Greetings dear players, We are hard working for better game with your valuable feedbacks.
Improvements Added helper UI for items which you hold. Added helper UI for NPCs, furnitures, cars, doors and breakables. Addeed helper UI for items which you try to put on table in merchants. Animations and emotions added for angry, yes and no actions while you are bargaining. Animations added for interactions. Target indicators won't be shown if you are less than 10 meters away. Some roads are removed for better performance. Changed camera distance for better performance. Better information window after buy car. Cars are spawning on right side of your own shop. Angry rate while bargaining is dramatically decreased for better QoL. You can see all helper UIs on left side of screen.
Bug Fixes Chinese Langage Support, now working all characters on fonts. Selling area bugs, now you can see true item count while you are selling items. "Skip Night" button, fixed the bug that caused 1 extra day count. Repairman, fixed foot locations. Antique Shop, antique dealer is not buying items which is not antique anymore.
Maybe you need to restart steam client for update.
We hope you all have fun. Would appreciate your feedback.
This weekend, we're having a sale on cosmetic effects from the Ancestor Mystery Box! All microtransactions from the Ancestor Mystery Box as well as their variations will be on sale! Check out the full list of specials in-game by pressing M to open the store.
This sale will run until 4pm on Monday, March 4th PST.
If you need some extra points for this sale, this is a great opportunity to pick up the Shade and Disciple series supporter packs before they leave the store soon!
Next month (April) is Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop's 7th anniversary. We're not planning on having a huge update this year because we've decided it's better to release new content as soon as it's ready instead of waiting for an arbitrary time of year. March (this month) brings with it some new menus, fixes for various problems reported by the community, and some updates to an infrequently used NPC for mappers.
Reporting
Added a button to quickly report or commend players in the player list (by default, F9, or the thumbs-up icon in the lobby). Reports go to the Reactive Drop Team.
Added a new option to the pause (ESC) menu: "Report a Problem".
Entering the pause menu now takes a screenshot that can be attached to the report.
This feature can be used for anything you think the Reactive Drop Team should know about. (Let us know through some other method if you get errors sending a report.)
Once a report is started, you can resume the report at any time until you close the game, or throw it away and start a new one.
You can start a report on any player you played with or the last dedicated server you were on for up to an hour afterwards.
You can also file a report that is not tied to a player or server (for example, a bug report or asking for help with a problem related to your account) at any time.
Fixed the "Automatically report players I mute or vote for" checkbox on the player list always appearing to be unchecked when the menu loads.
Deathmatch
Infection Deathmatch Challenge: Prevented Onslaught from being activated in these modes.
Infection Deathmatch Challenge: The railgun now pushes zombies with much more force.
Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces servers no longer filter deathmatch challenges.
Colonists (for mappers)
Colonists are no longer an auto-aim target by default. (Can be adjusted in Hammer.)
Colonists now show the friendly fire warning on the crosshair unless they are marked as an aim target.
The colonist behavior that makes them follow marines when interacted with can now be disabled in Hammer, and the colonist now has a glowing outline to indicate that this action is allowed.
Added "spawn with weapon" option for colonists in Hammer. However, many weapons act strangely with colonists; this will be addressed in the future based on what mappers need.
Combine soldiers now use asw_weapon_pdw_single rather than being hard-coded to use a custom model and animations. asw_weapon_pdw_single becomes an asw_weapon_pdw with special settings once it spawns, so scripts that manipulate asw_weapon_pdw do not need to be updated.
Colonists now support ai_goal_actbusy. All Half-Life 2 citizen busy actions are available.
Additionally, Drone_WallPound and Ranger_Sleep busy actions are now available.
Aliens now make "sounds" that humanoid NPCs can hear whenever they complete or loop an animation.
Other Bug Fixes and Tweaks
Jacob's Rest: Cargo Elevator (all variants): Fixed some graphical oddities based on camera position on the metal plating after the toxic pit.
cl_lagcompensation can now be changed while connected to a server.
Fixed choppy animations for eggs.
Fixed computers sending an extra OnComputerHackCompleted output after the download is completed if asw_simple_hacking is enabled.
Fixed a main menu crash when cl_quick_join_scroll_max is 0 and rd_reduce_motion is 1.
