Lazarus
Hotfix - tutorials and fleet routes
- fixed issue where fleet routes would display on the screen when you exited a Xenotaph.
Known issues:
- sometimes a player cannot capture a territory. We're looking into it.
WEEKLY UPDATE 18! Turrets, Collision & Maps!
THE MAP
now includes icons for locations of Players, as well as last week's Carriers! Not only that, but you can also see the movement and attack routes of all the Drone Fleets in the game, so you can run like a coward or intercept and take the fight to their doorstep! Comes complete with a key so you know what's what, and a toggle so you can choose what info to be shown. [Known bug: when you undock from a Xenotaph, the routes are shown on your screen. you can get rid of them by bringing your map up, and then minimising it. Just hit M twice!]
COLLISION DAMAGE
is now locked, so asteroid collisions will no longer kill you. Damage is different per size of Asteroid, but the same amount regardless of your speed. Much more predictable, arcade-y and fun. Essentially you need to ram into the biggest Asteroid three times at full speed to kill yourself in the default ship - obviously different ships have different HP amounts so be careful!A COLLISION TIMER
has been added to the game too. It means we give you a small period after taking damage from a collision in which you cannot take any more collision damage. It's currently set to 1 second, and does not make you invincible to any other kind of damage. It's these kinds of things that seem like maybe they'd break the game, or are overkill, but they definitely help make the whole thing a lot more friendly and fair-seeming to players.TURRETS
have been balanced a lot! their HP has been reduced to 25% of what they were, and they do a lot less damage too... 35% of what they used to. They're still very useful and great for keeping territory safe, but Drones are definitely able to smash them up a bit more easily, making the back and forth of territory a little more interesting.TELEPORTING
is now fixed, with costs increasing depending on the distance, and the costs of the travel are displayed correctly too. Remember, you can only fast travel to territories that the players own.
STREAM REWARDS
are in! If you've been playing with us in the previous two streams, you've been awarded the relevant skins, and you can equip them right away! Of course you should join us tomorrow for the next one and get another skin!SKIN UNLOCKS AND SELECTION
is back in! We'd broken the code redeeming, but now it's all fine :DSYSTEM ENERGY USAGE
has been tweaked heavily, so things are a lot more balanced and fun.ASTEROID
movement has been addressed, tweaking so that the weird random movement is reduced. This is ongoing though, there's still more we can do to make this better.GLOB WALLS
are all fixed up, so now they properly remove their soft selves when they've become impenetrable, plus they're locked in position and will not move once impervious. Much less stress on the server (things that move cost data!) and also much more useful in gameplay terms.We're still working incredibly hard to get the Wipe content in - when we finally do it will be worth the wait, but for now we're going to stop making promises about time scales. It's just not fair being such a tease to you all! Tell us what you think about this week's update - and what you want to see in the next one - over on our Discord! (https://discord.gg/spiltmilk)
Weekly Update 17 - Streams and streams of new stuff.
- GLOB WALLS
now spawn in when any faction first captures a Xenotaph. These are procedurally generating growing entities that will burn through energy to grow. Once full size they will grow a hard shell, turning into impervious walls. Whilst they're growing the player or enemies can trim the glob's sections to try and redirect their growth, or kill them outright by attacking their core.
- TURRETS
have had a thorough going over. Now they count towards the human faction, so you can deploy them to hold territory (until they die) plus they no longer damage you. finally a bug has been fixed that meant they struggled to acquire new targets if their existing ones left their range or were destroyed. Now they're very trigger happy indeed!
- ENERGY
now recharges at 4 times the previous rate. Combined with a short delay from the point you stop using it (boosting or shooting), this should make combat a lot more fun. Waiting for your 'ammo' to 'reload' is a lot more tactical and less frustrating now.
- NEW SKINS
have been added! None of them are winnable from Loot Crates, as they're all Exclusives. 1 of them you can only get by meeting Myrathi ingame and asking for a code (check his twitch!). 4 of them are tied to your continued commitment to playing with us during our regular Saturday livestreams. 1 of them will be given out to anyone on our Discord server. 1 of them will be given to everyone if/when we hit 500 concurrent players. 1 of them is (finally) going to be rewarded to anyone who took part in our very first livestream, way back in January of 2017!- FACTION CAPITALS
now spawn big and very dangerous waves of enemies if you turn up. The territory they occupy cannot be claimed, but they do provide quite a huge fight for anyone who thinks they're a top gun.- ESC MENU
can now be summoned inside the Xenotaphs. It means you can claim skin codes, fiddle with settings and even quit the game(?) in perfect safety. We've also played with the layout so there's no overlap between buttons and - for example - the 'auto zoom' button no longer interferes with the audio settings.- FAILURE MESSAGES
are now accurate if you try to change your Ship and for whatever reason the server won't let you.- THE MAP
has had a tiny tweak, so the frame in the top right of the minimap doesn't hide information any more.- GAME WINDOW FOCUS
is not lost when you click outside of it, regardless of if it's in fullscreen or not. Good news for streamers!- SWAPPING
your equipment out used to have a nasty bug. The idea is you can change which buttons trigger which equipped Systems. You could start the 'swap' process, leave the menu and then it'd break everything menu related till you restarted. This has now been fixed! Yay!Tell us what you think about this week's udpate - and what you want to see in the next one - over on our Discord! (https://discord.gg/spiltmilk)
WEEKLY UPDATE 16 - Nothing to do with Star Wars.
SWAPPING/EQUIPPING SYSTEMS
is now more robust. We've made it much clearer that if you have your Slots full, you will be swapping an equipped System for the new one you want. We've also fixed an edge case around the 'manage' interaction, the one that lets you reassign Systems to different buttons, and the whole thing it just a LOT niftier and clear now.CARRIERS MARKERS
have been added to the map so you can either avoid these deadly giant craft or, you know, hunt them down for a good fight! Their exact location is not given away, just which territory they're currently in.
FACTION CAPITAL MARKERS
are on the map too, so you can see where the source of the evil comes from!PLAYER NAMES
are now displayed next to you and your co-pilot's ships, which makes building battle-forged alliances much simpler!
ASTEROID MOVEMENT
has been addressed a little bit so you shouldn't see those weird times where they'd blow up, and their component parts would start moving in one direction and then suddenly and very violently all go in another direction entirely. We've still got work to do, but it should be less of a problem than it was.PLAYER COUNTER
we now have a little player counter sat above the chat, which updates live!ENERGY REFILLS
to 100% when you dock at a Xenotaph now. The Ourobeans are clearly feeling generous. More boosting! Yay!AUDIO CUT OUT FIXED
so now it doesn't cut out :DDISCORD LINK UPDATED
now it's our official swanky verified oneKNOWN ISSUE
we know that if you 'manage' your Systems and swap their assignments in a Ship that has 2 Core Slots, there's a chance that equipping new Core Systems to those Slots might break. We're chasing the bug down!We've been hard at work as ever, bringing the vast and thorough Lazarus Wipe and all the associated elements to life, but they're still a week out. Progression, spending, technology, rewards - it's all being touched and made much more fun by the changes that will be introduced before long. Also we'll be having our next livestream on the 12th, and we're bringing a bunch of changes to make that much more fun/easy/friendly. Plus we'll have tons of exciting news ahead of the stream too - not to mention the cool new skin we unveiled over on our discord (https://discord.gg/spiltmilk)
WEEKLY UPDATE 15 - Combat, Closed Weekend & a Livestream tomorrow!
STREAMING & SQUADRON 500
We've got an exciting goal - to get 500 players in Lazarus at once! We want to achieve this before we go to Early Access, and we can't do it wihtout you! We'll be running livestreams regularly between now and the end of May to try to get that many pilots involed, and if you join the game during those timeslots you'll get exclusive skins that won't be available any other way. You'll get the basic for turning up to one stream, but an even better and more exclusive skin for every extra stream you play with us during, up to the 4th!The skin rewarded for playing during 1 stream.
