New Devlog! Plus Fixes for Ship Teleportation, Pathfinding, and Various Errors
Hey Folks!
We have a new devlog today! Plus an update (v0.14.3.14) is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly. This devlog covers the the last two months of updates including the pathfinding overhaul, ship AI, population fixes and more. You can watch here or on the Kitfox Youtube:
As for the patch, this is a hotfix to our "Across the System" update, which addresses a number of more general bugs and errors players have uncovered, ranging from ship teleportation and ignored collisions to null errors in the UI.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 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.
General Changes
Ships should no longer teleport to strange places if the user is holding WASD keys while the NAV UI is loading.
Ships without the captain on them now correctly detect collisions when player is flying them.
Pathfinders should once again be able to cross from one ship to another when both origin and destination are outside the ship.
The game should no longer refuse to drop a stackable item onto a container with both empty space and viable other stacks.
The game should no longer throw errors when an item on the cursor is swapped for another item, and then that item is dropped onto a container containing compatible stacks.
Crew members are now correctly removed from the player's company roster when they die on remote ships, avoiding null exception errors when using the hotkey to switch to other crew.
HUD physiological stat bars no longer throw null exceptions if there is a problem with the person they represent.
Using F5 or Autosave will no longer interrupt a save already in process, which could cause errors.
A number of loose items which previously did not highlight with the highlight interactables hotkey should now correctly highlight.
Fixes for several typos and redundant entries in the game data.
Two of the bigger fixes in this patch involve ship flight. In one case, the ship could be piloted while the NAV controls were loading, causing the ship to teleport across the System. And in another case, ships piloted by crew could ignore collisions as long as the captain wasn't around. Both of these should be patched now!
Another significant issue involved pathfinding across ships. If the crew was floating outside ship A, they would report that they could not reach the exterior of ship B. This turned out to be a logical error in detecting when a room is reachable from another room, and should also be fixed.
The next several errors were the result of missing items and crew. In some cases, swapping and dropping various items could lead to cases where an item was incorrectly placed or throws an error, often causing unusual behavior or soft locks. In other cases, crew would still remain in the player's company roster even if they died in a destroyed ship.
In all cases, the game would stumble over these missing or incorrect references, but should now be better guarded from them.
One player noticed that it was possible to F5 autosave while the game was already saving, which could cause errors. So we added some code to ensure user-triggered saves could safely interrupt a save in process, and to avoid autosaves from interrupting.
Lastly, we had a few typos in the game which caused incorrect highlighting or redundant data, so those were fixed.
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 how things are working for you in the new patch
Best, Daniel Fedor Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC
New License Tiers, Pathfinder and Performance Improvements, and Other Fixes
Hey Folks!
Update v0.14.3.13 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix to our "Across the System" update, which adds new license tiers, changes the pathfinder code, and addresses a number of other issues.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 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.
Added 4 new tiers of OKLG salvage licenses, with longer durations.
Licenses can no longer be sold back to most kiosks.
New pathfinding algorithm to improve game performance.
Characters should no longer clip through or get stuck on corners when walking.
NPC transiting from station-to-station optimized for better performance.
NPCs now record their docking events, PASS voyages, and other transit events in their message log.
NPC pilots no longer trapped in a holding pattern due to invalid fuel reserve calculations.
Characters can no longer install items through a wall if standing immediately on the other side.
Characters can no longer install items without the loose version if getting the loose version required a spacesuit first, but the wall itself did not.
Characters can now shimmy self out of unwalkable tiles if they are stuck inside wall/desk/etc.
Characters should no longer stop at double airlock doors when ordered to leave the ship.
Characters no longer get stuck walking in place if standing between closed airlocks.
Characters should no longer go in and out of the ship over and over while working on walls with lots of corners.
Characters will now correctly resume a task if they stopped to don a spacesuit and helmet first, instead of moving on to another task.
Switching regions no longer causes a population increase.
Docking with the player's owned residence no longer causes a region change.
Whodunnit cases can now be closed on any officer or corpse, even if case file is missing.
Whodunnit rewards have been adjusted to be more favorable, and several related plot bugs have been fixed.
