Long time no see! Since the last time we posted, we’ve been busy with our alpha version of The Ranchers and with all the amazing feedback that we received from everyone who’s played this version. Thank you to each and everyone of you who’s taken the time to help us make The Ranchers the best possible version of itself for the future ahead.💕
Our latest and final update in the alpha stage entails a lot of new mechanics, Quality of Life updates and new elements to the gameplay:
🌼Addition of new animals species
🐰 Rabbits 🐐 Goats 🐓 Addition of 2 new variations for the Rooster, new Calves for cows and bulls and chicks for chickens to represent their early growth stage
🌱New livestock feeding system. Now each species has its unique diet. 🌱New Pregnancy mechanic for Mammals Animals. 🌱New Eggs hatching mechanic for Oviparous Animals. 🌱New Animal Sickness mechanic. 🌱All livestock can be raised outdoor without necessary having a barn or a coop. There will be consequences with time, but hey that also means you can have them early!
🏡New Barns, Coops, Silos, Water Towers, Troughs and Fences!
🌱 Addition of new farm fences and fence doors that can be crafted by the player. 🌱Addition of 3 new Barns types with their exclusive interiors design. 🌱Addition of 3 new Coops types with their exclusive interiors design.
🌼 All the Barns and Coops can now have Feature Kits
🌱Auto-Feeding Kit, it will feed your animals automatically. 🌱Air Conditioning Kit, It will prevent your animals from becoming ill by keeping them warm in Winter and cool in Summer - You can see how your buildings/features kits are linked to each other by hovering your mouse on them with the hammer equipped. 🌟This whole building <=> feature kits "linkage system" will open a lot of great new game mechanics that will come in the future. 🌱All Coops and Barns doors can be opened or closed as you wish (with benefits and consequences of course). 🌱Introduction of Silos. 🌱Introduction of Water Towers. 🌟By combining Feature Kits, Silos and Water Towers you can now automatize your whole livestock feeding needs. 🌱Introduction of animal Troughs that can be crafted and placed in the ranch to feed your livestock when they are outside of the barn/coop or if you are raising them outdoor.
🐄 All livestock do use a new "systemic food seeking" algorithm to find food and drinks sources in your ranch (Water troughs, different food troughs, wild grass, vegetables, etc).
🌱Addition of new models to the existing species: 2 new variations for the Rooster, new Calf's for cows and bulls and chicks for chickens to represent their early growth stage 🐓 🌱The quality of all the animals' 3D models has been upgraded for better visual quality 🌱Polishing round for all the livestock animations! 🌱Meat, Milk and Eggs are now animal specific (this is will make the cooking very precise!) 🌱Animals do play a specific sound to let you know if they liked your gifts or not! 🌱Animals can now be named!
🌟Quality of Life updates
🌱 Wild grass do produce Hay regardless of their growth stage. 🌱 New sprinkler 3D model for "basic sprinkler". 🌱Items that have "grid coverage" mechanic, like Sprinklers, Scarecrows and Silos do now show their coverage with a visible grid in game. 🌱 All the crafted buildings give 50% back of resources when destroyed accidentally. 🌱 All the tools, animals, vehicles, and so on, can now have multiples rarity variations that will affect the item internal statistics (price, storage capacity, speed..) 🌱 Addition of a new section in "the end of the day summary" that will have all the important notices that happened during the night (ex. new animal give birth) 🌱 In "the end of the day summary", if nothing happened (results at 0 Coins and 0 notices), the animation duration is much much faster! 🌱 New Player animations:
When eating and drinking.
Filling the watering can.
Tired and holding the phone or the gun/rifle.
Aim with the gun/rifle.
🌱Balancing the Player energy and health. 🌱Long range weapons can now be used when player is in the air (jumping, falling, etc.) 🌼 A new day will only start when you hit "Start new day" button in "the end of the day summary". And that's how you can pause the game. This also works when playing in multiplayer.
🐧The Ranchers runs natively on Linux and Steam Deck!
While performance optimization is an ongoing process, this update is a significant step toward our goal of having The Ranchers fully optimized for its release day and certified Steam Deck ready!