If you playing during 2 streams, you get the above skin, plus this extra one:
If you playing during 3 streams, you get both previous skins, plus this extra one:
And if you playing during all 4 streams, you get all the previous skins, plus this extra special one:
STREAM TIMES
The schedule is as follows:
28th April - Stream 1
12th May - Stream 2
19th May - Stream 3
26th May - Stream 4
Every stream is on a Saturday, and will be at 6pm BST (10am PDT, 1pm EDT) over on our Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/spiltmilkstudios)
Yup, that's right, the first stream is tomorrow!
So how can you help?
1. Come and play the game during those times! We'll be playing with you and hope to have some fun activities to get up to, but we'll have more on that down the line.
2. Invite your friends too! The game's free to grab on Steam this whole weekend, so it's easier than ever.
(If everyone in our Discord invites a friend, we're nearly at 500 already, so we feel like we're pretty close!)
Other than the skins you'll win for turning up, we'll also be unlocking an extra special skin for the whole community... if we get to 500. So y'know, that's an added incentive right there.
But hey, this is a weekly update right? Correct, it's not all about the streams - we're still working hard to improve the game week on week, and this one's no different. Read on for the big changes we've made to combat!
AMMO/OVERHEATING
All the Blasters in the game have been reworked entirely with regard to their firing, which is now tied to your Energy bar (the blue one that feeds your boost). Every shot will use Energy (which still automatically regenerates) so you won't be able to just spam bullets all day long any more. In addition, emptying your Energy bar will have a consequence. Essentially your System will overheat, and you'll have to wait for the bar to fill at least a little bit before being able to shoot again, so it's wiser to fire in bursts. Each gun now behaves differently within this setup too, which is something we're keen to run with and will iterate on as the weeks go by.
See how my energy bar's depleting as I shoot, without moving? Yeah, we're gonna balance this and have a LOT of fun with it.
BLASTER RANGE
We've also taken the opportunity to globally limit to the range/lifespan on all the Blaster variants' bullets. This will be different per weapon eventually, but for now the blanket improvement means you're not just killing stuff offscreen (which is boring), or firing bullets far into the void (which is better for your CPU).
DEATH & SHIP REPAIR
In the first step towards the big features we've been promising, we've added some more gameplay around dying. When you die in anything other than the default SH-15, your ship is busted up... and you'll have to spend Lazarene to repair it before you can use it again. This is to add more of a cost to death, which in turn should make you play more cautiously, making all combat that little bit more tense and exciting. Also, it puts the focus on hoarding more Lazarene, which in turn means you'll want to go out and get more Loot crates, but then what if you get caught unawares with a big haul before docking safely?! This kind of drama is central to the vision we have for Lazarus. Sadly this is a bit buggy at the moment, and it looks like it doesn't charge you... it does though, rest assured!
Look at those nasty skulls, preventing you from playing with your favourite ship!
ENEMIES
Now they're a lot more awake and dynamic. We were seeing some cases where it'd take a few seconds for them to wake up and notice the player's presence, hopefully that's all fixed now, and the game is a lot more fun and responsive for it.SYSTEMS
We've limited the Limpet Booster , HP Recharger and Repulsor to have only 1 level, as we're still a way off from properly implementing all their upgrades.PERFORMANCE
We've fixed a lot of server side issues that should mean the world stays performant and you should all see far fewer bugs. Fingers crossed!KNOWN ISSUES
We're hearing audio cut out intermittently. If anyone else gets this, please do let us know!We've also been working away on the much-teased big features behind the scenes, so that's still incoming. It's a ton of work around the Wipe, player accounts, progression and XP... so it's taking some time but it'll be worth it when it's in!
Next week might see the introduction of this work, but regardless we'll also be fixing some of the more immediate issues for you. Stay frosty, and don't forget - play with us tomorrow, help us get to that magic 500 concurrents!
Weekly Update 14!
SYSTEMS!
