Hey Folks!
Update v0.15.0.36 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our "Fire in the Hold" update, which makes several improvements to the tutorial and general quality of life, plus other fixes.
Saves from v0.15.0.0 and later should work. Note that if you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.
Career history UI now emphasizes life event and end career options, to help new players understand the intended main choices.
Plots no longer begin during the first 3h of the game, to avoid confusing players in the tutorial.
Clicking the map in NAV, while in RCS mode, no longer causes the map to drag/pan suddenly or miss the clicked target.
Clicking on the Ostraka in NAV no longer selects things on the map underneath.
Firing guns will no longer always miss a person/object while it is highlighted.
Doing repair/restore actions now has a 10x lower chance of igniting fires.
Character mass stats are now correctly tracked when carried item stacks are manipulated. (And old saves should self-repair mass errors.)
Ostraka window now responds correctly to scrolling, resizing, moving, and clicks if the user had returned to main menu one or more times.
Ostraka prev/next buttons now work to switch chapters, as well as pages.
Ostraka buttons now have tooltips.
Several Ostraka illustrations have been updated to be more helpful.
Tutorial steps that target kiosks, lockers, and lamps now show those items in the objectives, to make finding them easier.
Corpses on chairs in corners can now be interacted with again.
Roster tutorial now continues to work after the player returns to the main menu.
Docking UI now prints warning text on screen when station keeping is actively maneuvering.
Hovering mouse over an inventory item will now highlight the grid window it belongs to, and dim the rest.
Using QAB to reopen an already open window now makes that window reanimate into place, for better feedback.
The MegaTooltip (MTT) now has better use of space for item info, and puts some commonly-needed stats above the 'Show More' button.
Active objectives that have been dismissed can now be restored to the HUD via the PDA list.
Objectives listed in the PDA now have more room for text.
Damage overlay once again shows shadows for easier item identification.
Following the tutorial to undock will now slow the game speed back to 1x if it was fast-forwarding.
QAB and inventory window pin/unpin button tooltips are now more descriptive.
Encounter UI no longer has the Force Exit button (was confusing new players, and rarely used now).
Docking with the tutorial derelict no longer alerts the player they may be committing a crime.
PDA's Cart Compartment is now named PDA Carts for clarity.
Message log at bottom of HUD now scrolls more smoothly.
Refuel kiosk UI now pauses the game when it opens.
Collecting pressure suit and helmet before the tutorial reaches that point no longer stalls the tutorial.
Clicking Unpin on QAB and inventory windows no longer leaves tooltip stuck open.
Fixed a text alignment issue in the refuel kiosk title.
Several kiosks' short names have been expanded for clarity.
As you can see, a big portion of this update addresses the new game experience. We recently watched some new players navigate a new game and tutorial to watch where trouble spots appear, and it was very imformative!
One of the bigger issues turned out to only happen if the user returned to the main menu, and then played again. The Ostraka UI (and Roster objective) would largely stop working in this case, and fixing this will be a huge help. The Ostraka also needed some better pictures to replace old or placeholder images on certain pages.
We also updated that UI with more tooltips, and to make the forward/back arrows work across chapters, not just pages. And we were able to fix the issues where clicking the Ostraka would click through to the NAV map, confusing things.
Speaking of NAV, we also tweaked the way selection works on the map. Previously, clicking the map would sometimes cause it to move and snap back suddenly, causing the click to miss what the user was aiming for. This was because click-dragging the map in RCS mode allowed the player to temporarily pan the map, and it would return to the map's focus after.
However, most users simply got frustrated with this, as they could never click anything unless paused. And if they wanted to move the map around, they would just use map panning mode. So now, when the user clicks, the map stays put, and the clicked object gets selected more reliably.
We also noticed that many new users were unsure what to click in character creation, and would (logically) decide to focus on saving money and working on skills/traits. This bypassed the intended main way to advance a character, which was to "Seek Adventure," gaining skills, traits, contacts, and money all for the low cost of 1 year.
To better help steer new users here, we adjusted the button positions and sizes to emphasize primary and secondary actions.
The MTT had a bit of restructuring to make better use of space, and to place certain bits of info above "Show More," which was a complaint several users had when we changed the layout there.
The objectives list in the PDA now has more room for text, and new buttons to allow the user to un-dismiss objectives back into the HUD, if they wish. And the inventory UI now better highlights which grid goes to the item under the cursor, which helps in cases where the user has many of the same container type open.
Apart from tutorial and quality of life changes, a few important bugs were fixed.
First, all ranged weapons were missing targets very often. And it turns out this was due to the way we highlight objects. Recently, we changed selected objects to highlight better, but doing this made them invisible to ranged attacks. So with the help of some player feedback, we were able to find and fix this.
Second, some hardcore players were able to pinpoint a mass accounting error that only occurred when the characters used interactions to pickup or drop items (such as in hauling or install orders). This would add the mass of stacks they picked up, but only subtract the mass of the top item in the stack when dropped.
Some of the save files affected by this had characters with over 1000 kg of mass! Though in micro-g, it would often not appear much until the player visited a planet or accelerated.
This accounting error involved some changes to deep stacking code, but seems to be more reliable now. Plus, the game will attempt to repair any characters afflicted by this bug the next time you reload.
Finally, corpses sat in chairs in room corners were unreachable due to a range issue on the drag or strip actions, since they were over 1 tile from any approachable edge. This was fixed, and now both players and maintenance staff can deal with corpses that are in corner chairs.
As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!
Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC
