- This patch fixes UI being unresponsive in some areas after the latest update.
If issues persist or new issues occur, please let us know in the Report A Bug forum section!
Northern Lights
Update Notes for Patch 0.16.1
If issues persist or new issues occur, please let us know in the Report A Bug forum section!
Update 0.16 Released!
- Input System rewritten from ground up
--- We have developed a new Input System to be used across our projects. While not much has changed on the surface yet, this will allow us to further expand on game mechanics and how the control scheme works in the future. Some of the future features we plan on adding include: support for rebinding on controllers, use of "hold" and "tap" input actions where fitting, improved controls settings, full controller support (including menus) and more! Stay tuned! - Localization System rewritten from ground up
--- We have also developed a new Localization System to be used across our projects. The key improvements of the system are improvements of performance when switching languages, as well as better text formatting support, which we will make use of as we continue developing the game further! - Upgraded the game to a newer game engine version (previously Unity 2019, now Unity 2022)
- Improved DX12 stability
- Added option to enable a dark background on subtitles, making them easier to read with snow on screen.
- Fixed Gulag Location not initializing correctly (no loot, interactions not working)
Once again, thank you for supporting us in our endeavors! We're excited to share more updates with you soon. Stay tuned!
Update 0.15 Released!
As we continue to develop Northern Lights, our goal is to address all the mechanical and design issues within our resources. From small interaction logic to big systems, our current plan is to revamp all of the Northern Lights specific mechanics, then start diving into re-writting the bigger, more complex systems, which will be shared between our projects. More info to come soon!
- Torch mechanics rewritten from ground up
--- Torch now requires inputting a starter to light up, torches can be lit at camp fires, lit torches can light up camp fires. Torch now has sounds. (More improvements to torches and lighting that didn't made it in this update to come in a patch soon) - Glowing stick mechanics rewritten from ground up
--- Glowing sticks can now be collected in inventory, pressing "Use" on a glowing stick will turn the glowstick on. Lit glowing sticks now show up in the tools panel of the inventory. Lit glowing sticks can be dropped in the world to light the surroundings. (More improvements to torches and lighting that didn't made it in this update to come in a patch soon) - Darkness in caves and undergrounds is now improved
- Pressing T to show the watch now works while in inventory (useful for stat checking etc.)
- Added more logging to aid in debugging the known issue of inventory no longer opening. If this happens to you, please contact us with a game log following the steps in Report A Bug
- Fixed a bug causing inventory and pause menu to be accessible while in post-death screen
- Fixed torch lighting stuck on forever after full decay or throwing torch away
- Fixed game UI sometimes getting stuck on First Person HUD after loading last save when dying
Once again, thank you for supporting us in our endeavors! We're excited to share more updates with you soon. Stay tuned!
Exciting News for Northern Lights Fans & Update 0.14
Today, we come to you with both a reflection on the journey we've shared so far and a glimpse into the future of Northern Lights.
As many of you know, Northern Lights has been a labor of love for our small indie team of only three people. Back in 2020, we released our biggest project to date, only to face challenges that stemmed from our lack of experience. The launch didn't meet our expectations, and we struggled with optimization, content, and originality.
Without second thoughts, we embarked on a journey to reshape Northern Lights, releasing significant updates in May 2021 and the game-changing Overhaul update in January 2022. Your support and enthusiasm fueled our passion, and we are immensely grateful for the community that stuck with us through thick and thin.
However, as time passed, interest in our game decreased, and sales went down, forcing each of us to seek additional employment to sustain ourselves and our families. Despite our best efforts, Northern Lights, while now in a better shape than before, has still not recovered.
Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads, contemplating the future of Northern Lights. After careful consideration, including thoughts about quitting development altogether, we've made a decision: we will be continuing development on Northern Lights. But that's not all – we are also excited to share that we are working on a brand new game that incorporates all the lessons, improvements, and gameplay systems we've developed during the Northern Lights journey.
We understand the concerns that may arise, and we want to assure you that every enhancement we make in our new game will also find its way back into Northern Lights. This is not an abandonment; rather, it's a new chapter that allows us to explore fresh ideas while ensuring Northern Lights receives the attention it deserves.
We've faced challenges and learned valuable lessons along this journey, and we believe that our experience will shine through in both projects. We recognize the complexity of this decision, and your understanding means the world to us. We are eager to provide more information about our upcoming game soon, in a later post.
Now, let's delve into the details of today's update, where you'll find improvements, fixes, and additions that further enhance your Northern Lights experience.
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New Craft! Crafted Cooking Pot
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New Mechanic! Homesick wellbeing mechanic for Hard and Prey difficulties
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Bow mechanics rewritten from scratch
- --- Bow animations are now smoother
- --- Bow draw tension now affects projectile speed and drop
- --- Flying arrows are now rotating according to trajectory and drop rather than always facing forward
- --- Fixed most mechanical issues with bow
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Rifle mechanics rewritten from scratch
- --- Rifle animations are now smoother
- --- Rifle is now bolt action
- --- Fixed most mechanical issues with bow
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Improvements to building blueprint placement mechanics
- --- Added surface placement rules for blueprint placement
- --- Fires cannot be placed on wood platforms now
- --- Tents cannot be placed on wood platforms now
- --- Ground traps can only be placed on terrain now
- New game intros can now be skipped
- Added sounds to Doors and Containers
- Added random rotation to spawned loot
- Added Salt graphics in Salting Spots
- Added a notification for new items when crafting done
- Added a notification for having no Arrows left when using Bow
- Added icons and colors to Sanity and Health-Stats depletion and gain notifications
- Added icons and colors to No Ammo, Inventory Full and Missing Item notifications
- Added Harvest All, Consume All buttons in Inventory Contextual menu
- Added HUD Controls hints for Watch
- Improvements to HUD Controls hints
- Improvements to New Game Intro Cutscene
- Improvements to Clothing balance in Weather Station
- Tweaked first person clothing resolution
- Tweaked Wellbeing regen value, disabled Wellbeing regen for Hard and Prey difficulties
- Fixed camera twitching when having affliction visual effects or aiming/un-aiming weapons
- Fixed a road between River Village and Fishing Camp clipping through terrain
- Fixed affliction notifications shown on load game
- Fixed quest dialogues playing on load game
- Fixed bow aim animation switching to rifle aim animation if drawing while bow is breaking or right on loading new arrow
- Fixed UI text becoming blurry after resolution changes
- Fixed exterior audio not getting muted when entering undergrounds
- Fixed picking up arrows freezing character for one frame
- Fixed wood house floors not allowing object placement
- Fixed interior volume bounds blocking building placement around building doors
- Fixed mouse pointer getting pixelated on low texture settings
- Fixed hands clipping through clothing
- Fixed building placement obstacle checking issues when there's a collider under building floor
- Fixed building floor collision issues in Comms Outpost, Forestry Lookouts
- Fixed building floor collision issues in Lighthouse
- Fixed building floor collision issues in Gulag
- Fixed building floor collision issues in some Cabins
- Fixed building floor collision issues in Airfield Hangar
- Fixed building floor collision issues in Bunker
Once again, thank you for supporting us in our endeavors! We're excited to share more updates with you soon. Stay tuned!
Update Notes for Patch 0.13.3
- Added Korean Localization
Update Notes for Patch 0.13.2
- Fixed stoves and fireplaces not warming up interiors
- Fixed temperature issues in River Village
- Fixed warming up breaking with certain clothes on
- Fixed an issue with hypothermia passive treatment not triggering over time
- Fixed an issue causing players to fall through the second floor of the mansion in River Village
- Fixed "armed" traps no longer catching animals after loading an existing save
- General improvements to Interiors System
- General improvements to warming up and chilling down multipliers
Update Notes for Patch 0.13.1
- Interiors now save their temperature upon leaving and re-entering a game
- Improvements to warming up times for survivor
- Improvements to hand watch readings rate
- Fixed an issue causing players to fall through ground when loading save while already in-game
- Other minor improvements and small fixes to interior temperatures
Update Notes for Patch 0.13
- Improved interiors temperature system, houses temperature now takes open doors into account
- Various small improvements and fixes to other temperature dependent systems
- Fix stutter while game is paused or idling
- Performance improvements in man made locations
- Performance improvements on low environment quality setting
Winter Sale & Optimization Update 0.12
Greetings everybody! Today we are proud to announce that Northern Lights is part of the Steam Winter Sale Event at a 50% off discount! And to celebrate this, the Christmas in-game decorations are making a return!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1090800/Northern_Lights/
Along with this event, we are also releasing update 0.12 which focuses on improving stability and performance of the game. This is the first stage of our optimization effort, and a first base on which we will continue to add improvements with the coming updates.
Better asset streaming
Northern Lights uses asset streaming in order to load and unload regions of the game without a loading screen. That means that the game loads and unloads assets from disk as it goes. This sounds great in theory, but some of you were having lots of trouble with scenery not loading, missing terrains, falling through map, lag spikes and so on. This was an issue of a middleware tool that we use and is no longer supported, so we decided that in order to get rid of these issues for good, we had to take the step to replace it altogether. And because of this, in the past month we worked hard at developing our own system for streaming scenery. It is not perfect and definitely not final, still a lot of things to solve about it in terms of performance improvements, but a good start in our journey towards a fully smooth experience.
Better memory utilization
We've taken a deeper look into what takes so much system memory in Northern Lights, and we manage to shave off up to 2GB of memory used in certain cases. There are still things that we want to address regarding this, but unfortunately we didn’t manage to do it for this update. There will probably be another patch with further improvements regarding memory usage in the near future.
Better frame rate in certain locations
We have optimized some of the assets we use in the residential locations. This is still an ongoing process, but for this update expect better performance in most residential locations. As with the previously discussed point, there will be another patch addressing the issue in more locations in the near future.
Improved terrain settings
Some of you might have noticed that the terrain quality setting of the game does not do much. This was a big issue that was on our radar for a while, but something we've never got around until now. Setting terrain quality to low should now have a great benefit impact on frame rate, at the cost of texture and effect quality. With this fix in place, we have noticed up to a 30% performance gain on low-end hardware. If your machine is around the minimum specs in terms of graphics performance, expect a good performance boost from this update.
And more! Changelog below
- New asset streaming system
- Improved memory utilization
- Improved performance in locations
- Improved terrain quality settings
- Doors now save their open/close state when saving game
- Fixed an issue causing in-location loot to sometimes respawn when loading certain saves
- Fixed an issue causing pelt-beds from certain locations to disappear when loading any save
- Minor tweaks to some texture resolutions
What is next?
In the coming months, along with the aforementioned performance patches, we aim to add new mechanics elements and improve the existing ones. This will include hunting, animal AI remade from the ground up, improving and fixing the issues with story mode, as well as new side quests, and more. We will come with a full roadmap for 2023 in the weeks to come!
And as always, thanks to everyone for taking time to read this blog post, for supporting us through feedback and purchasing the game, and for being part of our small, yet growing community!
MadGoat Studio wishes you Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas!
Update Notes for Patch 0.11.4
Hello everyone!
We have just released a new patch to address some of the issues reported in the past days!
What's new?
- Fix various issues with certain quests
- Minor improvements to performance in certain locations