First of all, thank you to everyone who played Atrio. This is our first major game, and seeing the amount of support truly warms our hearts. If you've seen some of our devlogs, you'll know how much we care about Atrio and now that we've survived launch week (without too much disaster), we want to start addressing some of the criticisms we've received.
Nearly all of the criticisms were valid and well deserved. We think the game is very fun but we know it can be better.
Here are the top priority fixes we will be addressing:
Gameplay improvements (first round)
The pickerpal RNG & the Fuel depot
We hear you. Nothing is more frustrating than your lightbulb line shutting down mid exploration because one of your pickerpals is galivanting off in the distance.
I'm going to start experimenting with the pickerpals this week to see if we can make them gather fuel at a consistent rate.
Pushback splitters should be more useful (and more of them to capture)
We had designed factories to not need the pushback splitters, but it was an oversight to limit how players can create their factories.
We also need to address the fact that if you want to make a mega base, you should be able to capture as many pushbacks as your heart desired. We are going to find the best way to do this.
Pushbacks don’t do anything if the line is clogged. We need to address this.
Tornatoads should wait if line is full (same with saptaps)
We've been getting a lot of bug reports about this one, and it's been causing a LOT of issues by maxing out memory. We've already fixed this and should have it up by end of week (potentially even tomorrow).
Key Rebinding (in settings)
We've received a lot of feedback about this one, so we've bumped it up in our priority list and will be adding key rebinding.
Fast travel kind of sucks
This one has lots of spoilers so I'm not going to say much - We're going to look into improving this.
These are the top 5 features, but certainly not where we stop. Expect more once we tackle these.
Bug Fixes (first round)
Here are the highest priority bugs we plan on fixing (or have already fixed but are waiting to go live)
(Fixed) Plunger quest dialogue says you have purple batteries, but you don't actually have them
(Fixed) Electric flowers west of the station don't regenerate
Factories stop auto pulling items late into the game
Building an item under the Iris-Station deletes the Station 4 chip (Same if you leave the backpack)
Items are sometimes stuck "inserted" into other objects
Players dying on odd spots and their bodies aren't accessible
Deer factories are "vanishin
Players can die during the punk monk sequence, stopping them from unlocking the blue bar
Bees not working as expected? (need investigating)
Placing factories on top of core items breaks stuff
Hopefully we can start to alleviate some of the frustrating parts of the game and continue to leave players happy with their Atrio experience!
Stephen & the Isto Team
Jan 12 - Hotfix 1.0.23
- Fixed electric petals not respawning sw of base - Increased number of woozybulbs by 5% - Reduced sap-paste craft time from 20s -> 15s - Rebalanced end game to be easier
Jan 11 - Hotfix 1.0.22
Rebalancing the late game automation to be less "grindy" - Mealkit requires 4 vegetable packs instead of 8 - Mealkit requires 1 Honey instead of 2 - Reduced Survival Kit requirements from 99 -> 15
Atrio Version 1.0 is out now!
Hey everyone, After a year and a half in early access, we're ready to release Atrio out into the dark wild (see what I did there??! hahaha- sorry) We've tweaked, tuned, polished and perfected and now the game is ready for the world to enjoy.
Launch Trailer
Change overview
Story mode
The story mode is finally here! Most players take between 12-18 hours to get through, and we can't wait to see what mysteries you unfurl. - removed the walls from early access - Added all remaining stations - Added ending cinematic - Completed the dialogue for all stations
UI changes
- New title menu with new particle systems, and a higher quality background image - Factories, smelters, scrap chests and other items have color coded UI - Fixed an issue where buttons would double click - Cleaned up the research menu, updated the UI
Gameplay changes
Note: To avoid spoilers, we've kept many of the changes secret (for you to discover in story mode) - Introduced the Smoke bomb - Updated all supply pod battles - Introduced new type of bee that attacks the supply pod - Tornatoads are invulnerable to smoke bombs - Fuel depot rebalanced for the new fuel types - Player has new death animations when killed by pushbacks - Optimized the nav mesh so creatures use less processing power - Polished the selection algorithm to be more intuitive for controller - Added back in rain
We also dropped our final vlog before launch:
There are so many more changes, but we'll leave them for you to discover!
We're so, SO excited for you to discover Atrio: The Dark Wild.
Happy playing! -Stephen & the Isto Team
Atrio Launches in 1 week!
Tell your friends, tell your family, your neighbor, the racoon who keeps stealing your garbage in the middle of the night, we don't care! Just tell everyone!
Atrio: The Dark Wild is complete.
After a full year and a half of observing how all of you have played the game, we've adjusted, tweaked, refined, and polished the game.
For the first time, you'll be able to play the entire story mode and learn the secrets of Station 3.
Most of our playtesters take about 12-18 hours to complete the story, so
make sure to mark January 10, 10am PST into your calendars
-Stephen & The Isto Team
Nov 10 - Minor Hotfix 0.9.26
Hotfix 0.9.26 - Purpshroom seeds craftable - Bug fix for grav pipe placement with button held
The Combat Update
Hi everyone, We know, we know. We haven't released a patch since last May. Most of the work we've been picking away at has been finishing the later stages of the game because
ATRIO LAUNCHES JANUARY 10!
That's right. Atrio has an official launch date, and it's coming up quick. Tell your friends, tell your family, and wishlist if you haven't already. But before 1.0, we've decided to release one last patch, with a TON of new stuff in it, so buckle up.
1. The Battle System
One of the biggest issues we had with the game was the ability to capture creatures. Going out and "trapping" was quite boring. Finding creatures in the wild was boring. And having creatures randomly attack your base was frustrating. None of these options worked (and we tried them all).
We wanted the players to choose when they wanted to enter combat, and so, we found a solution - the underground supply pod.
1.1 What is the Underground Supply Pod?
Scattered throughout the world are pods for you to find. As the name suggests, they are supply pods that deliver you items upon request. And it's free! It costs absolutely nothing. All packages requested from an Employee of Company 3123 are free of charge. No catches. None. Zip. Zilch. (except for the fact that the supply pods attract wild creatures but surely that's not important).
1.2 How does it work?
Once you place a request for a package, you'll have to stay within the "order zone". If you leave, your order will be cancelled. Of course, creatures may try to kill you while you're in the zone, but again, a minor detail.
1.3 New Battle Items
Since the underground supply pod has a tendency to attract dangerous and potentially lethal creatures, we've introduced some new tools to help you stay alive.
The Stun Turret Fueled by blood-ingot, this turret does stun damage to a single target once every second. You can manually deposit blood ingot, but it only has capacity to hold a single blood-ingot, so if you're in the middle of combat, it really doesn't work well. This is intentional.
We want to force the player to automate their defenses (since we are an automation game), and having the stun-turrets automatically intake items from an assembly line incentivizes automation.
The Wall Healer Walls and gates play a vital part of staying alive in the dark, so what better way to protect yourself than with walls? The wall healer works the same as the stun turret, except that it heals walls.
1.4 The supply pod takes damage
Oh, did we forget to mention, the supply pod has health…. Sorry! If you don't protect your supply pod, the order will be cancelled and you'll have to start again. Our initial playtests had players running around in circles as a dodging strategy and not actively focusing on the automation portion of combat. Not only was this soul-sucking to watch as a game designer, but the players weren't having fun. The health on the supply pod was our sneaky solution.
1.5 Health Packs
It wouldn't be much combat without health packs. We have 3 varieties (small, medium, Large). Fairly self explanatory, but I'm quite happy with how the design turned out!
2. The Buff System
As the game starts to close in on 1.0, we're having internal playtests of the later parts of the game, and noticed that players were simply skipping large parts of the game. As such, we introduced a way to gate players from exploring parts of the game too early - with the idea of buffs and environmental damage. For example, if you step on water, your largely electronic (and cheaply made) body will short circuit. You can't explore the water until later on in the game, when you get access to buffs.
2.1 What are buffs?
You can only get buffs when you consume batteries. Each battery gives you a unique buff status. Without spoiling too much, purple batteries heal you over time, and red buffs give you water resistance.
You can upgrade their effects in the research module, and can only have one buff active at a time, so be wary of how you use them.
2.2 New death animation
Players found it frustrating instantly dying from stepping on water, so we've introduced a warning system (particles and sounds). You have 3 seconds of stepping on water before you're shown a brand new death animation
3. Controller support
As we are doing a dual 1.0 Launch on Steam, Xbox and Epic Games, we're hard at work adding controller support. Plug in a controller and It will auto detect input and dynamically change to support controller.
We've introduced a new flow for placing that's controller specific, and your toolbar at the bottom will automatically change to a different style of toolbar that's much better suited for controller. (I personally like battling with the controller). We've put a lot of love, thought, and hard work into making controller feel good, so please give it a try! We still have work to do on controller support before 1.0, but we think this is a great start.
3.1 Steam deck support
That's right you can play Atrio on the steam deck! Since we have built in controller support, it should just work right out of the box (Including cloud saves, so you can play on your pc and then move to your steam deck when you're on the go)
4. Research
With the introduction of supply pods, we wanted some special rewards for players completing supply pods. We've moved the Research Upgrade Chips to be exclusively rewarded when you "beat" all levels of a supply pod.
In addition, we've changed how research is done. Previously, we had research boosters that increased the research rate over a long period of time. If you had for example, research juice 1 "cooking" in a research booster, you would be researching at 2x speed. We found players didn't utilize this system as it was slightly obtuse and hard to understand. In addition, all of the "juices" were crafted, and we really need more items to find out in the dark.
5.1 Research Packs
We've changed the research juices into research packs. When you deposit a research pack, time is instantly deducted from the research time. We found that this has really helped increase the understandability of the research system, and players are more motivated to go out and find research packs. We hope you agree and paln to keep a close eye on the system to see how players receive this new change,
5.2 New Research paths
Other notable changes
We've added the rest of the giants, but they'll be available in 1.0! The vlog has some spoilers if you want to see more about what's coming.
Optimization
I wrote an entire blog post detailing our optimization journey, but if you have a slower pc, you're going to notice a huge difference from the previous patch to the this point
Notable changes include: - Optimized code (+20fps while testing on lower end PCs) - Faster loading times
This has been a massive patch, and much of the work we've done isn't even included (for spoiler reasons). We can't wait for you all to play the official 1.0 version of Atrio: The Dark Wild
-Stephen & The Isto Inc. Team
Optimizing Atrio
Hi everyone, Stephen here with another progress update.
We are closing in on 1.0 and will be picking a launch date within the next month. As such, our priority has shifted to increasing performance on both pc and Xbox. With our target being Xbox One S (a pretty old console), we have our work cut out for us... but that's great for PC users! If you have a decent graphics card (RTX 2080's anyone?) we're expecting Atrio to run buttery smooth for you.
Kyle and François have been optimizing it for approximately 3 weeks, and I'd like to dive a bit deeper into how we are making bigger gains. Here's where we've seen the best gains so far:
The overview
Increasing In game FPS
- Dynamically turning on and off Animators depending on if they are on screen - Culling the Tilemap (our floor environment) - Sleeping automation pieces that aren't being used or active - Lowering the rate at which we do physics calculations - A more optimized search for food algorithm for creatures - Creating a more optimized health-component for all buildings and creatures that have health - Cleaning up slow LINQ queries (tbh, I don't know what this is. I'm just relaying what Kyle told me)
Speeding up load times
- All harvestable objects were getting loaded on start. We've updated the system to only load harvestables in use, or in sight of of the player. - Better texture/memory packing - Downgrading texture resolutions on textures that were too big (and you couldn't notice a difference when downgraded).
All of these have contributed to huge performance gains while playing Atrio.
A deep dive into our 'Food Searching' algorithm
We usually keep these blogs pretty high level, but I know there's at least one technical nerd like us who would appreciate a deep dive, so we're going to cover what we think is the most interesting optimization of the last couple of weeks. Here's how we gained some frames when searching for food.
Introduction
The entire world in split into 1m x 1m tiles. Only one item or factory can occupy a single tile at a time. Even our visuals (the floor environment) are split up into 1x1m tiles. Everything runs off of this tile system, from deciding what footsteps sounds to play, to what item is on that tile.
There's an "invisible" layer that we keep track of behind the scenes, that we call the automation layer (again, still using the 1x1m tiles). It runs without any visuals, but manages how the items move in the game. When you're off on another part of the world, we hide all the visuals and just let this automation layer run. This saves a lot of frames and is essential to running the game at a decent fps.
Searching for food
All of the creatures in the wild roam around searching for food. If there's something delicious to snack on, they'll walk over and munch on it. The problem is, there's a lot of tiles. Approximately 212,000 tiles, to be specific.
Imagine we had a big list that contained every tile (we refer to this as an array),
and we wanted to know which ones have food on them. We'd have to check each and every tile, every frame! This would destroy even the fastest computer.
So, we use a dictionary to track the set of "useful" automation tiles that contain food! We only add tiles to this dictionary whenever they're useful. When food gets eaten, we remove it from the dictionary. *Note: You could use an array instead of the dictionary, but we're using the dictionary for other purposes not described in this post.
So now instead of 200,000 tiles, we maybe have 500. Problem solved? well, not quite.
The problem with dictionaries
The problem is "accessing" the info of a single tile is quite slow. In fact, if we knew the exact position in the large array (example, if we wanted info on tile 197,201), its much, much faster.
So how do you know what tile you want? In some cases you don't. That's when we use the dictionary. We can go "Hey check all the tiles and tell me which tiles have food, and I'll pick the closest one".
But sometimes we know that a position x,y there's food (without going into too much detail about how our underlying system works). Using a little bit of sneaky math, if we know the x,y coordinates of the tile, we can easily calculate what position in the list we want to access.
Unfortunately, maintaining a list of ~212,000 tiles does take a a lot of memory (32 MB in RAM to be specific) but we now get nearly instant access time. Game dev is about trade-offs.
OK, so how much faster is this?
The results speak for themselves. In a single frame (if your game runs at 60fps, a frame will happen 60 times in one second),
Total before: 12.98ms to look for food in one frame for a deer Total after: 5.78ms to look for food in one frame for a deer
Now imagine doing that 60 times, that's a MASSIVE improvement!
