Ostranauts v0.12.1.8 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which is aimed at helping reduce save file size in longer-term games.
Saves from v0.12.0.0 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 code to prune expired items and people from game memory and save files on save game.
Added code to skip loading COs from save file if no ships list them as on board.
Fixed a bug that caused deleted people to re-manifest themselves when one of their friends moves to a new ship or station.
Changed NPC transit flow to always prefer going from higher population districts to lower.
The most important change here is a fix to the way games are saved, which should overall reduce the size of save games as they get older. We had a bug which caused save files to retain data on deleted objects, so as the game progressed, the save file would grow to unusable size.
This build addresses that bug, and should tame that file size from here on when loading and saving a game.
This fix also addresses the issue players ran into when attempting to use the NPC pruning and station respawning tools described here:
Because the deleted items were retained in the save data, the prune only emptied the visible NPCs (which helped framerate in-game), but could potentially cause the save to stop loading due to memory limits.
If anyone was unable to load their save after using the Prune NPCs or Respawn Ship debug tools in 0.12.1.7, you should try that process again in 0.12.1.8. Loading a pre-debug-pruned save should work, and re-saving it should drop the save file size. And if you wish, re-running the Prune NPCs or Respawn Ship should similarly drop save file size more.
Finally, we added some more shaping code to the NPC transit system, so they would prefer to go to lower population areas. This should help the OKLG districts stay a bit more balanced with NPC counts.
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 (0.12.1.7) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.12.1.7 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which is primarily aimed at adding a few debug tools to help folks with save games bloated by NPCs from earlier bugs.
Saves from v0.12.0.0 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 debug tools to prune NPCs from the Star System.
Added option to Respawn Ship debug tool also wipe NPCs and respawn.
First of all, I apologize for the rough couple of patches we've had this past week. There were at least 3-4 bugs introduced that made save games either too crowded with NPCs to use, or even unloadable at times. And ironically, all of these were the result of us trying to make things smoother, but not anticipating side effects in other areas of the game.
Yesterday's patch, 0.12.1.6, seems to be mostly stable again, and folks can get back into their save games. We still have bugs to fix, and I'd like to see if I can get that performance/stutter issue improved. But at least people can get back to playing as they did before.
That is, unless you have one of those save games with NPC overpopulations.
Some saves became overwhelmed with police ships spinning around, NPC ships littering the area, and/or K-Leg stations filled to the brim with dozens of NPCs each. And all of this balloons load/save times and craters performance.
This patch adds a few extra debug tools those users can try to help prune their saves back to manageable. No other fixes or features are in this patch.
And since these tools might become useful again to others, we created a pinned post on the Steam forums here:
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 (0.12.1.6) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.12.1.6 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which fixes several save-related issues, as well as NPC spawning and other issues.
Saves from v0.12.0.0 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.
Fixed a bug that caused saves to fail loading if the character had a single-word name, and was created before v0.12.1.5.
Removed support for loading save games created in 2022 and earlier.
Fixed a bug in the load game UI that would show the temporary zip extraction folder as a clickable option, which causes crashes when clicked.
Fixed a bug that could allow the game to continue spawning more than the maximum number of NPC scavenger ships in a region.
Fixed a bug that could cause extra living and dead NPCs to spawn on NPC scavenger ships and other non-derelicts.
Changed ship broker price markup/discount to always be the same percentage, instead of changing each restock event.
Fixed a bug that generated lots of log spam about images when loading characters.
The biggest deal here is the save file bug fixes.
It looks like our earlier fix for single-name characters caused it. Before the fix, the save game loader would find missing relationship info, and just skip it.
But now that single-name folks are starting to have save data, it actually tries to load their data, and stumbles when it comes across relationship info saved before the fix. Crashing before it finishes saving.
And to compound things, when it crashes on load like this, it leaves a copy of the save game in the Ostranauts folder, where it temporarily unzipped the save.
That temp unzip save shows up in the list of save games you can load, and players attempting to load it get a crash.
So this patch fixes that relationship loading issue, for one thing, and also hides that temporary folder so players don't accidentally try to load a bogus save file.
This also requires cutting off support for really old save formats, from before 2023, which we *think* should be safe now :)
We also finally found the cause of huge NPC ship spawn amounts. Or at least one of the causes.
It appears the code to repopulate space with NPC ships could get into a situation where the number of planned ships to spawn increased faster than it could spawn them, resulting in a runaway population of NPC scavenger ships.
