Jul 27, 2023

ICARUS - Shamm

Our first major expansion for Icarus is coming. Icarus: New Frontiers launches August 24th and brings with it a new map, with all new biomes, mutated alien creatures, narrative missions, craftables, exotics, and more.

Icarus' First Cohort was dropped into safe Earth-like terraformed zones. Icarus: New Frontiers will take you deep into new regions of Icarus where alien creatures and habitats survived but were altered by the terraforming process - such as searingly hot volcanic regions, murky swamplands and eerie alien grasslands.

New technology also means you’ll be able to stay on the planet in Open World mode for consecutive Missions, so you better get comfortable with your new home away from home.

Jump in and have a read of all the details of what’s to come.

Icarus: New Frontiers

New Frontiers comes packed with new content. Regardless of how you like to play, there will be something for you and your team to jump into.

A brand new map, with three new biomes - the searingly hot volcanic region, murky swamplands and eerie alien grasslands
New extreme weather events for each biome, reflective of the atmospheric conditions of each environment
10+ mutated alien creatures. The terraforming process drastically impacted the local wildlife, and while it didn’t kill the creatures as it did in other zones, it terribly mutated them into the species you face now. Dreadwings, Lava Hunters, Needlers, Dracs, Drifters - their nicknames only tell half the story
Six new narrative missions that play out in a sequenced story, leading you on a gradually darkening journey
New mission logic and technology, allowing you to launch any mission, big or small, from your Open World (this will be added to the base game too, in our future Hypatia update)
100+ new items to craft, deploy and use across Icarus, along with five new raw resources generating a range of new recipes and tiers: Obsidian, Scoria, Crystalised Miasma, and more
Native and exclusive to this new zone of Icarus are the new Red Exotics, found in exotic flora found around the map
With this new currency come 30+ new items in the orbital workshop for you to purchase and a new system which allows you to purchase these from the surface via cargo pods

This is just the content coming at launch - as with all RocketWerkz games, we’ll continue to drop regular updates with more content, fixes, tweaks, improvements, and features. We’re done 85 consecutive weekly updates with Icarus so far, and we’re not stopping now.

Launching on 24 August

New Frontiers will launch on Steam on August 24th (EDT). Visit the Store Page to check timing in your region, and to Wishlist so you’re reminded when it launches.

As our first major expansion, this is the largest content and game update since launch, hence the version number will officially reach 2.0 with this update. Our ongoing weekly updates and larger content patches (Hypatia is next) will continue to add content to the base game as well as the new expansion, so even if you don’t have the expansion Icarus will continue to grow.

In the coming weeks we’ll reveal more details including screenshots and gameplay footage, so keep your eyes peeled.

If you don’t own New Frontiers, but someone in your gaming group does, you’ll be able to join and play in their hosted sessions without needing to own the expansion yourself. The only limitation is you can’t host the session, otherwise, you won’t be restricted. You’ll also be able to join Dedicated Server sessions of New Frontiers even if you don’t have it yourself, so there many ways to play if you aren’t sure about buying it yet.

Jul 27, 2023

Small-Big Update

Jet Rush - freshbreadgames

Boost Buoys are working again.

Lots of performance improvements with general settings and foliage. General settings have been simplified to offer a more generic experience. I want the game to run well on multi platforms instead of seeing more foliage on PC with super bad@$$ hardware... everyone will see the same thing regardless of the hardware.

Seriously I can't stress the increase in foliage performance so much so, I wanted to reiterate it.

Virtual memory consumption. At this point I have lowered the requirement for VRAM. It's shouldn't complain or run poorly if you have a max of 2gbs vram (more to come)

On that note, Raytracing is fully disabled. Now only supporting Lumen subsystems for lighting.

Shadows have been modified to perform well and look good. No more settings, just on or off.

VSync is disabled. MOAR FRAMES! Known issue: you may or may be able to turn quicker with more frames. Fix is coming soon.

New logic for AI boats. They are still very... derpy but work. You may be able spot one in a map!

Started to work on Steam Deck support. Right now, it's not running well but should still "run". Choosing the lowest texture setting with a render of 50-75% is advised when trying it on the Steam Deck. More to come.

Jul 27, 2023

Tune in: The Sims 4 Buck Wild Takeover Event

The Sims™ 4 - Electronic Arts

Introducing Simmers to the world of Chestnut Ridge, a picturesque landscape based on the Wild West. For players seeking animal-focused gameplay in a rustic locale, Horse Ranch offers a rural world where players can build and customize their own working ranch, fall in love with adorable mini-goats and mini-sheep, and raise horses to become trusted companions. Saddle up and mosey into town to learn from the locals, hire a ranch hand, or just kick back and relax after a hard days’ work.

Shop the sale and discover new experiences. There are packs with adorable interactions, outdoor adventures, exciting careers, and relaxing hobbies. Your world of Sims is yours to customize.

Shop the Buck Wild Sale

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222670/The_Sims_4/

Jul 27, 2023

Balance Update

Approaching Infinity - IBOL17

Thanks to player feedback, I've executed a major balance of the new ship combat systems.

One problem was that enemy difficulty was outpacing equipment available to the player. This has been fixed.

Is it too easy now? Still too hard? Let me know!

