Hello and happy friday! It's been some time since our last update, and we've been hard at work on some things that we're pretty excited about.
Nirvana District
On the content side, we've made huge progress on the new district. Nirvana was the entertainment and nightlife hub of Eden, before the affliction took hold. This is a massive area, with a distinct new visual style and locations to visit; those of you who enjoy exploring uncharted new areas will surely enjoy uncovering everything it has to offer. Nirvana will be launching sometime mid-October, so look forward to that! We'll probably be dropping a few teaser screens between now and then as well.
Multiplayer Progress
We've also made some big strides when it comes to co-op/multiplayer support. Laying the groundwork has been a bit of a slog, but most core systems are now coming together at an increasing pace. In the interest of making the multiplayer experience as smooth as possible, we've integrated Steam server API for browsing and joining friends' games more easily.
We'll be doing quite a bit of testing, both internal and through opt-in alphas, to determine the proper balance and gametype(s) we're going to support. When we announced multiplayer was on the horizon, there was some concern from the community that the game was going to become DayZ overnight; that's definitely not the plan! Single player will coexist alongside the multiplayer modes, which could include PVE-only servers, PVP, team-based modes, etc.
Stay tuned for an announcement with more details on testing opportunities once we're further along. We appreciate the patience and understanding while we're heads-down in development on these huge new additions to PAMELA!
Patch: PAMELA v0.2.4.4 is Live – Arcadia Geometry/Invisible Wall Fixes
We've got a small (but effective!) patch out for you all today; several instances of incorrect level geometry and invisible colliders were causing some of you to get stuck when traversing between Floor 7 and 8 of Arcadia.
The emergency stairs can now safely be traversed! We also fixed several doors in the residential units which did not have collisions active, meaning certain unfinished/empty areas were accidentally accesible.
Thank you as always for the great feedback which helped pointpoint these issues so quickly. Enjoy the patch!
Fixes
Added collisions to several inoperable sliding doors in the new Arcadia residential units
Removed invisible walls between floors 7 and 8 in Arcadia emergency stairs
Removed incorrectly placed ceiling geometry between Arcadia floors 7 and 8, which was causing players to get stuck when descending from the 8th floor
Update: PAMELA v0.2.4.3 is Live – New Arcadia Suites, and Backup Saves, take 2!
We originally pushed this update last friday, but thanks to a few of you providing us with quick feedback we identified a save/load issue with Shield Door items. Essentially any save that had a base with Shield Doors would have been corrupted; thank you again for those of you who let us know so quickly so we could remedy the issue.
This update includes some all-new Arcadia residential Units, a fancy save back up system (described below), and some miscellaneous bug fixes.
Features
Environment: New Arcadia Tower suites added; all units on floors 7 and 8 are now accessible!
Backup Save System: After successfully loading a save, the game will now duplicate that as a "safe" save file next to the main save file. What this means is that if for some reason your save becomes corrupted (should be quite a rare occurence at this point) you can rename this backup save file and overwrite your corrupt file with it. If this does occur, we would appreciate if you sent your save folder (with the original corrupted save included) to support@pamelagame.com so we can investigate further and fix the issue for future cases.
Fixes
Fixed several miscellaneous issues with the logic hacking minigame.
Fixed an error with Shield Doors not linking properly when reloading a save game
Fixed Shield Doors breaking saved games
Update: PAMELA v0.2.4.2 is Live – New Arcadia Suites, and Backup Saves! (edit: Rolled back to 0.2.3.3)
EDIT: Hi all; thank you for reporting the issues with saved games being lost in some cases. We will investigate; for the time being we are rolling back to the previous version (0.2.3.3). Sorry for the inconvenience, this seems to have slipped through our testing.
As promised, here's an update with a few solid additions! Namely, some new areas in the Arcadia Tower, and a swanky save back up system in case of (rare, at this point) instances of save corruption.
On the multiplayer note from yesterday; we've been reading through all of your posts, and want to thank you as always for the honest feedback. We want to assure you all that we've got significant new content in the works (such as today's new areas, for example), and that single player won't be disappearing as a gamemode at any time in the future. We'll be posting a more detailed response early next week, just wanted to briefly touch on this note before the weekend.
Features
Environment: New Arcadia Tower suites added; all units on floors 7 and 8 are now accessible!
Backup Save System: After successfully loading a save, the game will now duplicate that as a "safe" save file next to the main save file. What this means is that if for some reason your save becomes corrupted (should be quite a rare occurence at this point) you can rename this backup save file and overwrite your corrupt file with it. If this does occur, we would appreciate if you sent your save folder (with the original corrupted save included) to support@pamelagame.com so we can investigate further and fix the issue for future cases.
Fixes
Fixed several miscellaneous issues with the logic hacking minigame.