Game will no longer hard-lock when attempting to toggle a switch that was repositioned with a rounding error.
Game will no longer soft-lock when line of sight checks hit a null object.
Players should no longer be teleported inside the Sun when patrol and pirate ships undock.
Players should no longer be stolen from their ship by patrol officers and pirates when they undock.
All items on stations are no longer owned by the first NPC spawned there.
Docking with an NPC ship will no longer endlessly duplicate that ship in place.
Players can once again dock with newly-purchased derelicts, even if an NPC scav ship docked with it in the interim.
Torch course plot no longer gets stuck active with endless null errors.
NAV stations will no longer change VREL/VCRS if the user presses movement inputs while paused.
Ship's NAV logs have more collision and docking info in them now.
NAV scroll speed is now consistent regardless of game speed.
NAV note will no longer obscure power reserve info in cases with long ship names.
Trespassing crimes on Venus are now correctly cleared when paying the fine.
Paying fines now requires the money up-front, or else time must be served.
Players accused of stealing ships in Venus space will no longer have their arrest warrants issued in OKLG jurisdiction.
Clicking Quick Action Buttons no longer click-through to select paper doll items.
Paperdoll drag slot item no longer obscures left hand slot item.
Right-clicking an objective no longer opens the PDA to the social page for the clicked name.
Chairs can no longer be installed with dismount point facing into walls/fixtures.
Loading a save file will no longer leave Lorem ispum text in the log.
Game music will no longer begin playing before the player leaves the starting dorm area.
Officers on patrol ships shouldn't spawn inside walls anymore.
The LootSpawner UI in Ship Editor now has filtering for Loot dropdown, and a warning if spawner overlaps a wall.
Some empty tracking conds that were previously visible in the MegaTooltip are now correctly hidden.
Reactor ignition will now correctly shut down core pump automatically.
Tooltip task fail messages should now update more cleanly.
One thing to be one the lookout for in this patch is the new Salvage License tier system:
The OKLG Licensees Only kiosk now sells 4 new license tiers. The red, blue, silver, and black licenses offer extended salvage permit durations of 72h, 7-day, 30-day, and 300-day, respectively. The prices for these new tiers represents a large up-front cost, but the reduced hassle and cost-per-hour may make it more attractive to professional salvagers.
On the other hand, vendors are no longer accepting used cards for partial refunds. Sorry!
We've also made several significant changes to improve performance. A lot of the more recent complaints from players center around poor performance. And pathfinding can be a significant contributor to that problem (especially in large maps and/or with large groups of people).
To help address this, we've completely changed the underlying code of the pathfinder to use a more efficient system. The old system was the tried-and-true A* (or A-star) search, which checks tile-by-tile in all directions to see which next tile is closer. This system works well in a lot of situations, but can sometimes be wasteful in large open areas.
For example, this is what an A* search looks like going from the green to the red tile, with a (dark) wall in the middle:
Gray and purple squares are the ones the algorithm searched, with arrows showing viable directions from each. The blue arrows are the final choice of shortest path. As you can see, this searched a lot of tiles, including tiles that were redundant same-cost paths.
Our new pathfinding code uses a system called Jump Point Search, and an equivalent search result looks like this:
Again, purple and gray squares are tiles we had to process, and arrows represent possible directions we can go from each. Blue is, again, the final chosen path.
The difference here is that we are checking in diagonal directions and, at any given tile, we are "jumping" down whole rows and columns of tiles until we find one that lets us go further than the last tile. And from that new "further" tile, we restart the search.
As you can see, this results in far fewer tiles processed to reach the same goal.
That said, there are going to be situations where A* comes out ahead, notably more cramped/broken the spaces are, or where tiles have variable traversal costs. But since most of our trouble comes from large, open areas with equal per-tile costs, this appears to be a net performance improvement in most situations.
Of course, you all will be the final judge of that!
As part of this pathfinding change, we also addressed some other path and AI-related issues we found. AIs were getting stuck on corners, or dismounting into walls. Some AIs would get trapped inside double airlocks, or refuse to cross them after opening them. AIs were reaching through walls to interact with things, or inefficiently switching between inside and outside the ship to work on walls when they hit a corner.