This is a doozy. So... a bunch of the Systems in the game were not working, or had not had the big sign off. The idea is that anything you can get/equip should work as you'd expect, or we should take it out until it does. There is one catch - we rely on Playfab for all this backend goodness, and right now it's playing silly buggers, so we're not seeing the changes populate the live server. Patience will be required.MEV SIPHON, ENERGY EFFICIENCY, REPLUSOR & LIMPET BOOSTER
are all now limited to Upgrade Level 1 (we'll introduce upgrades soon!)HP RECHARGER
was never fully implemented, so we've removed it temporarily.XENOTAPH DEFENDER SPAWNING
is now nerfed, and nerfed HARD. We've taken a fairly generous stance with this, but basically we'll be re-balancing down the line, and didn't want you all to be bashing your heads against the previous difficulty until we did. You'll only face Fighters, and not very many of them for now.LOOT CRATE DROP RATES
these were broken, but now are fixed. Soz. You'll see a good drop rate for them from all kills now, be it Drones or Asteroids.LOOT CRATE AUDIO
this addition is probably my favourite. When you open a hard-earned Loot Crate, you'll get a lovely audio sequence to go along with it. At last!DRONE FLEETS
are no longer able to send their troops out into the null zone (off the edges of the map) so you should see a lot more fighting and back-and-forth between factions, as well as big fights to stumble across. Basically because all of the Drones they spawn will actually stay inside the game world :PTUTORIAL ASTEROID FIXED
it used to occasionally spawn a bad guy when you blew it up, and that's just mean, so we stopped it.NO MORE SKIPPING THE TUTORIAL
because we need to know how robust it is outside of our own internal testing. Also, we need to know that everyone who's experiencing the game understands the darn rules :DSHIELD VFX FIXED
because it annoyed our Designer that it faded in and out on a loop. So now when you equip it and turn it on, it'll stay solid, which is much better at communicating it's effectiveness, purpose, stateblah-blah shut up Smiff.AUTOMATED LOG REPORTING
we introduced this over the Closed Weekend, and you can still opt out, but now it's all fixed and we'll be geting tons of useful anonymous info from you lovely people!You'll notice some of those snuck out in the little midweek patch we did but most of you won't have spotted that methinks!
Next week'll be good, we're hoping the first pass of the new features sneak in. Essentially we're rejigging the progression and what you earn/how you spend it so it's all a lot tighter, more rewarding, and easier to understand. We'll be introducing XP of a sort, and permanent progression as we get a step closer to the Weekly Wipes coming back. Exciting times! It's pretty complex, hence working on it in the background, but it'll be worth the wait!
Weekly Update 13! Smash the Stars!
Smash the Stars!!
We're running a 'Closed Weekend' from Thursday 12th April through until Sunday 15th April
The aim for this weekend is for us to break the game. Seriously.
We know we’ll never be able to be 100% prepared for a global launch, so we want to try and push it as hard as possible, to see what breaks when tons of players join in the fun so we can at least fix it a bit!
This is the first step towards us launching on Early Access, and with any luck that won’t be too far in the future.
Of Note - for existing players, your inventory/currency will be temporarily put in holding, this will be back to normal as of the next update, but this is due to re-pointing our backend service to a different container for this weekend.
More Server improvements.
More improvements to the servers of Lazarus, meaning that they're under less load and more capable of running the game. This echoes down to the gameplay experience, as because the server isn't so busy dealing with too much going on, it has more capacity to deal with player interactions/requests, resulting in a much smoother overall experience.
AI General Improvements
Each of our factions is controlled by an 'AI General', plotting where to send NPCs to gain territory, or regain it from foes. The Generals are now more aggressive in re-issuing orders to existing NPCs, allowing for better distribution.
Tutorial Improvements and better world 'knowledge'
Some under the hood improvements have been made to the FTUE/Tutorial, to streamline the capture-territory stage and improved 'target selection' if you're struggling to capture a territory, so that we don't keep sending you to your death!