Fixed an error with shield doors not linking properly when reloading a save game
Dev Blog #76: Nirvana Progress, Arcadia Residential Units, Multiplayer
It's been a while since we've put together a proper devblog! Since we've got a lot on the go behind the scenes, now seemed like a good time to put one together. We're pretty excited about all of this; let's dive in!
New Areas in Progress
On the art side of things, we've got a few chunky items in progress. As we've already announced, we're in the midst of designing and fleshing out Nirvana, which will be an all-new district that we're super excited about. It will be quite visually distinct from what you've experienced so far in Eden; we're looking forward to sharing some teasers when we're a bit closer to launching this.
However, we've got a little update coming to tide you over in the meantime! We've added several new residential units in the Arcadia tower, found on floors 7 and 8. Matt did a phenomenal job designing and propping these fancy residential suites, which should be going live a bit later this week after some testing.
M-m-m-multiplayer
Right, so... this is a meaty one. We sort of "announced" we were working on this as part of the roadmap we posted on Trello awhile back, without really going into much detail about the hows and whys.
Looking back, multiplayer is something that we've always wanted to be part of the game. We've all got a deep love for exploring and surviving with friends, facing the unknown together, as well as potentially running into hostile players. Earlier in development, we made the decision to focus primarily on the single player experience in order to nail that down fully. Not to say we're "done" with single player as a playstyle now, by any stretch! Rather, we're stable enough to actually entertain the idea of multiplayer options.
From a development perspective, multiplayer implementation gets broken up into 2 distinct steps: getting it to "work", followed by getting it to a point where it adds to the game and doesn't fight with existing systems. Basically what this means is that first we're porting the single player game as it currently exists to support multiplayer, and at that point, through lots and lots of testing, we'll circle back on systems that need tweaking to feel great when played with others.
Once we get far enough with multiplayer, we'll most likely be creating a separate opt-in branch on Steam which you guys can use to test it out in an early state. We don't have an exact ETA on this at the moment; we'll be posting some intermitent updates as we progress and have a better idea when the alpha version will drop.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below! We may put up a Google Forms survey about this as well as some other areas we're looking for feedback in.
What else?
While we push on these new features/areas, balancing tweaks and bugfixes are taking a bit of a backseat. We're still combing the forums, keeping our eyes open and updating our internal trackers, so please keep the feedback and reports coming!
For the time being, we simply anticipate less frequent updates while we lay the massive foundations for multiplayer. That said, we should have a nice patch later this week with the new Arcadia suites and a handful of bug fixes, so definitely watch out for that!
Patch: PAMELA v0.2.3.3 is Live – Weapon & Armor Crafting, New Hacking Minigame, and fixes!
Happy Friday, Sleepers! We've got a juicy update out for you today, let's dive into it.
First off, we've expanding the crafting schematics to include Weapons and Armor. To construct these, you'll need to build an Equipment Bench, which requires a Crafting Table Mk-II (renamed from L.A.B.). Weapons and Armor are therefore fairly involved to build, but that's fairly by design. We've also decreased spawn rates for these items across the board to account for this major change. Let us know your thoughts on this addition in the forums!
Another big ticket item this week is a new hacking minigame...
One of the main complaints about the original minigame (which is still selected 50% of the time when hacking) is that it was too reflex based, and was also victim to framerate irregularities. We've been meaning to implement this new game for some time, and finally got around to it!
In this new game, you've got to cycle through pairs of glyphs to construct the results below, then lock in your answer before the time runs out. We've had a ton of fun playing this minigame so far, and hope you do too.
***There's a new menu option, relating to hacking! In general, you can select 3 options: Hybrid (both minigames occur 50/50), Reflex, and Logic. Both games are challenging in their own way, so we wanted to make it an option for you to choose one or the other, if you have specific issues with the Reflex game.