Separately from this, we also found and fixed a few more situations where AIs would use extra cpu when transiting between stations, or region-changes would spawn too many NPCs. And some fixes for cases where docking/undocking would cause players to get booted out of the region or into the Sun.
Several fixes addressed bugs in fines, crimes, and arrests, and we added a way to close Whodunnit cases when the player lacks the case file or specific corpse.
A number of cases that could cause hard and soft locks due to nulls, duplicates, or coordinate errors were also found and fixed. Plus a number of other fixes and improvements!
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 how things are working for you in the new patch
Best, Daniel Fedor Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC
AI Eating/Drinking, Ship Orbits, Performance, and Other Fixes
Hey Folks!
Update v0.14.3.8 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our "Across the System" update, including some improvements to AI food and water use, ship orbit plotting, and other fixes.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 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.
Ships now orbit more accurately when in freefall (i.e. while not maneuvering).
NAV station now plots current orbit (if applicable) when not maneuvering.
Moon orbital tracks are visible once again.
Minor performance optimization to the NAV station by ignoring hidden, helper celestial objects.
Improved AI eating and drinking to behave more appropriately to their needs and personalities.
Added the ability to drink blood and chunky blood.
The Load button on the in-game Escape menu now works.
Changed AI to prioritize family and meaning needs lower, so they are more in line with other social needs.
Changed clothing to use higher-resolution artwork in the MegaTooltip.
PASS shuttles will now attempt to ferry people from overpopulated stations to underpopulated stations.
Several causes of excessive NPC spawns have been fixed, including NPC haulers that had impossible destinations.
NPC ships will no longer prevent the player from using super FFWD after being ordered to 'come here.'
Trying to use the trade UI with no ship docked no longer causes errors.
Trade UI no longer allows delivery to barter zones if no valid zones exist.
Torch ships no longer drift apart while towing and both torch drives active.
Plots no longer begin with the player's crew as a protagonist.
Crew no longer spawn outside the unmarked gas tanker ship.
LA Residential map now has a working down transit station.
Fixed several typos game text.
One of the main areas of improvement in this patch is to the way ships orbit celestial bodies. The path the ship follows now more closely matches that of satellites and moons, so it should be easier to hold position relative to those now.
The NAV station now also plots this orbital track as a gray ellipse, to show more long-term projection info. And we fixed the missing orbital tracks for moons, as well.
AI eating and drinking also got a lot of attention in this build. Their consumption should now be more appropriate to their needs and personalities, and should prioritize use of drinks like water for survival, vs. alcohol for more social or pain needs. (We also noticed that blood was the only liquid one couldn't drink, so we "fixed" that.)
We also looked into some player-provided saves that were experiencing performance issues, and discovered a number of them had overpopulation issues. This turned out to be partially due to NPCs choosing impossible destinations, resulting in some stations gaining NPCs but never losing them.
We've added a few more population shaping rules to the game, enforcing max pops where applicable. PASS ships will now ferry excess population to underpopulated stations. And extreme cases of overpopulation will run the "prune" operation on NPCs that can be safely removed.
The escape menu's Load button is now working! So it is now possible to load a save directly from in-game, instead of quitting to the main menu first.
Several bugs were fixed involving the trade UI and barter zones, as well as ships towing other ships, and plots initiating on NPCs instead of the player.
Plus, a few other fixes and new sprite art.
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
Improvements to Performance, Ship AI, and Other Fixes
Hey Folks!
Update v0.14.3.6 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our "Across the System" update, including some improvements to performance, ship AI, and other fixes.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 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.
Some more performance optimizations are included in this build.
The game will now warn the user more clearly if the save folder/drive is running low on space.
The Options UI now shows Saves and Settings folders separately.
The Options UI will no longer show duplicate Core mods.
Reselecting an object should no longer duplicate it after an install or repair was finished.
Hauler AI pilots should now fly at more reasonable top speeds that take their cargo into account.
AI pilots should be better at evading collisions if you get in their way.
Super fast ship designs should be less likely to go ballistic when AI is avoiding a collision.
Maneuvering a ship that is being towed should no longer have "sticky" controls.
Hauler spawning should be more tightly controlled now, resulting in fewer wasteful Haulers.