Besides from all these features, we have also improved on the general experience when playing The Ranchers and fixed various Bugs and Crashes in the game:
🌼 As part of our optimization efforts, we have reduced the game's memory usage (VRAM) by a whopping 45% through some wizardry and extensive "cleaning", resulting in a much more stable game even during heavy load/stress! 🌼 A much faster loading time, between menu screen and when the gameplay start. (reduced by 20.4% to be precise ) 🌼 We have also balanced the summer weather by reducing the amount of rain and fog. 🌼 We have significantly reduced the mass of birds' physics to prevent them from causing traffic mayhem when they collide with NPC cars. 🌼 All known "ropes bugs" have been fixed!
Finally, I hereby announce, with the delivery of this update and the full legislative authority granted to me by The Ranchers Country, that the Alpha version is officially deemed complete! 🎊🥳
🥳Let's start the Beta chapter! 🥳
So, what's next?
The next update will be a Community Update! 🎉 We will be studying and implementing all the great alpha-feedback we have received from you with a big focus on quality of life and in-game onboarding!
If you haven't given your feedback on the alpha yet, or if you have anything else you want us to seriously consider, now is the time to share your thoughts with us! Feel free to post your feedback here: The Ranchers - Official Roadmap & Community feedback
💖 Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and stay tuned for more exciting updates! 🔥
I finally fixed the Equipment item selection bug. I also added some code to scale the game to 16:10 which should make black bars on the Steam Deck disappear. If you play on one, a quick heads up would be awesome.
Reminder: The Beta branch has the upcoming Berserker character available to test.
Have you reviewed the game yet? 😏
What's new?
Added: Display for own Highscore in the Highscore Menu. Changed: Increased Ambush Treasure gold value to 4. Fixed: Cloud Save issues. Fixed: Local Save issues. Fixed: Equipment item can not be selected after long play sessions. Fixed: Damage Amplifiers revenge effect is not permanent. Fixed: Game aspect scaling for 16:10 devices.
Hello all! A big thanks to everyone who's grabbed the game so far and fallen in love with the utterly terrifying abominations that hide in wait in the depths of the Rip.
We've been listening to your feedback, concerns and suggestions, and while we have more plans for features and content, we wanted to turn around a smaller patch to tackle some of the more critical and timely issues.
To this end, we've pushed out version 1.0.1, which is live on Steam now (you may need to restart your client in order for it to register the update).
Here are the notable changes:
Added: Experimental auto-pause feature (available under Options->Controls). This is currently opt-in while we make sure it functions as intended. If you have a movement key held down, auto-pause will stop your Deadnaut from moving if they spot an enemy.
Added: More detailed tutorials for ADAD systems -- Watchers on ships and towers on settlements. The tutorials will trigger when appropriate, and appear as red message boxes in the bottom-left that must be viewed. As with other tutorials, they will not appear again unless reset via the Gameplay menu.
Balance: Reduced Benefactor spawn rates on Easier and Normal difficulty, decreased damage and armour of Rangers.
Balance: Significantly reduced chance of console units being disabled from an EMP blast to a non-puppeted Deadnaut. If Deadnaut is in a doorway, it will not receive a Watcher attack.
Enhancement: Levels that have been revealed by a sigil or by discovering a map will no longer show the locations as fully visited.
Added: Modifier that indicates if a clone is registered.
Fixed: An issue where sigils assigned to custom Deadnauts would not appear in their correct slots.
Fixed: Issue that sometimes prevented “reached tier X” achievements from firing.
Fixed: Locking a door with a hack tool now sets its lock strength to maximum.
The following changes were applied as hotfixes:
Added: Option to disable the noise effect of the holographic UI in the Video & Audio settings menu.
Added: Ability to exit the game during a mission without losing your campaign progress.
Again, this is just a small patch aimed at the more pressing concerns that we didn't want to wait for a bigger patch to address. Stay tuned for more info on upcoming content, updates and whatever that giant frog thing I saw outside the cockpit last night was.
If you're an expert on enormous space amphibians, or just want to chat about Signal Lost, hit up our official Discord.