We added some validation fixes to this code to prevent that from happening again.
Note, however, that this won't *delete* all the spawned ships. Just stops them from spawning if there are too many (> 16) around OKLG. If you want to prune a save file that has this problem, try making a copy of it first (just in case), and inside the zip file, you can try deleting a bunch of ships starting with "O-" (which are usually scavenger NPC ships).
Just be careful not to delete any ships starting with "OKLG," and your own ship's ID. And once you load that save, the NPC ship count should go down without any errors.
We also found a bug that caused NPC scavenger ships to spawn pirates, dead bodies, and other NPCs, which while hilarious, was probably also unloading those NPCs onto OKLG when that NPC ship docked.
This caused not only OKLG's extreme NPC count problems, but also players being ganked by pirates, and seeing lots of dead bodies on stations.
Again, this patch won't trim those NPCs out of OKLG. But at least they'll stop spawning (and future games should be cleaner).
The last two fixes address ship broker mark-up/discount amounts changing over time, and trimmed some extra log spam that might help with performance.
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 (0.12.1.5) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.12.1.5 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which fixes issues with corrupted saves, loitering scavenger ships, NPC populations on stations, and more.
Saves from v0.12.0.0 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.
Fixed a bug that could cause save games to be missing people or items on some ships.
Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to remain docked longer than they should, longer for each other scavenger ship out there.
Fixed a bug that caused all NPCs to gather over time on whichever OKLG stations player is not on.
Added code to make NPC ship colors darker if nobody is on board.
Fixed a bug that allowed AI to work on a task without tools if their hands were full and that tool existed somewhere on the map.
The biggest fix here addresses a source of possible save corruption. It was possible for the game to exit to the main menu before the save finished, clobbering some data for ships in the System. Typically, this would happen when using Save & Exit before Autosave or Save was used in a game, and would impact recently visited stations and ships.
This patch now correctly waits for save to finish before switching to the main menu.
We also found one cause of NPC scavenger ships remaining docked for too long. This turned out to be an issue with their AI timers being updated too infrequently. Now, NPCs should undock more often, and especially so if your save file had a lot of NPC ships.
We still haven't found the source of the bug that spawns too many NPC ships. However, to help us find the cause, you'll now notice some NPC ships are a darker amber color on the nav station map. These ships are missing a pilot, and hopefully that will help us figure out if the extra NPC ships are due to missing pilots, or something else.
Another bug fix involves the NPC transit system. Due to a missing cleanup step, any NPC that used transit to exit the currently loaded station would always immediately leave that station any time they reappeared.
This would often result in all NPCs gathering on the other two OKLG districts where the player wasn't. This fix should now balance that traffic better.
Finally, there was a bug that caused AIs with no inventory room to be able to perform work tasks without holding the required tool, as long as that tool was somewhere on the map. Those AIs will now correctly fail to start the task, and their logs will contain a reason why (for players examining crew).
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 (0.12.1.4) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.12.1.4 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which fixes several issues with how police spawn and behave, NPC scavenger docking, NPC relationships to players, and more.
Saves from v0.12.0.0 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 Fixed a bug that caused police ships to spawn and do nothing. Fixed a bug that could cause police to board and/or interrogate players while on OKLG station. Fixed a bug that could cause NPC scavenger ships to dock with player ship purchased from a broker. Fixed a bug that caused characters without last names to be unable to form relationships with others. Fixed a bug that caused biological parents to see their children as their biological parent. Fixed a bug that caused derelict prices to drop if player visited them before purchasing them. Added code to reduce log spam about missing interaction. Fixed a bug that caused NPCs spawned on distant stations to appear outside station if player docked. Changed the wall type of generic space station from generic wall to Van Hummel wall.
One of the more serious bugs this patch fixes involves police spawns. A bug was causing the police ships to spawn outside of OKLG as usual, but their pilots would remain on OKLG. This caused both stray police ships piling-up outside OKLG, as well as officers intent on questioning the player on the station.
This fix stops that from happening further, but existing spawns will still remain in old saves, since it was potentially risky to try and hack them out.
A separate issue was also allowing NPC scavenger ships to dock with derelicts the player purchased, and this has been fixed. Like above, this won't correct old issues in a save, but will prevent it from happening in future games (and derelicts purchased after this patch).
Players who have an NPC ship stuck docked to one of their current ships should try using the ferry service (PDA Home screen P.A.S.S. button) to ferry over to their ship, and undock that way.