Orange gas canisters will no longer change volume and explode when uninstalled.
Players standing over loose canisters should no longer heat the canister gas up.
Player-controlled crew can now also use airlocks without permission if they are suffocating.
Crew can no longer haul items across the ship after they have been installed.
Police Vector Mk III, Light Tug, and Ostrich ship designs had some improvements made.
Backpacks now have nicer sprite art in the MegaTooltip.
This patch includes another batch of performance optimizations, targeting more places where the game did unnecessary calculations or generated excess memory garbage. Test players have said there were noticeable changes, so hopefully this patch has things running a bit smoother for you!
We had a couple players report a strange "Error 112" when attempting to save their game, and we were able to trace this to a hard drive out-of-space error. The game now handles this exception in order to tell the user what happened more clearly, plus it will warn the user on the save game page if the save drive is nearly full.
As part of this change, we also added a separate line in the Options UI to show Saves folder vs. Settings folder, and fixed the bug that showed two Core mods.
We managed to find and fix what was causing items to duplicate when right-clicking them after certain install and/or repair processes. This turned out to be a null exception when attempting to display the item's info in the MegaTooltip, causing it to try again and duplicate the item in the process.
AI ships had a few more improvements made, making them better at avoiding collisions and flying at reasonable speeds. Haulers should spawn more sparingly now, to avoid overcrowding. And the controls should be less "sticky" when towing ships.
We fixed a couple gas canister issues players reported. One was a mismatch in orange canister volume between installed and loose versions, causing them to explode suddenly when uninstalled. The other was a Heater code error, causing the human's body heat to pump into canisters in the same tile.
Crew AI also had a couple fixes. AI was previously acting on haul orders even after the item was installed, causing them to move to new install points. And there was an issue whereby the player-controlled crew couldn't open an airlock while suffocating without airlock permissions, even though automatically-controlled AI could.
Plus, a few other fixes and new sprite art.
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
Ostranauts Devlog #2 - Character Creator Upgrades and AI Fixes
Hey Spacers,
Dan is back with another devlog, this time showing off the recent changes to character creation, AI fixes and visual upgrades to the game. You can watch the video here or on the Kitfox Youtube:
In the video you can see the hairstyles and beards from Terry’s MopTops mod, which has now been fully integrated into the game. Ships also no longer behaving badly and no longer fly at incredible speeds. Dan also talks about updates to the tutorial and other UI and visual upgrades. Next up, the hardening phase continues as the team focuses on these quality of life updates before Fire in the Hold.
Thank you everyone for such a positive response to the first devlog, we really enjoy making these! We’re really interesting in hearing more about what you’d like us to show off in future videos! If you wanna meet your fellow spacers and chat about these updates and all things Ostranauts, check out the Blue Bottle Discord or the Kitfox Games Discord.
See you in the next one!
-Alexandra
Airlocks, Pathfinding, and Right-click Hotfix
Hey Folks!
Update v0.14.3.4 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our "Across the System" update, which addresses some AI airlock behaviors, pathfinding limitations, and right-click selection.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 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.
Right clicking world items will no longer always select top-most item or hands while paperdoll UI is open.
AI should now be able to walk through open airlocks even if there is a pressure difference.
Better logging when AI failed a path due to airlock permissions.
Pathfinders can now search more than 1511 tiles before they give up.
Yesterday's patch introduced a bug where right clicking world items would always re-select the top item in the stack. And holding the right mouse button would show a random body part in the MegaToolTip. This should now be fixed.
Also, a player noticed that lack of "Open Airlock" permissions would stop their character from walking across thresholds with a pressure difference, even though that airlock was already open. This would most often occur right after an airlock opened, or in cases where air was constantly flowing through a doorway.
Now, if the door is open, AI will walk through it regardless of "Open Airlocks" permissions.
And since it could sometimes be unclear why AI refuse to open an airlock, we changed the logging a bit to be clearer.
Lastly, we are trying an experiment where we give AIs more searching power when they are looking for a valid path. Previously, they had to quit after searching 1511 tiles. And this could frequently stall them on larger ships (especially when docked).