🎯 [UI] Warp plasma % bonuses are now shown in the character information screen. This statistic has also been added to the item filter. 🎯 [UI] An option to disable the white screen-flash has been added. This is located under the General section of the main menu options. 🎯 [UI] Recipe configs that currently provide a random outcome in terms of item grade are now better presented in the item preview slot. 🎯 [Balance] The Imperius T7 skill Drone Mastery III has been revised. It now works as follows: Time between summoning drones is reduced by {0}%. Drone resistances are increased by {1}% of the warp plasma bonus %. Warp plasma required to summon drones is increased by {2}%. 🎯 [Balance] The Ga, Co, Ra, Un and Ep Fragments now sets the level of the transmuted item to the same level as the player. In other words, you can not both up- and down-level items with these fragments. 🎯 [Balance] The final boss in Act 2 has been revised. In particular, the map is now larger. 🎯 [Balance] Cave entries and exits now spawn in a bit less confined spaces. 🎯 [Bug fix] Fixed an issue that could cause COOP clients to get stuck on loading screen when changing maps. 🎯 [Bug fix] Fixed the evaluation order of several high-level skills that previously failed to include % hull and % warp plasma buffs. 🎯 [Bug fix] Fixed a bug that could cause non-weapon-type mods on drone summoner items to be incorrectly re-rolled on Continuum Transmuter recipes. 🎯 [Bug fix] Fixed another cave-entrance-spawning-in-wall-edge-case. 🎯 [Bug fix] The map that contains the first Nienix fragment has been enlarged. Larger ships should thus no longer get out-of-bounds when going there.
Hello! We spent the past few weeks making NORCO Steam Deck verified. It's been compatible for a while, but in order to receive full verification, we made some slight UI modifications to support a 16x10 screen resolution. For now, this resolution is only supported on Steam Deck, but we'll make it available across all platforms in the future.
As always, we deeply appreciate the feedback and bug reports that we receive. Because of this community's help, the game has been able to grow and mature since its release. With a team as small as ours, the kind of support you've all shown is invaluable.
The best way to report issues and ensure that they get addressed in future patches is to use the bug reporting form available through Raw Fury's online portal: https://rawfury.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/1 Below are some additional updates and improvements included in the 1.4.5 patch, many of them in response to your reports.
1.4.5 Changelog
Fix "screen flip" bug that occurs if a player simultaneously presses the dive and zoom buttons in the lake.
Fix bug that causes the phone to disappear during choice selections when using the head drive app.
Fix bug preventing controller input after engaging with the pigman hotspot in the lake.
Make input diagram fade from the screen when any button is pressed.
Fix attribution of "Templars in Acadiana" by Wilbur Stiles, which was mistakenly listed as "Templars in Louisiana" in the credits.
Edit script for brevity and clarity, and to address typos in Acts II & III.
Adjust the boat collision sensitivity during the puppet show and lake sequences.
Support 16x10 screen resolution for Steam Deck.
Reset/readjust UI on screen ratio change (this triggers when docking a Steam Deck).
It is time to introduce to the game the main force of any military conflict - the infantry troops! We are pleased to announce our vision on the infantry progression tree and invite you to take part in the open testing of the most advanced soldiers!
War Thunder Mobile Infantry - open beta testing of the troops of the future!
Commanders! We’re happy to share our plans on infantry units in War Thunder. Today we’re talking about how we see troops in the game and invite you into the first open testing session. Unlike the combat vehicles testing, we decided to start with the top-tier units of the infantry line-up, featuring the most advanced soldier equipment, which is a prospective of modern warfare trends.
Exo-suits
According to many military experts, combat exoskeletons will become the most likely development of infantry equipment in future. Urbanized terrain, as the main battle arena of modern warfare, as well as the need for a soldier to use heavy weapons and high classes of armor protection, require from a modern soldier capabilities that go beyond abilities of the unassisted human body. A powered exoskeleton will allow the soldier to operate a wide arsenal of small arms and heavy weapons, use anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons as a firearm, and stay able to move fast and high. The wearable ammunition load and the weight of equipment become incomparably large towards an ordinary infantryman, while the dimensions of the soldier remain small, and the speed of movement significantly increases.