Connection Logging
In order to help us diagnose user's connection problems, we now log anonymous connection "data" (such as opening connection to server, disconnects, etc) to a file. We have the option to upload them automatically when you close the game, but this requires you to opt-in to sending this information to us. We'll use this data to try and isolate and triage the connection problems a number of you are seeing. You can opt in/out of this at any time.
Weekly[ish] Update
Server/Gameplay Performance
A big focus was spent on fixing and improving some performance issues that arose during the last server lifecycle. These were starting to affect user-actions which involve the Docked UI (such as equipping new weapons) and also heartbeating with the server. In addition, the NPC Factions were being a bit unruly, they've been tamed and told to sit on the naughty step for causing some of the server issues.
Through our soaks of watching the server, they're behaving a lot more as we expect them to, improving the reliability of the ingame experience.
HUD reacts to your ship loadout
The In-Game HUD now shows you slots for your available loadout, rather than showing every slot in the UI regardless of if the ship could handle it! Tidies up the UI and doesn't mislead.
Fixes to the weapon visuals in-station and in-game
Your guns/special systems that you have equipped now display correctly again on your ship, whether docked in station or in space! In addition, bullets now appear from their designated muzzle points on each weapon now, rather than a floating point just infront of it.
FTUE/Tutorial Modifications
Some of the tutorial messages were appearing too early, we've modified the pacings for a few of these to be in sync with the tutorial! We've also patched an issue around receiving non-tutorial lootcrates too early via enemy/asteroid kills,.
Protocol/Connection logging to help us diagnose connection information
In order to help with analysing connection issues, Lazarus now writes out anonymous connection events (connection, disconnect, queue status etc) to /Connections/connectionLogs. These files will aid us seeing what's occurred without the mess of the unity output log file. Currently these do not get automatically uploaded to us, but running LogUploader.exe will prompt if you wish to send us logs. We'll be working this into the game in the next release so you don't need to go here to send us the files.
When you connect you should also be seeing two launch options now. If you're struggling to connect, please select the RakNet option and try again. If both options fail, then do get in touch with us.
The Future...
The other reason why this update seems a bit small is because we're working on a couple of larger changes/updates, which involves working on them in isolation until we're ready to roll them in. As of yet they're not ready, but hopefully will be in by the next update!
WEEKLY UPDATE #11 - CARRIER CALL
Let's get straight to the good stuff.
CARRIER & ENEMY MOVEMENT
has been reworked a fair bit, meaning they move around each other and around Asteroids much more intelligently, while never overlapping! This was particularly bad for Carriers, as you'd often come across big messy globs made of tough armour and more guns than was fun.
ENEMY FLEETS
have been brought up to spec, and now they more reliably move through the world, choosing different territories to attack and capture, going after them with forces of Drones made up of all enemy types. This makes for a much more dynamic and varied world to play in, and trickles down to every player in some way.
CARRIER CAPS
have been introduced, so each Drone faction needs to capture territory to gain access to more Carriers for spawning in, and even then there's a maximum cap per faction so they can't just dominate.CARRIER MOVEMENT
has been improved, so now they're more of a threat, but not an unfair one. We've increased their speed, acceleration, and even adjusted how they turn so they should just... move around more. This is to help balance things out, keep them interesting, and ensure that Drone Fleets manage to stick together a little more as they move around the world capturing territory.ERRORS & STABILITY ISSUES
have been addressed in a big way, meaning you won't see any changes but hopefully you'll feel them. Or rather, the lack of them!CONNECTION ISSUES
have been addressed too. Now, we don't want you to get too excited as we're not sure that we've addressed the problems for absolutely everyone, but if you've been having problems joining the game, please do follow these instructions to help us figure it out...PLEASE DO THE FOLLOWING IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO CONNECT:
- Right click on Lazarus in your Steam Library
- Select 'Properties'
- Go to 'Set Launch Options'
- Paste in '+linkProtocol RakNet' (without the quotation marks) and press OK
- Then close the dialog
- Then launch Lazarus and try again
- If after this you still can't connect, hit us up. Seriously - discord, email, whatever it takes, as long as you send error logs and screenshots.