Fixed a performance hitch when sending equipped inventory items (such as medals) to a server.
Removed some console warning messages that the game's Steam Input support code could show in non-error cases.
When running rd_steam_input_disable, the game now turns XInput support back on for every attached controller.
Changed the color for voice-muted players from gray to red to make it easier to differentiate them from non-speaking players, which were a different gray.
Removed a spammy server log message that could be triggered by alt-tabbing.
To celebrate the day of women, the Women's Day holiday week is now live!
During this week complete as many tasks as you can to unlock various rewards, among them the romantic Orchid dye! (Not all tasks can be completed by all players)
Chapter X: The Ascent is out now! Check out the teaser video below if you haven't seen it. Featuring a whole new region, more story, 2 new Guises, side quests, and lots more.
This new content update includes:
3-5 hours of content.
Main story quest: Infiltrate Zircon, the heart of the Zircadian Empire... again! Attempt to secure the Haze Artifact and sever Lucifel's corruption once and for all.
More side quests: Investigate a shadowy cult attempting to resurrect an ancient god, help a local fortune teller discover why her fortunes have been turning out so bad, and finally find the use of those broken Leaping Boots that have been cluttering your inventory!
New areas: Explore the shivering Shyveri Forest and meet with its inhabitants in the town of Fae'Ryn. Explore the city of Adoulin and its otherworldly locales such as Ijus Grove and Saraai'mar.
2 new Guises: The fortune-telling Tarotist with the power to pull cards from their deck to help allies and hurt foes, as well as the machine-loving Machinist with the ability to create and use special inventions.
New achievements and collectibles to pad your Collectivus.
There have also been numerous fixes for this release:
Guise balancing and better animations - an ongoing process.
Many lag/stutter fixes, especially in starter areas and the Overworld.
Retro glitches now stay after you've explored them, so you can explore them again! Also, a few more have been added around the world.
If you experience any bugs or issues, please let me know in the Discord or on Twitter! Both can be found on the store page.
Smaller update with big changes. This update comes with 2 big changes. 1. The ability to save and continue a journey some other time. There is only 1 save slot. 2. Curses, trying out some curses that you can get via 2 new events, they hinder you for a few fights or the entire journey.
So not a lot of new content, but new ways to enjoy the current content at your own pace and also new content to make runs more interesting.
As always let me know your thoughts and keep submitting those bug reports!
[-] Eliminated redundant settings button on the starting scene. [+] Implemented the capability to resume a journey. [+] Integrated text "speech" sounds for events. [+] Incorporated curses into the gameplay. [+] Introduced two new events: "A Chance Meeting" and "Cursed Woods."
Can now select Hologame House alternate version that appears in the Bonus Games as a stage variant. No gameplay differences
Added "Tournament Unlock" button to the Options menu, under game settings. This unlocks all character colours and stages but disables saving until resetting the game
FIXES & CHANGES MENUS
Fixed dynamic music shifting in 2v2 mode
Updated the ball power colour for level 4 in the custom match settings to reflect changes to colour spectrum from last year
MISC
Fixed the background displays on Hologram House to match the character palette swaps
Fixed display of Hyper move names when starting a Hyper move with Hi-Res fonts turned on
Not only have we refactored the entire network system to allow for batteries and variable flow rates, but the system itself has been heavily optimized to be more efficient in both network traffic (that is sending data from the server to clients) and server processing (that is the amount of calculations done from second to second). This aims to improve both server and client performance when it comes to resource networks.
This has been a long process, and we’ll go into detail below on the extensive changes and reworks we had to do to deliver it, including multiple reworks and a lot of man-hours invested on our end.
We break down the new system, what you can expect, a host of new items as well as balance changes that have come along with it.
Jump in and check it all out below.
Notable Improvements:
Water networks are now accessible at Tier 3 (find out more below).
Sprinklers are now Tier 3, cheaper and better. They can now make you or enemies wet, water crop plots and can be triggered manually or by sustaining damage.
Fixed instances where the Bees swarm would not always be removed upon their death.
Deep ore veins are now unlimited by design. We fixed a bug a few weeks ago which was making them refresh on each login, meaning they ran out as intended - but after testing and based on your feedback we decided it was a better experience if they never run out.