Our new limit is about double that, at 3332. And in testing so far, it doesn't appear to hamper performance much. In fact, the lower limit may have been worse if the AI tried and failed many such paths in a row.
This change should hopefully result in more AIs getting where they need to go, without cryptic errors, or no feedback at all.
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
Fixes for Performance, Suicidal AI Pilots, and Sundry
Hey Folks!
Update v0.14.3.3 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our "Across the System" update, which is beginning to tackle some of the performance issues we've had, plus suicidal AI pilots, and other fixes.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 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.
Framerate hitches caused by stuck interplanetary haulers should be less common now.
Framerate hitches caused by AI ships nearly out of fuel should be less common now.
AI Ships will now use the correct local ATC to request help, instead of calling a hauler out from across the System.
AI ships should no longer get stuck accelerators, causing them to fly at hypersonic speeds.
Lag spikes caused by opening the COMMS UI should be reduced now.
Refueling kiosk should now be able to recharge ships with damaged batteries.
It should now be possible to choose plot-specific actions again, if they were previously hidden after completing an unrelated plot.
Docking ships should not quantum tunnel into each other as often anymore.
Damaged battery charge now decreases to match its decreased max charge.
Using stackable items inside containers should no longer cause lost stacks or blocked grid squares.
More items and tools now have higher resolution art in the paper doll and MegaTooltip UIs.
The paperdoll UI should have more accurate click detection when the item sticks out from a slot.
Tooltips should now use correct names instead of [us].
The MegaTooltip item icons should now correctly change appearance when the item changes modes.
Docked ships should no longer slowly drift apart over time.
Haulers should no longer completely deplete the derelicts in the boneyard.
Scavengers should stop spawning when there aren't enough ships in the boneyard.
Taking the PASS ferry to OKLG_SEC outpost should no longer lock the player inside a jail cell.
Crew spawn locations on stations and ships should be more reliable now, resulting in fewer crew stuck outside.
The paper cheat sheet on the NAV screen should no longer stubbornly refuse to move out of the way.
Exercising Strength/Cardio condition should now correctly expire after finishing using equipment.
Using super fast-forward should now expire more conditions when finished.
Leaving a region will no longer cause errors due to crew being docked with an already deleted station.
AI ships around VORB should stop spawning without any means of thrust.
Incessant targeting alarms should be fixed now, since every spawned hauler won't start out targeting the player.
AI flying through atmosphere should now correctly switch to rotor usage, if available.
Added more lore snippets to the loading screen, and removed non-lore snippets.
Several text fixes and edits to game content.
One of our current priorities is to address performance issues, and this patch includes a few early steps towards that goal.
A number of framerate hitches were the result of AI ships getting stuck in various situations, causing them to try, fail, and retry the same things over and over. This could lead to chained problems of haulers being sent out unnecessarily, and those haulers getting stranded, repeating the cycle.
We were able to find and fix several of those causes, plus a few bugs in the way AI ships are spawned. And the result, at least in some save files, should be fewer hitches and unnecessary new ship spawns. And fewer over or underpopulations of ships, haulers, and derelicts.
We also found a cause of AI pilots flying at 5 km/s, 10 km/s, or sometimes faster in the area around OKLG. This appeared to be a bad variable passed to the AI right before they got into a holding pattern, causing their accelerator to be stuck "on." So they would accelerate at full thrust.
Combine that with a separate bug that got them stuck in a holding pattern, and you get ships traveling at subluminal speeds without any regard for the ships (or asteroids) in their path. Both issues should be fixed now.
We found and fixed a number of smaller bugs that could lead to big problems. One involved stacks of items getting accounting errors and stale references, which could result in lost stacks of items, or grid squares that were blocked.
A separate issue involved items failing to load when a ship was docking, aborting the entire process mid-dock, and causing the ships to overlap completely. If you ever attempted to dock, and the other ship appeared inside your own, this bug's for you. (And this fix should allow us to say good riddance to that bug!)
We also added a new batch of sprite artwork for items. And a few fixes to the paperdoll UI to make clicks more accurate with these new images. The same images are also now used in the MegaTooltip, so when you select an item to learn more, you can see the nicer artwork.
Plus many other fixes, ranging from UI glitches, to non-expiring conditions, or even crew spawning in the wrong places.
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
Further AI Improvements for Helmets and Hauling
Hey Folks!
Update v0.14.3.2 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our "Across the System" update, with fixes for some additional AI helmet, pathing, and install/hauling issues found this week.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 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.
AI will stop putting suit and helmet on for tasks that don't require it. (Fixes more edge cases.)
AI will no longer (un)install items from very far away if they were interrupted and AUTOTASK was reenabled.
AI will no longer install/repair items without supplying ingredients if they were interrupted and AUTOTASK was reenabled.
AI will no longer wander to airless rooms on the current ship, looking for safety, if the only safe air room is on a docked ship.
Loading a save file with delivery/feed item tasks will no longer produce task icons that cannot be fulfilled.
Right clicking to dismiss PDA orders "paint mode" will no longer click-through and select the tile below
While patch 0.14.3.1 fixed several AI helmet behaviors, it missed one situation where the AI would spawn new hauling tasks, only to find those tasks already existed. And it interpreted that as a failure due to traversing an airlock. This bug would mostly happen later in the game, when AI resumed older tasks.
This hotfix addresses that case, and we should now see fewer AIs putting helmets on while remaining inside the ship.
There was also a related bug or two which could appear if an AI was interrupted during a longer task like installs or repairs (often after a save/reload). When it went to resume that task, it would skip delivering input items to the job and/or do the job from too far away. This, too, should now be fixed.
A different bug was found when AI was frantically trying to find a room with air to refresh their helmet, but the nearest room was on another docked ship. It would seemingly run randomly around the current ship several times before trying the docked ship. This should now be resolved, except in some cases where the ships are too large for the pathfinder to efficiently search.
Lastly, a minor UX issue was fixed, whereby right-clicking to finish painting PDA tasks would also select the tile below the cursor. This will now correctly ignore that first click.
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
AI Improvements for Helmets, Hygiene, Duties, and Dooties!
Hey Folks!
Update v0.14.3.1 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a feature update to our recently released "Across the System" update, with significant upgrades to the AI's handling of helmets, airlocks, hygiene, defecation, and work prioritization.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 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.
AI can now only open airlocks when they have permissions and are wearing helmets, except emergencies.
Captains can additionally walk outside without a helmet if they have permission, and the player ordered them manually to walk outside.
AI should now only put a helmet and suit on immediately before they go outside, instead of randomly when pondering tasks.
AI should now wear both a suit and helmet before going outside, instead of just a helmet.
AI should now be smarter about refreshing their helmets safely, and will not drop them on the floor anymore.
AIs should now remember their survival skills after a save/load when their name was changed during character creation.
AI work priorities can now be fully set on the Roster and Duties UIs.
AI AUTOTASK repairing, patching, and restoring now honors priority settings on the Duties UI.
AI should no longer try to use the toilet when they cannot go.
AIs can now successfully use the toilet while wearing a suit.
AI will now only choose to freshen up if they are dirty.
Only human intervention will allow AIs to freshen up with water now.
AI shouldn't claim they cannot do a task immediately before doing it anymore.
AI shouldn't cut through corners anymore when rounding them, causing them to suffocate inside the wall.
There is a new tutorial for when the player's helmet air becomes fouled the first time.
Cycling between crew on different ships will no longer cause ships to vanish.
Ship crew no longer lose their assigned shifts in the first hour after loading a save.
Emptying cargo pods no longer spawns infinite loot inside.
Super Fast-Forward no longer allows studying or exercise training while unconscious.
Freshen Up action is now usable on water containers, as well as the water itself.
PDA and inventory UIs now slide in at realtime speeds, instead of fast-forward/slow speeds.
Severe burns received during character creation is now correctly set to chronic burn scar.
Several typo and other wording fixes.
Today's update includes a pretty significant reworking of how AI handles airlocks, helmets, work, and their personal needs.
Players have long reported issues with the AI seemingly putting their helmets on for no reason, forgetting to take them off, dropping them on the floor, and worst of all, spacing themselves unexpectedly while performing other tasks.