Players who had a character with only one name were running into issues with forming relationships with others in-game (e.g. hiring crew), and this bug has been fixed. As above, it won't correct save files that have the problem already, but any new relationships formed should work.
Also, while I was in there, I finally found and fixed the bug that caused biological mothers to see the player as their biological mother. (And father.) And since testing this frequently brought me to distant stations that had a few bugs, I fixed those, as well.
Finally, there was a bug/exploit that allowed players to drop a derelict price by visiting and/or stealing from the derelict before buying it. That loophole should now be plugged!
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 (0.12.1.3) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Just a tiny hotfix patch (0.12.1.3) today. It includes the rollback of AI tweaking from yesterday that caused strange free-time behavior, plus a new fix for pathfinding that was allowing AIs to fix things from too far away.
There are still other fixes we'd like to add in a future patch, but they are proving to be hard to reproduce, and therefore fix. In particular, issues with scrap loot appearing suddenly, missing NPCs on stations, and memory issues.
Please do keep us informed if you discover any new bugs, or have more information to share on existing ones.
Best, Daniel Fedor Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC
Ostranauts Hotfix Patch (0.12.1.1) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.12.1.1 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, which fixes several issues with game timers, pathfinding, and other problems.
Saves from v0.12.0.0 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 a performance optimization to pathfinding code.
Changed AutoSave to reset interval timer when game manually saved.
Changed AI to have more knowledge about how to use environmental objects.
Fixed a possible memory leak when saving a game completes.
Fixed a bug that caused AutoSave and Loading popups to stop updating while game was paused.
Fixed a bug that caused AI to seek out and wear helmets if they even considered going through a voided airlock.
Fixed a bug that caused wounds to be invisible on inventory paper doll after loading a save.
Fixed a bug that caused special event timers (e.g. micrometeoroids) to update while game was paused.
Fixed a bug that caused extra officers to spawn on OKLG stations instead of reusing existing ones.
Fixed a bug that could allow important NPCs (like Flotilla fixer) to be used as NPC scavenger pilots.
Fixed OKLG licensed kiosk action list so option 1 is Trade instead of License Info, for consistency with other kiosks.
Fixed a null exception that could occur when updating the appearance of a destroyed object.
Several of this patch's changes involve pathfinding improvements. One is a performance optimization which tries to reuse existing pathfinding solutions more, and it should improve performance in high-traffic areas and areas with large spaces.
We also fixed a bug that caused AI to put a helmet on any time the pathfinder considered going through an airlock without air on the other side. Even if it ultimately didn't decide to.
AI also got a minor boost by having its list of possible actions updated to include some newer items.
A different batch of fixes focuses on timers, saving, and memory. Several timers in the game were using scaled time, meaning certain UIs would stop updating when the game paused. And an opposite situation for game special events continued even when the game was paused.
With regard to saving, the autosave timer now resets when the user executes a manual save. And there should be slightly improved RAM use after saving now.
Lastly, there were a handful of miscellaneous fixes to the game, including a few that caused missing or too many NPCs of certain types.
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 Feature Patch (0.12.1.0) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.12.1.0 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a feature update to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update, and changes autosave to use threading and disrupt the game less, plus several game and UI fixes.
Saves from v0.12.0.0 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.
Changed Autosave to run on a separate thread.
Changed the MegaTooltip (top right info) to show a consolidated damage bar on items.
Changes AI to make OKLG managers less likely to attack Criminals on sight.
Fixed a bug that allowed players to profit if they sold, bought, and sold the same ship immediately.
Fixed a bug that caused the AI AUTO setting to toggle when selecting tiles in the zones UI.
Fixed a bug that caused the trade UI Toggle All button to add non-sellable items.
Fixed a white preview image in the ship purchase confirmation dialog.
Fixed a bug that could cause derelicts to be missing preview screenshots.
Fixed bug that caused pilot AI to try and avoid ships that were not really there.
Fixed a bug that caused 1x1 battery, HVAC items, and others to be missing from OKLG Supply Kiosk.
Fixed several typos in game data.
The biggest change in this Feature patch is the new Autosave threading code. It should now only pause for a few seconds when it starts to autosave, then run the rest of the autosave in the background on a thread. You'll notice after the big Autosave pop-up fades out, a smaller icon remains in the corner while it writes to disk. Hopefully, this will be less intrusive than the old autosave!