PLEASE NOTE, IF YOU ARE ABLE TO CONNECT ALREADY, THIS MIGHT BREAK THINGS SO DO NO TRY IT.
SHIPS & SYSTEM LIMITS
now behave. For reals. Honestly, the bane of our lives. But no longer. You absolutely cannot equip more Systems than your Ship's build allows. This is great news.THE ENERGY BAR
is now always full. Sometimes you'd spawn in with your energy bar (the litte blue one) less than full. This will never happen ever again, because we're great.TERRITORY NAMES & CAPTURING INFO
has been fixed up. Before now territory names & owner information would be wrong, statuses incorrect, just all kinds of misinformation. This was across the HUD as well as on the Map, but it's all fixed now so you can sit with that open and watch as the world turn Yellow, Red and Blue... because you should be helping out, not just sitting there admiring it!FACTION NAMES
are fixed. No more Apophis This and Apophis That. They're Drones goddamit, and they deserve being recognised as such!DOCKED DEATH
doesn't happen anymore. Very rarely you'd get slammed by an asteroid while docked. Well, now you're perfectly safe all tucked away in there for as long as you like.FTUE
has been even more polished. Yup, the returning champion of the updates is still in the mix this week. We're pretty certain the game is 100% bulletproof now, so nobody can get lost or stuck, though we know there are still a few minor bugs so we still have some stuff to do here. We've also added a ton of polish to the tutorial. It's only really relevant for new players, but we want to take care of you!Next week's push will feature more polish and bug fixes, plus concentrating on bringing the Lazarus Event back into the game. It's been delayed and delayed, but forms such a core part of the loop we want to see how you guys and gals like it. Will the first pass be introduced next week? Who knows, but you should wish us luck anyway.
WEEKLY UPDATE 10 - Say Cheese!
CAMERA
Now you can use an option in the Esc Menu to toggle between the Dynamic Camera (the camera system as you know it until now) and Manual. In both modes you can now use the Mousewheel to zoom in nice and close to your ship; with Manual toggled on the game will never change it back, you're entirely in control. Enjoy! We want to see lots of close up shots of your shenanigans!
FRONT END
Since we fixed up the player accounts last week, we've been really excited about this change. When you log on, the game will show your ship, with your skin, on the Front End menu wherw the SH15 used to be. This is the kind of polish and launch-prep we love, it makes the game feel a lot more ready for release!
WORLD GENERATION
The world now procedurally generates more properly every time the server resets, which means you should see more varied territory layouts, more dynamic progress from the different loctions of the Drone Factions, all that sort of thing.LOOT CRATES
These are now tracked on the Radar. Just look for a purple dot, and you'll never lose one again.RADAR
This handy bit of HUD has been polished to a sheen. We've fixed the alignment on all of its elements, we've layered things more clearly, and every category of radar icon is a slightly different size, so that they shouldn't get lost amongst each other now when things get busy.HP BARS
These are always drawn right over their owner now, whereas before they'd drift a fair bit as they reached the edge of your screen.CHAT
You can no longer smash this through reckless use of font sizes :D Italics and bold still work just fine.WAYPOINTS
We've fixed up the dotted green line that appears on the map when you place a Waypoint. Basically, it always displays on the map now regardless of if you've got the map at maxi or mini. We're chasing a rare issue where of it isn't drawn properly, but we'll get on that right away.
PLAYER WEAPONRY
The aiming/rotational movement is smoother now, mostly because we saw how jerky it was while testing the camera zoom :DFTUE POLISH
Absolutely tons of work has gone into making this bulletproof. There are still some exploits which we'll likely smash next week, but for now new players will be very hard pushed to get confused, lost or break the game before they're enjoying themselves. Anyone who's been stuck in this should restart it via the Esc Menu.Next week it's all about the last little bits of FTUE, plus lots of work around the Wipe, maybe even some stuff fixing the Shielder enemy... and who knows what else.
Hit us up on the Discord to let us know what you think about this week's push, and what you'd like to see next!