This week: Batteries & Brownouts
We have added batteries and water storage devices to store these resources for later use, such as in cases where your solar panels aren’t producing energy at night or your waterwheels are clogged. (For the full breakdown of new items see the new items section below.)
Instead of devices shutting off when not receiving enough of a required resource, many will now move into a brownout state. Depending on the device some will shut off. For example, Aquariums will shut off, while crafting benches will brownout.
A brownout is where a device isn’t receiving adequate resources, and therefore performs at a suboptimal level. Examples include lights getting dimmer, crafting benches crafting slower, and dehumidifiers or heaters having a reduced radius of effect. Devices such as water pumps will produce less water if they are not receiving enough electricity.
We have also added a way to examine your networks at a glance so you can see the status of all the connected devices as well as their active states. This can be achieved either by having a Water Pipe Tool or Electricity tool equipped, looking at an object and pressing 'R', or by connecting one of the new items added this week (a Flow Meter) to your networks. Interacting this way will bring up a screen breaking down all the objects connected to that network. Individual elements can be clicked on to see each device in that category and a priority can also be assigned. Prioritizing means being able to define if a device should be prioritized to receive resources first before the rest of the network - this is especially helpful when you have a heavy network load or not enough power to run everything.
This week: One Big Refactor
Systems such as these may seem like a small change on the surface but in reality, something as simple as adding batteries required an entire rework of how devices both connect to networks and communicate with each other. We have gone through three iterations of this system two of which you will never see because they didn’t fit with the game and didn’t work out as well as we had hoped. But that is the part of game development that goes unseen. Sometimes, you want to add something simple to a system that wasn’t designed for it and you have to rewrite the whole thing.
The system was originally designed for all machines to have ‘constant flow rates’ - that is a static supply or demand value that can be turned on and off depending on the machine's state (also off/on). This, in theory, is simple, effective and at that time, was what we thought we needed. The static value represented a ‘flow rate', a rate at which units of energy would transfer to/from the machine into the network itself. However, adding Batteries to this system (which was always an intention) exposed a bunch of issues with the simplicity of the system, even if it worked to a degree. Some of these issues included being unable to vary the flow rates for devices, and the network acting in a very ‘binary fashion’ meant any complex interactions that we felt needed to come alongside batteries (for them to be used in a meaningful way) were not possible. (Examples include storms affecting the output of wind turbines, or scaling a device’s performance based on the amount of electricity available).
This meant going back to the drawing board on the system, and after a few more months of development, we have developed a system that supports variable flow rates. This system allows devices to be dynamically scaled up and down based on their status, and we’ve also developed a system alongside that allows you to control your resource networks, including setting priorities for receiving resources, controlling on/off states and more. In addition to these, you can now inspect your network and see the connected devices at a glance by either using the electricity and water placement tools or a flow meter.
Implementing a dynamic system means various devices can now experience ‘brownout states’, which can cause a heater to have a reduced area of effectiveness, or a crafting bench to perform less efficiently when they are not receiving enough resources from a network. In the past, these devices would have shut off entirely, leaving players having to run around disconnecting machines from the network until the problem was solved. This new system allows you far more control, and far more information to work with.
After many hours of both testing internally and with our experimental branch players, the system is now in a state we believe is ready for release. We may still have some bugs that will show up now that is being released to the general public, but we’ll strive to address these quickly over the next week. We also have plans to improve how you interact with machines on these networks as well as do a balance pass to power-generating devices (Wind turbines we are looking at you).
With a new network, comes a smorgasbord of new items.
Basic Battery Rack (T4)
The entry-level battery option, which stores a moderate amount of electricity but has a low flow rate so isn’t suitable for high-capacity networks.
Advanced Battery Rack (T4)
The premium option, with a much higher storage capacity and flow rate, which is more suitable for networks with a much higher demand.
Water Barrel (T3)
Acts as a storage device for water and can be connected to water networks.
Metal Rain Reservoir (T3)
Collects rainwater, can defrost ice into water, stores more than the Rain Reservoir (T2), and can be connected to water networks to act as a storage device.
Biofuel Water Pump (T3)
A brand new device to allow water networks to be created and used earlier in the tech tree. Can be deployed in streams or lakes to generate water when fueled with biofuel.
Water Borer (T4)
A new device that can be placed on enzyme geysers and when powered, can be used to extract water which can be fed into a water network.
Flow Meter (T4)
A device that can be connected to both water and electrical networks. It has a display that shows the current supply, demand, and available storage at a glance. You can also interact with the device to see a more detailed view and assign priorities to machines.
This week: Balance Adjustments
To pair with reworking the entire power network system, a balance pass was required on existing networks.
We have moved the water pipe tool T3, with the introduction of the biofuel water pump this makes water networks accessible much earlier. Due to this all furnaces at T3 and above can now be connected to water networks for any recipes (existing or future). Due to the water networks being shifted to T3 we have also shifted the water sprinkler and reduced its crafting cost to make it fit as a T3 item.
The biofuel aquarium (T3) has had its level requirement removed so it can be built before level 30 but also now requires a water connection to keep your fish alive.
We have also removed the water network connections from the T2 masonry bench as there are T3 replacements and it helps solidify as T3 as the introduction of enhanced production with water networks.
Next Week: Batteries, Bugs, Balance & Optimization
Next week is going to be dedicated to balancing, optimization and bug fixing for the new Networks we’re introducing this week, along with some other QoL.
#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
If you like what we’re doing with Icarus, and want to support our continued development, consider purchasing one of our DLCs for a few dollars, it would mean a lot to us.
Added message about not being connected to the network to the resource network inspection view
Fixing up Blueprints after batteries merge
Adding functionality to flowmeter item
Reduced sprinkler steel to 2 per
Rebalanced Flow Meter recipe, reduced Aluminium costs and added Electronics and Glass. Moved to Fabricator
Removed Clay and Scoria Brick recipes from Stone Furnace
Increased Metal Rain Reservoir cost, costing 12 Refined Iron (from 8) and adding 20 Charcoal
Readding water borer blueprint and fixing deployable enteries for water borer and biofuel pump
Adjust flow meter durability 250 -> 750
Increasing Basic and Advanced Battery Storage so it takes each around 10mins to fully charge and 10mins to fully discharge, this can be augmented with multiple batteries and each battery provides different charge/discharge rates
Adding optional flow text to resource inspection resources
Fixing issue with resource displays on talents / tooltips, the calculation for ratio was backwards showing incorrect flow rates
Adding optional water connections to furnaces
Upping the water borer water generation rate
Flow meter now shows detailed resource network window when interacted with
Resource network inspection window is now self contained and can be opened using the normal linked-actor dynamic widget flow
Re-added resource remaining indicator to Drill, Extractor and Harvester UI
Removed Water Connection from T2 Masonry Bench
Removed the Water Connection from the T2 Rain Reservoir as its superseded by the T3 Rain resevior
Shifted T2 Water Purifier to T3 as it makes more sence at that location due to the network changes
Modified Size of Ice Borer & Flow Meter (they were too small)
Fixed Resource network puck collision on flow meter so you can now connect to multiple networks
Removed Old un-used flow meter static meshes
Removed helper text for T2 Masonry Bench water connection craft speed (as this is no longer applicable)
Adding ability to scale network flow via stats so modifiers can scale up or down depending on contextual events
Lights Intensity is now scaled (on electrical lights) when they are recieveing less power (are in a brown out)
Added logging if a wire/pipe fails to reconnect to a device on load
Changed generator loading to use full activation path (should fix things like the Water Pump being stuck on Idle)
Fixed Inspect Network not working for wiring tools on Clients
Fixed missing action prompts from water tool
Updated Deep Ore Veins so they are unlimited
Lights intensity now has a stat and can be scaled by adding modifiers to lights
Adding new brownout modifier for lights that reduces its effectiveness
Removing Optional brownout text from resource network data
Added dev tool for inspecting resource flows inside devices
[/expand]
Fixed [expand type=details]
Fixed bees incorrectly persisting for 5 minutes when killed
Fixed bees not cleaning up correctly on clients when killed
Fix a trivial runtime replication warning associated with new deployable camera focus setting
Shield/offhand item stats are now applied when placed in the offhand
Added resource remaining indicator to Drill, Extractor and Harvester UI