We also noticed a number of players misunderstanding the way the condition bar in the MegaTooltip (MTT is the info box at top right when an item is right-clicked). Previously, it would reset to 100% when an item transitioned from "working" to "damaged" mode, which was a bit confusing.
Now, both modes use the same two-part damage bar. When the bar is in the red part, it is damaged. And when it is in the green part, it is working normally.
We also fixed a ship broker pricing bug that caused several issues, including the ability to print money by serially buying and selling the same ship. Several bugs with ship images were also addressed.
An AI tweak we made should also make Managers less likely to attack Criminals on sight, which would often cause both to be tagged as public enemies for the police to then attack. It may not solve all the AI chaos we're seeing, but we'd like to see what effect this has before changing more.
Finally, there were a few other fixes the AI toggling, missing items in the kiosks, and other typos.
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 (0.12.0.8) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.12.0.8 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update that fixes several bugs and issues reported by players. Namely, some AI crew fixes, barter zone QoL enhancements, and ship docking/undocking fixes.
Saves from v0.12.0.0 and later should work. If you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.
Added code to the trade UI to show all items on the sell screen, instead of just the items vendor wants to buy. Unwanted items are marked accordingly.
Fixed a bug that prevented Fixer/trader from seeing wanted items inside unwanted containers.
Fixed a bug that prevented barter zones from appearing if they were on unowned ships.
Fixed a bug that caused docking fees to continue accruing after selling a derelict.
Fixed a bug that allowed player to dock with hidden/despawned ships.
Fixed a bug that caused derelict ships to be immovable if player used ferry to get to them.
Fixed a bug that allowed AI to attempt to equip invisible game system objects for fun. (E.g. loot spawners, conversational topics, all of outer space)
Changed AI to it would only attempt to quit the crew while docked at a station.
Changed AI so it won't complain about work as often when it is dissatisfied.
Fixed a bug that caused quitting crew member to load old social combat UI.
Fixed a bug that caused upset crew to just stand next to the player without doing anything.
Fixed a bug that could cause officer to get stuck when replying to player, especially when player said they don't know why they were stopped.
Several of this patch's fixes address the trade UI and barter zones. Players should now see an updated trader UI that shows all items in the barter zones, including items the trader won't buy. Items which are not sellable will be listed as "Not Wanted," and the rest can be sold normally.
This allows us to show not only items on the floor of your ship, but also items in bins, racks, crates, and dollies, even if those containers aren't directly sellable. This also fixes the issue where it seemed like a barter zone wasn't found by the Fixer, when it was instead seen as empty because it only contained containers at the surface level which the fixer didn't want.
We also fixed a few more docking/undocking related bugs, including another situation that could lead to docking fees continuing after selling a derelict. Docking with despawned or hidden ships is also now prevented, and we added a fix which prevented piloting a derelict after ferrying to it.
Finally, we added a series of fixes to the AI for crew. AI should now pester the player less often when dissatisfied with their job, and will only attempt to quit now if the player is docked at a station. We also fixed the old social UI that would appear when they do so.
Another fix addresses crew that would just stand there and do nothing next to the captain when dissatisfied with their job, and even a bug that cause them to grab ahold of anything in the universe, tangible or not, when bored (including the entirety of outer space).
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 (0.12.0.7) Is Live!
Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.12.0.7 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix to our recently released "Rate My Ship" update that fixes several bugs and issues reported by players.
Saves from v0.12.0.0 and later should work. If you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.
Fixed a bug that causes docking clearance to get messed-up when attempting to dock with an already docked vessel.
Fixed a bug that could cause NPC ships to never undock from derelicts, making some gigs impossible.
Fixed a money exploit loophole when buying and selling derelicts without visiting them.
Fixed a bug that prevented docking to owned ships if the transponder was off.
Fixed a bug that could cause nulls when hacking a door.
Fixed a bug that could cause ghost ships when undocking from an NPC ship.
Fixed a bug on the Ferry UI that always showed OKLG as the destination.
Fixed a bug that could cause AI ships to try to elude player after granting docking clearance.
Fixed a bug that spawned purchased ships too close to another ship to be reached safely.
Several docking fixes in this patch! There were a number of edge cases we didn't cover in our code that needed fixing, and thanks to player reports, we were able to find and fix those.
Buying and selling derelicts also exposed an infinite money loophole that, while lucrative, sort of spoiled the fun of the game. So we patched that to help keep the game balanced.
And a few other sundry bugs were found and fixed in this update.
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