We've also got the usual bunch of bug fixes in there as well. Feel free to peruse the big ol' list below, and as always let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Features
New Buildable Item: Equipment Bench
Weapon & Armor Crafting Schematics
New Hacking Minigame: Logic based "glyph" minigame
General Menu Options: Hacking modes - Hybrid, Reflex, Logic
Balance
Crafting Menu organization has been improved, with extra tabs for easier navigation
Options menu no longer applies options on button click - only when "Apply" is clicked
Increased Cryo Core spawn rates; they are defintely still supposed to be rare but should spawn more regularly now
Decreased weapon and armor spawn rates slightly as they are now craftable
Fixes
Fixed an issue that caused containers to become empty after respawning with a cryo core, when they were placed inside of another container
Fixed an issue with the Shield Door which would incorrectly animate the pylons if it was picked up with a full inventory
Fixed an issue which caused containers to break when being arrested while container menu is open
Fixed an issue with Tricarbyne Armor which caused incorrect shadowing and rendering when looking down at your body
Fixed an issue with the Electron Pulse; if 2 pulses were fired in quick succession, the audio could get stuck on repeat
Utility Descriptions no longer run off screen in certain cases
Fixed a rare issue that caused buildables to disappear from IVG Build Menu when reloading game
Fixed a few cases of duplicate containers in the world (2 identical containers were on top of each other physically, and were confusing to interact with)
Picking up a Power Transmitted with an Ion Core inserted: now either tries to pick up both, or drop the Ion core if there is not enough space (used to disappear)
Adjusted a sliding shutter door in Garrison to prevent access to an unfinished area
Fixed a bug with the Crafting Menu acting strangely when opened with C and I in various orders
VISR - fixed a bug in which the inventory counter did not update unless you open and close the inventory when placing buildables in the world
Impact Catalyst: did not recharge energy based on damage dealt or recieved
Fixed attachment description displays in several places
Respawn: Utility effects were not clearing on death, i.e. you would still recieve a bonus from a power slot item even after dying and losing it
Player Corpse Menu: can no longer collect infinite crafting resources by opening and closing the menu repeatedly
Fixed several instances of Bio Augments not stacking correctly with Genome Points
Fixed an issue where IVG would display a fully harvested object as having full health, not 0
Patch: PAMELA v0.2.2.2 is Live – Public Roadmap and Some More Bugs Crushed
Today we’ve got a patch for you with a few fixes, but there’s some pretty major ones. There are some great inventory fixes as well as a fix for another issue that was causing saved games not to load correctly. From what we can tell this only affected a few people, but now your saved games should be much more reliable.
In the previous update we nerfed Turrets a little bit too much so they’ve been better balanced now. We also discovered the + and ++ versions of the turrets weren’t actually doing any more damage than the standard one, so that has been resolved as well!
As always, read the full list below!
We have one more announcement today, we’ve stickied a new post in the General Discussions forum about our new public roadmap! Go check it out and vote on the features that you’d like to see us work on first.
Turrets have been rebalanced:
Regular:
Damage: 5 -> 10
Time between shots: 5 -> 3
Force: 10 -> 3
+:
Damage: 5 -> 12
Time between shots: 5 -> 2.5
Force: 10 -> 3
++:
Damage: 5 -> 14
Time between shots: 5 -> 2
Force: 10 -> 3
Fixes
Fixed an issue that caused players to not be able to place items in certain inventory slots.
Fixed an error that would block saves to continue loading if it was encountered. This would create the symptom of buildable items disappearing after loading a game, among some other things.
Fixed a few bugs that was causing the equipment upgrade nodes to not display correctly. This was causing players to think they lost their upgrades, but it was just the menu not updating properly in all use cases.
Fixed an error that was causing SEC-RTs not to die sometimes. When this happened they would generally walk infinitely into a random direction.
Fixed a bug that would cause some items in the inventory to appear to be rotated and the highlight wouldn’t match the item.
A few ‘Junk’ items missed the last patch for being switched to the new ‘Engineering’ category.
Update: PAMELA v0.2.2.1 is Live – Quick-Heal, Craftable Element Cubes & Tons of Fixes
Hello again everyone! The team is back from our much needed vacation and are back at it again. This week’s update is a pretty tasty one with some crucial improvements and fixes that we can’t wait to get your feedback on.
You asked, we listened! There is now a quick-heal button and also a way to get rid of all those extra unwanted resources, craftable element cubes. In the Engineering menu you will now find element cubes. These cubes can then be stored in containers for later use, or recycled for profit. But more importantly, you won't find yourself unable to harvest or craft anymore because you're full of Chromium.
The other major bullet point for this update is a potential fix for the dreaded ‘Black Screen’ bug that has been plaguing some players. This would entirely block people from playing the game when it happened and has been extremely difficult to track down as we cannot reproduce it ourselves. If you were experiencing this before, please let us know if this update has fixed it for you. It is currently our top issue that we’re trying to resolve.
There’s a ton of other great stuff in today’s update like a new video player plugin that completely eliminates those horrible lag spikes we were having with the tutorial videos. Saving and loading is significantly more reliable now and disappearing buildables should be a thing of the past. Check out the full list below and let us know what you think in the comments below.
PS: Thanks again to everyone who has posted in the discussions about suggestions and bug reports. The emails we get that include save files and debug logs have been invaluable and your continued support is definitely appreciated and positively impacts the development of PAMELA for all to enjoy.
Features
Quick-Heal button added (Default ‘4’ on the keyboard). This will scan your inventory for healing items and use the lowest one available. (Order is Medi Hypo, +, ++, then Supra Hypo, +, ++)
You can now craft element cubes in order to store/sell excess resources.