Removed remaining value from Drills, Extractors and Harvesters (Deep Ore now unlimited means this is no longer required, others benefit from the mystery)
Fix selected dropship index is not being set on Outposts after Return To Character Select
MIASMIC: Fixed solar panels not counting for entire mission area, requiring placement within middle half of the mission area, can now be placed anywhere within mission area
[/expand]
Future Content [expand type=details]
Added cheat to spawn exotic infused creatures. Added red variant of infused creature particle system
Added ability to spawn Exotic Infused creatures. You can now specify an EpicCreature row when adding AI to spawn pool in each D_AISpawnZones
Tweaked base stats of Wooly Zebra mount, being slightly slower than the horse but a bit tankier and carrying more
Added missing limestone half pitch icon
Fixed Limestone halfpitch building assignment
Added Limestone Building Piece item icons
Adding mount specific versions of blueback attack and idle for more appropriate volumes
Adding blueback juvi idle, flinch and death audio and events and data table setups
Added GUN_Shotgun_CHAC
Added DEP_Trough_Luxury_Feeder, DEP_Trough_Iron_Feeder and DEP_Trough_Rustic_Feeder
Adding text and descriptions to a food / water troughs
Adding Skulmut & Dribbo creature setups and correct naming
Added proper spawnrate/damage/resistance stats for mini hippo
Updating mange wolf aggro states and flinch audio to better match creature in game
Submitting Juvenile Wooly Zebra mesh and textures
Added HAB diorama for off planet bestiary images
Added chicken trophy with white, brown, and black materials
Hooking up bear cub carcass mesh to corpse BP
Added setup for Mange Wolf Alpha creature including skeletal mesh and carcass assets, bestiary and stats pass needed
Added setup for Mange Wolf creature including skeletal mesh and carcass assets, bestiary and stats pass needed
Armoured saddles now point to correct skeletal meshes in D_Saddles
Adding all events for mange wolf alpha. Adding low end loop layer to add bigness and adjusting spacial for standard mange wolves to be less intense
Added Trail Beacon and Beacon Tool control hints
Allowed Trail Beacons to be deployed indoors
Added Trail Beacon Emissive
Added upper and lower indicator icons to halfpiece wall item icons
Final adjustments for blueback and blueback juvi audio sounds
Added inverted item icons of building halfpieces
Setting up CHAC workshop shotgun
Updated Exotic Infused Creature VFX
Moved files from dev folder to main project
Adding Icons for Chicken Head, Chicken Trophy, Trail Beacon, 4x new food troughs
Adjusting saddle in world dropped meshes to be generic
Added correct bones mesh for var 2/3 and made materials from preexisting textures for the var 2/3 carcasses
Adding Armored Saddle Icon
Updated DEP_Trough_Luxury
Setting up Limestone Deep Mining Deposit to use the correct textures & highlightable
Setting up the Limestone Voxels to use the correct textures and assigning the silica phyiscal material for the pickaxe hit effect as the sulfur effect eas too yellow and did not match the effect
Added DEP_Trough_Powered_Feeder
Added Limestone Voxel materails and textures
Added Limestone Deep Ore Vein materials and textures
Added a comfort system which takes stats of deployables around the bed and applies it to the players well rested buff
Prevent a GameUserSettings Delegate being bound twice in editor (internal dev only)
Move Sheltered Bed Tooltip to correct folder
Reduce the draw distance on some visual fire effects
Improve performance of forest fires
Adding audio entries for mange wolf alpha. Adding all current audio events and data table set up. Adjusting and fine tuning events for alpha and standard
Adding appropriate deploy audio for all water and food troughs
Added base implementation setup for the Kiwi including character BP and DT setups, second pass coming with corpse and proper weighting setup
Adding sound for when food is added to any food trough. Adding audio, event and blueprint functionality
Exotic infused creature crystal particles are now scaled based on creature size.
Fixed bug where crystal particles weren't being randomly oriented.
Crystal niagara particle system now persists between NPC and corpse which should reduce visual popping on death
Skip fallback navmesh checks when transport pod EQS fails and just drop near players
Adding brambles damage scratch event and blueprint implementation to play audio when damaging player or enemy
Adding new audio event for coconut tree harvesting audio and also fixing growth stages pointing to cocoa instead of coconut
Fixed bug where all creatures were spawning with exotic infused effects
Adding in Kiwi corpse and animation setup, tweaked movespeed to fit the size and duplicated animations for Audio