier for Desmodus, the winner of the second Community Creature Vote! We introduced RCV (Ranked Choice Voting) in the most recent round of community voting and saw Desmodus win (39,781 votes) vs. Carcharodontosaurus (24,419 votes) in the 9th and final round!

In other ARK news, we're starting the weekend off with an EVO event and Love Evolved starts next week. Check out the Love Evolved event details here!

Download in high resolution

Common Name: Desmodus
Species: Desmodus draculae
Time: Pleistocene
Diet: Sanguivore
Temperament: Aggressive

Even with all the other monstrosities around here, this fugitive from a Creature Double Feature deserves top billing. I mean, Dracula's right there in its species name! And Desmodus has a shriek that'll scare just about anything out of its way. It's also shrewd enough to limit itself to victims that it can carry off into the night.

Although I'm not superstitious enough to advise stocking up on garlic and stakes before you decide to track down Desmodus for yourself, I'd still advise you to hunt these horrors out in the light and away from their caves – they seem uniquely adept at flying and hiding in those dark, narrow spaces.

Taming one of these beasties lets you add its eerie abilities to your arsenal. Use their unsettling scream to scatter your enemies. Command Desmodus to snatch up small prey for you. Let its uncanny power to vanish into darkness become your personal stealth mode.

Desmodus has blood thinner in its saliva, which drains prey of more blood than this vampire could ever digest. If you can stomach the excess blood and drained meat your vampire pet leaves behind, you might be open-minded enough to appreciate another of its unholy gifts: a 'sanguine elixir' that helps enthrall the most stubborn beasts.

Desmodus will land on ARK with the upcoming free DLC map, Fjordur!

There is an ARK: EVO Event active on all platforms from now through February 7th, with the following EVO perks:

*Note that these bonuses are multiplicative of the game's standard 1x rates.

Official Servers: 2x XP, Harvesting, Taming, and Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval
Small Tribe Servers: 4.5x XP, 4.5x Harvesting, 4.5x Taming, and 4x Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval
ARKPocalypse: 5x XP, 5x Harvesting, 5x Taming, and 5x Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval
Classic: 6x XP, 6x Harvesting, 6x Taming, and 5x Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval