May 3, 2024
Abiotic Factor - Zag
Greetings!
It's time for our very first update to Abiotic Factor since it launched on Early Access in the wee hours of yesterday morn (that's in Cascade time, of course.)
First, THANK YOU all for the incredible launch. We are already sitting at 98% overwhelmingly positive reviews, and we are blown away. Please continue leaving reviews - you know that's the magic nonsense the algorithmic old gods demand from us all.
A massive thank you to everyone who picked up the game and those who have webbed, weaved, and wiggled their way through the GATE Cascade Research Facility. We are incredibly humbled at the response, but not so humbled that we can't put on our best mad scientist goggles and control your destiny at a whim in the form of a delicious hotfix!
Delicious, you say? Boy, I hope it's pizza friday. Ahem, anyway, what DID we change in this hotfix? Let's find out -- together.
HOTFIX 0.8.0.9781
You'll know you're on the right version because the above version will match the one at the bottom of your screen while in the main menu and in-game.
General Changes:
- Garden Plants now decay much much slower when they don't have water. (Plant Durability is now 350, up from 70)
- IS-0053-B has started to exhibit new and strange properties when drunk. Please observe proper containment procedures and follow all signage for the safety of you and your fellow coworkers.
- Improved visual clarity and reduced text ghosting while viewing emails located on Terminals.
- Added additional images that can appear when viewing the Story Progress of a given server in the server browser.
- Reduced the overall size of the gun reticle (laser dot) at distance. This dot will shrink some as you level up Accuracy skill, but now the base size is a bit smaller.
- Tamed Pests released from Pest Wheels will no longer try to immediately return and will instead behave more like tamed Pests released from Pest Traps.
- We tried to remove the Coworker but he would not leave so we're just going to let him stay for now.
Accessibility & Settings Changes:
- Pagers now have a volume knob, which can be accessed via the Audio Settings menu.
- Added anti-aliasing options to the Graphics Settings menu.
- New Accessibility Option: Loud Ambient Sounds. On by default, disable this to no longer hear extra spooky sounds around the place. This will not affect other players hearing those sounds.
- Adjusted several of the aforementioned loud ambient sounds.
Bug Fixes:
- We've loosened up the joints on the Armor Stand skeleton and it should now strike poses as science intended.
- Scientists can no longer skip their first day of work by jumping out of the vehicle early during the introduction.
- The medium-skill Scrapshot reload now has sound effects.
- Removed erroneous trait points number on the Job Selection screen.
- Fixed an issue where dedicated servers would indicate they had modified sandbox settings when they did not.
- Cooking pots are now added back to player inventory after becoming empty from soup, if the player has room.
- Your last selected hosting options now persist between sessions, meaning whatever you selected last will remain.
- Fixed a bug where scientists were spontaneously generating ammunition when unloading weapons from containers.
- Improved the reliability of properly saving items on carts, vehicles, and trams.
- Fixed potential save issues and disappearing pot issues with Stoves, portable and otherwise.
- NOTE: If you have issues with a deployed stove, please package it and put it down again, this may help with those issues. There may be other issues here and we are still investigating it. We have top scientists on the job.
- Perk Tooltips should no longer get stuck on screen when closing the Skill menu while hovering over a tooltip.
- Pest Cages are no longer playing sounds in 2D.
- Ironman and Hardcore mode options removed from Sandbox Settings. They were not meant to be there. Pretend they are still not there. Maybe they'll come back some day. Maybe the guy in charge of not shipping the game with these options is getting put in a containment cell. There's a lot of questions around this, who knows why things are the way they are. It's really a big mystery, when you think about it.
- Scientists finding themselves in a certain far-flung fungal foliage, while flinging themselves from the fringe, they will no longer be falling forever into the Anteversian abyss, and will instead simply die.
- Scientists should no longer fuse together when trying to use a moveable cart or any other vehicle at the same time.
- Scientists have now figured out how to use sinks and other water containers while holding flashlights and other devices when their battery is empty. It's amazing what you can achieve when you think around a problem.
- Soup Recipes that have been learned should now properly show up in the Compendium.
- There is now a timeout if Bruce refuses to acknowledge your presence in the introduction. He's a busy man, sometimes he just doesn't pay attention to the little things. Sorry about that.
- Fixed an issue where elevator buttons could become inoperable due to saving and loading at just the wrong time. Or the right time, depending on how you look at it.
- Anteverse Wheat and other things that grant XP when collected will no longer give XP every time they're attempted to be collected, and instead will only give XP when the collection succeeds.
- Performing the Greet emote should no longer hide the weapon in your hand to other scientists. This feels more natural, and disappearing weapons are scary and unknown. We're scientists, not ghost hunters! Not yet anyway.
We also demonstrated our expertise in making video games by breaking some stove-saving stuff in Hotfix .9777, so here are the changes in our second tiny Hotfix 0.8.0.9781.
- Fixed an issue where stoves would randomly lose their stovetop items. Please continue to report any strange stove behavior to the nearest GATE authority.
- GATE's architectural department has added some concrete flooring to a few precarious elevators to help prevent unfortunate falls of both personnel and property.
- You can now take a nice nap with your Coworker.
- There were reported anomalies with Televisions sets spontaneously duplicating themselves. The kinetics team has looked into it and isolated a rogue portal event causing this issue. It should no longer occur.
- Potential fix for Cooking Pots not getting the correct stoveware type on Dedicated Servers.
If you are interested in KNOWN ISSUES, click here.
Thank you all once again for enjoying the GATE Cascade Research Facility.
The team is now taking a brief and well-deserved weekend nap (probably) and we will begin our regular patching and update cycle, aiming to bring more quality of life fixes, balance, and the occasional feature or three. And yes, we're even going to look at adding more functionality to the Server Browser.
We're gathering a lot of feedback, and we're very excited to put it to use. Keep reporting bugs, leaving us feedback, and helping each other out in the community.
Onward -- to science.
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