Here's a shot of our profile tool showing the performance
The grande finale.
That was only ONE optimization that we made. With all of the optimizations combined, on xbox One S: Before: 10-12 fps After: 24 fps
We managed to achieve this in a three weeks, so hopefully we continue to see great gains in the future. We can't wait for you to try these out in a future updates, and playing the full version when we reach 1.0!
Stay tuned for some content updates, Stephen & The Isto Inc Team
One Year of Early Access!
Hi everyone, I'd like to highlight some of the biggest changes we've made in the last year, and give you some updates on what we've been up to this last month.
But first, a quick announcement - we won't be releasing a patch this month. We're in the middle of overhauling our battle system, which has ultimately impacted how the first hour of the game is played. We want to make sure the game is in a good spot before we release any major changes.
The 5 Biggest Changes we've made this year
Now, Lets go over the 5 biggest changes we've made since Early Access
1. A sense of purpose
This morning I went back and played the first hour of our original Early Access build, and it was very clear how unclear the objective of the game was. We also noticed this in our original playtests, but just didn't know how to properly deal with this.... until now!
We've recently been experimenting with the "Project H.U.M.A.N." map. A high level overview of your mission and purpose. We rolled out a prototype this month to our private test group (join the discord if you'd like to be a part of it) and have seen amazing results.
This, in tandem with the fuel depot update, makes it clear as to what your objective is, and better ties in with the core gameplay loop.
2. Fuel Depot
Speaking of the fuel depot, this was certainly the biggest change. Automating fuel as the core focus of the game has really solidified the game and given a clear purpose as to why the player needs to automate right from the start. Even though I loved spamming the fuel depot button, this change makes a lot more sense.
3. The Pickerpal
After changing focus to the fuel depot, we needed a way to automate fuel, so we added the pickerpal - a lumbering creature that picks plants for you.
They alleviate the pain of constantly having to manually refuel, and you can get straight into the automation portion of the game without having the learn about factories and ore harvesters. We've also noticed most playtesters have a lot less trouble getting through the beginning section of the game thanks to this more natural progression of gameplay.
4. Fixing our worst feature - Battery Death
The biggest complaint we got was the 14 minute death timer. In fact, most of our negative reviews come from this death timer. Because it's core to the premise of the story, we couldn't exactly take it out of the game, but we've done a couple of things to alleviate the frustration. This upcoming patch, the battery shows up only for about 10 seconds before you die (most players tend to just stand there and wait to die if we show it any earlier), and the respawn is wicked quick (no loading screen, just straight respawn)
These two simple changes have turned the general reception of the feature from mostly negative, to almost all positive (or at least neutral).
5. Fixing our second worst feature - Tall Factories
The second biggest complaint was that you couldn't see behind any of the buildings! (A massive oversight by us when we started designing the world of Atrio.) But thanks to Early Access, your feedback steered us in the right direction and we "squished" the factories down, making them wider and flatter.
In addition, we gave them the ability to pull from automation lines, simplifying the automation process. After playing both the old version, and our newest internal build, I cannot believe how much better the game plays! I'm so proud of how far we have come.
New Features
Let's talk about some new features on the way
Battle
As per our last post, we started to experiment with "delivery pods" that attract creatures when they're busy retrieving helpful items for you. We've now officially named them "Underground Supply Pods", and they'll be scattered throughout the world. Do note the art is placeholder, but the functionality is coming together nicely. We're still experimenting to figure out what's fun and not fun, but the supply pods are definitely staying, as they provide a way to acquire the pickerpals, and give a secondary objective to the player. They also let you choose when you want to enter combat, as opposed to our random spawning of pickerpals in our original build (people HATED that.... hooo wee)
In addition, we're prototyping out the wall healer and the stun turret. If you provide fuel to these, they will automatically heal your walls, or shock incoming dangers. These are definitely still quite raw, and their designs are all in the early stages, but hopefully these will end up staying.
We've also decided that they both pull from assembly lines, which means in order for them to be effective, you have to automate their fuel lines!
Buffs
Lastly, we've added buffs into the game. After you unlock the ability to consume battery's, you get the ability to choose from a variety of batteries, each with their own unique buffs (healing over time, damage resistance, water resistance). Oh, and you can now die from standing In the water (you're an android… what were you expecting!)
What an amazing year, and we can't wait to release this bad boy in 1.0 (sometime this year!) Hopefully you'll love the battle update when we release it in the next couple of months. Stay tuned and thanks for all the support!
Stephen and the Isto Team
4 years of Development
We're incredibly excited to share our journey over the last 4 years with this new vlog!
and we wanted to know which ones have food on them. We'd have to check each and every tile, every frame! This would destroy even the fastest computer.