Part of this stems from the way our pathfinding code worked. The pathfinding code was trying to be smart, and making decisions about airlocks and helmets, and this was often at odds with the thing the AI or player was trying to do. So we pulled all of that decision-making code out of pathfinder and put it up near where the AI was deciding what to do instead.
Now, the pathfinder code merely tells the requesting AI if it can do the path and how, or else why it couldn't. And the AI decides from there what to do about it.
We also tightened-up the graphics on lev- just kidding! We tightened-up the airlock permissions matrix to be more rigorous about what is allowed vs. not. And in most cases now, AI will only use airlocks if they have both permission and a suit plus helmet.
Emergencies (like suffocation) will override permissions temporarily, and there's one case where the AI will go through an airlock without a helmet if the player directly orders them to go to a spot outside. (Also intended for emergencies.)
Adding on to that, the AI behavior for finding a helmet and suit got an upgrade, and you should begin seeing AIs grab their suits first, and then helmet, before heading outside.
We've noticed many new players could also use a bit of help with helmet discipline, so we've added a new tutorial that appears the first time your helmet's air becomes fouled. It will instruct the user to find a safe room to refresh their helmet, since this is not necessarily intuitive to anyone who might be used to suits with O2 systems.
While we were in the code for work tasks vs. airlocks, we finally had a chance to circle back to the long-ignored Duties UI. Some players may not have even known it was there!
This UI lets the player prioritize certain types of tasks. It previously included some categories that made no sense or were unavailable, while missing some others that would help with granularity.
When the player adds new tasks via the PDA, and an AI is in AUTOTASK mode (at the bottom of the HUD, next to the crew portraits), AI will look at this chart when deciding what to do next. They'll look at the row with their name, and first do all 1s, then 2s, 3s, and finally 4s. And they'll read them left to right.
So in the above image, Madelyn will prioritize repairs over all else, then proceed with Operating (toggling switches, opening doors, etc.), Patching, Constructing, Restoring, Demolishing (and Scrapping, Dismantling), and finally Hauling.
Meanwhile, Naomi will prioritize Construction tasks. And Ashley will be a Hauler above all else.
You can get to this UI via the Roster UI, by clicking the bumper on the right, like so:
Note that the RESTORE PARTS toggle on this Roster UI also uses the same Duties priorities.
Separate from all of the above, the AI behaviors around hygiene and defecation should now be more under control, too. We curbed some of their excessive use of those actions, and made it easier to do for the player in some other cases.
One pair of subtle, but troublesome bugs also contributed to weird AI behavior in the past.
The first issue was that any character that was renamed during character creation lost all of their basic AI behaviors as soon as a save/load happened. This was due to the behaviors being assigned by name when the character was spawned, but not having that name updated later.
The second issue was that crew shifts were not being reassigned when the game was loaded from a save, until the next hour had passed. So for the first hour after loading a save, AI would frequently behave as if on free time.
We also had a chance to fix a few more general bugs. Cycling to crew on other ships was causing ships to vanish. Emptying cargo pods would cause them to spontaneously spawn new contents. Super fast-forward would report impossible activities. All of the above should be working normally again.
And we're not done yet! We also have some work planned to improve the starting tutorials, AI food/water usage, performance optimization, etc. All of this will be coming in future patches.
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
Ostranauts Hotfix Patch (0.14.2.13) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.14.2.13 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Across the System" update, which fixes unowned ships after character creation, and ship editor nulls when clicking Crew Sim.
Saves from v0.14.0.0 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.
Using Work On Self right before choosing a starting ship will not longer make that ship unowned.
Clicking Crew Sim within Ship Editor will no longer produce errors if the ship had no breathable rooms.
Just a quick hotfix today to address the main issue of characters starting the game without their ships owned or mortgaged.
It turns out our new Work On Self page could introduce a ship ownership bug if you used it right before choosing a ship. (Using Seek Adventure after Work On Self is a work around.)
Today's hotfix addresses that bug, and you should once again be able to complete character creation and end up owning a ship, even if you use Work On Self right at the end. (Note that certain events can still result in unowned ships. E.g. the gambling one)
The other fix is for the Ship Editor, which could throw errors if the user tried to use Crew Sim and the ship had only airless tiles. This should once again be working normally.
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