Other changes:

Away missions now employ a 4-frame animation for the landing party and monsters.
Space stations have new art!
Weapons can't force "crew crits" unless your shields are down.
Reduced the rarity and minimum sector of all new ship weapons, shields, and armor, making the more interesting ones more available.
Added explanation spiels about this and the shuttle's autopilot.
Increased the base hull points scaling of new ships from the shipyard, and those you repair yourself.
Some faction ships can have cloaking devices instead of shields!
Further reduced the cooldowns on most of the new space activated skills.
Changed the stealth runner's starting weapon to hull raker (thanks eharper256)
New device: Ballistic Accelerator : +1 range for all cannon weapons
New device: Cyclic Capacitor : +33% damage for all beam weapons
New device: Armored Missiles: +1 PD required to intercept your missiles, and they do more damage even through point defense.
New device: Missile Scrambler: Enemy missiles can't target your ship from a range greater than 5
New random quest: Gas giant survey: collect special data pickups near gas giants (fairly basic stuff).
New random quest: Embassy spying: intercept secret communications in space without being seen! (new and different!)
Skill change: Level 2 of Thermal Dissipators (Lava-walk) further reduces duration of burn status effect.
Skill change: Level 2 of Mountain Climbing skill reduces earthquake and cave-in damage.
Skill change: The new "scan every plant and tree for data" function is now tied to the "eco-examiner" skill of the explorer class.
Skill change: "Cartography" skill (explorer class) now helps you survey planets at less than 100%, at -5% per level.
Skill change: "scanning specialist" skill increases your de-cloak radius by 1 per level.
Skill change: "Mining Specialist": Level 1 automatically picks up whatever you get out of the asteroid. Level 2 automatically mines all adjacent asteroids. Level 3 increases this distance to 2 tiles!

I also updated the demo to include all changes here, and a fix for a rare bug that was plaguing some users.

Have fun out there, space captains!

Jul 27, 2023

Quickchat + QOL changes + Gameplay Tweaks

Last Train Outta' Wormtown - Get(Color)

Howdy!

QuickChat:
Replacing the old "ping" system, Pressing the QuickChat (default "T" or clicking "Right Stick") will open up a radial menu where you can easily send common and useful message pop ups. This works in lobby as well as in-game as a Pardner. Currently, there is no QuickChat for the Worm players, but this will be added in the future.

While playing as Pardner, the QuickChat is context sensitive based on your camera mode. For example, if you select the "Healing" chat bubble while aiming, it will ping where you're looking and display "Cactus Fruit over here!" to all Pardners. Alternatively, if you're not aiming, it will display "I need Cactus Fruit!" and display your current health to all Pardners.

New Lobby Features:
* New Custom Match Settings: For Fuel Required, Train Blockers, Number of Cactus Fruit, Pardner Max Health, and Worm Ability Cooldowns - there's now an additional < Custom > match setting. You can find this by clicking the > until Custom shows up. A slider will appear and you can set these values to your liking.
* Saving Match Settings: When selecting "Play Again" at the end of a match, the settings for the previous match will be saved and applied to the new lobby. Note: match settings will be reset when you go back to the main menu.
* Added more event feed pop ups for players connecting, disconnecting, and more.
* Clients can now "suggest" rule changes by clicking the < or > arrows in the match settings panel. This will inform players in the pop up feed.
* Host can now force start the game, ignoring if players are readied up or not.

Escape Mini Game Changes:
* Cleaned up the effects when successfully entering an input, so there should be much less visual noise and clutter.
* Can no longer get duplicate inputs in a row
* The Mini game now accepts arrow key inputs as well as WASD
* Lowered how much progress you lose with a failed input on the Hard mini game setting. You now lose 6 inputs of progress, where previously you'd lose all progress.

Sundown Changes:
* New music added for when nighttime begins.
* Worm Scream now deals 10 damage to Pardners in the close AOE. Just to be clear: This only happens at nighttime and when a Pardner is in the normal AOE of the scream - not the global detection range. Design insight: Night time is supposed to be an extremely Worm-sided end game scenario to stop long stalemate games. Even with the previous changes to buff Worms at night, there were still instances of Pardners camping inside the train with dynamite traps on all of the doors, allowing for more stalemates. Note: This change is most likely a temporary fix for this issue until the new Worm abilities are added in the near future.
* The Worm healing rate of the second and third rings has now been significantly boosted at night. The center ring has been unchanged. Design insight: Dynamite should be very punishing for the Worm, but I felt healing back to full took too long at night. This also is a nerf to the above mentioned stalemate strategy.

Gameplay Changes:
* Dynamite explosions will now light the fuse of other dynamites, but at half their normal fuse time
* Ghosts now push objects slightly further and their push cooldown has been reduced to 25 seconds (was 40)
* Heart Jars now have a permanent ping indicator when in inspection mode (right click/left trigger camera mode), so Pardners no longer need to intentionally ping it's location. Note: Only applies when they are lying around the map, not when inside of an inventory.
* You now see other Pardners health over their head in inspection mode.

Misc Fixes:
* Fixed 9 players being able to join a lobby (again lol). Note: I'm still planning on raising the player cap in the future, but this bug was causing other issues so it needed to be fixed in the short term

I'm still working on the big content update with new Worm abilities and Pardner equipment items! (Sorry it's taking long than expected!)

Stay safe out there, Pardner!