The first prototypes of combat exoskeletons are already being tested in modern wars and the prospects for their development are very optimistic. We invite you to an open testing session of combat exo-suits, equipped for various combat missions: assault, sniper, ATGM and MANPADS operators.
We will tell you about the start of testing soon. Stay tuned!
Combat classes
The standard combat exoskeleton provides an unified platform to equip different combat classes. It comes geared with multiple systems to increase combat capabilities of a soldier, as well as survivability: combat helmet with armored visor, rocket jump-packs to assist taking high positions on buildings, smoke grenade launchers, etc.
Assault
Assault troops engage in close quarter firefights and often face enemy armored vehicles. The assault infantry is equipped with a high-caliber machine gun and twin tube ATGM launcher to defeat tanks and combat vehicles of the enemy.
Sniper
Snipers provide reconnaissance data to their squad and engage long-range contacts. Their main weapon is a 30mm semi-automatic anti-material sniper rifle. A pair of single shot disposable rocket launchers allow the sniper to hit armored targets if needed.
ATGM operator
The main task of anti-armor personnel is to destroy enemy armored vehicles. A portable twin-tube missile system with additional ammunition allows ATGM operators to destroy any MBTs and other armored vehicles on the battlefield. As small arms at medium and close range, their exoskeleton is equipped with an 8.6 mm light machine gun with a multiple charged 43 mm grenade launcher.
MANPADS operator
The MANPADS operator is responsible for destroying enemy aircraft and providing reconnaissance data from above. The exoskeleton in this class is equipped with a light UAV, as well as an advanced aiming station, capable of sectoral search for air targets and an automatic target tracking system. The operator is equipped with an up-to-date man-portable anti-aircraft missile system with a multifunctional high-explosive armor-piercing fragmentation warhead and a thermal imaging seeker that makes it possible to track heat-contrasting ground targets. To destroy helicopters, lightly armored ground vehicles and enemy troops, the MANPADS operator is equipped with a heavy machine gun pod.
Welcome to the first-ever Core Keeper Weekly Community Wrap-Up!
We share a lot of cool stuff about Core Keeper over on Twitter and Discord, but we’re aware that not everybody who plays the game is active in those spaces. That’s why we’ve decided to do a weekly community wrap-up here on Steam from now on to share the highlights from these channels with you. Here’s what we’ve shared this week!
Our Cherry Blossom Event is Over!
It’s been a pretty Cherry-Blossom heavy week for Core Keeper, but our Cherry Blossom mini-event has come to a close. Don’t forget that you can access all of our seasonal events at any time through the Gameplay Settings menu!
Springtime in the Underground
With the gorgeous new additions that came in our Cherry Blossom event, it sure felt like spring had finally sprung in the underground this week. Check out this lovely spring-time GIF we shared of Cherry Blossom trees blooming in Azeos’ Wilderness!
Cherry Blossom Fan Art
The talented R-E (@arty_mc_artist) shared some beautiful Cherry-Blossom event-inspired fan art with us featuring a pink-haired Explorer. We absolutely loved this piece and our community did too!
Behind-the-Scenes Glass!
Our CEO, Fredrik Präntare, shared a little behind-the-scenes preview of something the Pugstorm team are working on…glass! And not just any glass, colourful glass! This is a work-in-progress shot from an in-development version of the game, so it is worth noting that nothing here is final nor official to Core Keeper. The Twitter community seemed pretty excited about this one though – what’s your favourite colour?
Discord Sticker Competition
We’re currently running a Core Keeper Discord Sticker competition over on, you guessed it, Discord. We’ll be announcing 3x winners for this one. Each winner will receive 1x Core Keeper Steam key (to keep for themselves or to give to a friend!) and, of course, their stickers will be added to our Discord. We’ve had some great entries so far with the competition closing at 11:30am UTC on April 3rd 2023, so there’s still plenty of time to enter if you’re feeling artistic!
Community Screenshots
We also had some awesome community screenshots shared with us on both Twitter and Discord, including…
This colourful creation from ponyponyex (@ponyponyex) on Twitter…
…and this impressive base from Grin over on our Discord!