Balance / Improvements
Element cubes no longer instantly give elements upon pickup, you have to ‘Use’ them.
Element cubes now hold 100 units instead of 50.
Turrets now shoot a burst every 5 seconds instead of every 0.5 seconds.
Shield Doors, Shield Pylons, Storage Containers (Small & Large), and Sentry Turrets now have new placement meshes that represent the open/activated versions of themselves.
Low and critical health sounds play less frequently, now set to 6 seconds.
The main menu image effects have been completely changed to match the ones used in the main game. The main menu was still using some old legacy effects from before our Early Access launch that possibly were causing the ‘Black Screen’ when loading the game for some people. A few other visual tweaks were also made.
Cursor now locks to the edge of the screen. This will prevent players with multiple monitors to accidentally click outside of the game view when using menus like Pause and Inventory.
All environmental audio was playing at all times for the entire world. This has now been fixed so that only sounds that you can hear are actually playing. This should reduce memory and CPU usage.
Tutorial video system replaced with a new plugin which completely eliminates all of the lag spikes when videos were being loaded and unloaded.
Buildables will no longer appear to reactivate if you walk far enough away from them and quickly look away and back at them.
Many crafting item categories have been changed from "Junk" to a new category called "Engineering".
Fixes
Potentially fixed the dreaded ‘Black Screen’ on startup bug. Please let us know if this is still an issue as we are unable to reproduce it on our end but know it’s affecting a lot of people!
Element cubes now save and load properly when inside a container.
Fixed an issue that was causing buildables to disappear when loading your game sometimes. This also solved several other miscellaneous issues caused on a game load.
NPCs no longer walk through buildable objects (especially noticeable when attacking turrets).
Fixed a problem when you picked up an Ion Core out of a Power Transmitter while your inventory was full. The Ion Core would come out, but the transmitter wouldn’t open up to allow you to place in another one, breaking it permanently.
Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Ion Cores inside Power Transmitters to glow forever. This would block sight of the power level remaining.
Fixed several bugs related to Ion Core capacity issues.
Fixed several missing colliders in the Garrison Barracks.
Fixed a missing collider in Novus in the Promenade.
Fixed several missing colliders in the beginning cryo area.
Fixed a bug that made the critical health sounds not play if the low health sound was already playing.
Fixed a bug that caused buildables to disappear from containers after a cryo-core respawn.
Fixed a bunch of coroutines that were not being killed properly when you left the game back to main menu.
Fixed some incorrect text in the tutorials that still referenced double-clicking items instead of the new middle-mouse click.
Fixed a bug that made the IVG Repair Durability meter display 0 health for buildables that had full health.
Fixed an animation issue with several buildables that would load in incorrectly. This was certainly apparent on Shield Doors after loading a game.
Patch: PAMELA v0.2.1.16 is Live – Respawning Bug Fixes and Code Cleanup
Hello again! We wanted to snipe out a really quick update before our week off next week (read our last change log for details) because we found a few issues that we didn’t want hanging around while we were gone.
Most of this was some internal code cleanup to remove a ton of compiler warnings, but we had some serious issues that we discovered with respawning that was a regression caused by one of our past updates. There were also several miscellaneous issues caused in the last update from us upgrading a plugin which should now all be resolved. In simple terms, there should be less things broken! Probably more than reported here.
Have yourselves a wonderful week and we’ll see you back on the 10th!
Fixes
Repaired a ton of issues with coroutines either not running or never stopping. This could have caused far reaching issues.
Added some more checks on buildables during respawn to stop them from wiping data during a cryo core respawn.
Potential fix for rare bug that caused the player to ‘fall forever’. Let us know if you run into this one again… it’s a slippery fish.
Tons of internal code cleanup to remove various compiler warnings.
Patch: PAMELA v0.2.1.15 is Live – Improved Containers, Better Status Warnings & Lots of Fixes
Hello everyone! This update brings some great fixes and improvements that exclusively came from what users were reporting in the Steam discussions. We read through each and every post, comment and review and take it all in and store it on our internal tracking software. The community is helping tremendously in shaping the game into what we all want as well as helping make it more stable and enjoyable each and every day. We thank all of you for your input!
Now on to what’s in today’s update! We have a range of fixes and features for you, ranging from some controller improvements to items now saving their positions inside containers. Feel free to go sorting happy in your Storage Containers.
There were a number of reports regarding vendor kiosks not dispensing items under various situations and that has since been tracked down and eliminated. The rolling shutters (gates) now open correctly on load and you will no longer fall through a wall that was missing colliders on the 2nd floor of Origin Station. There’s lots more, so as always read down below for the full list.
One last thing to mention is the studio will be doing its annual Canada Day week-long shutdown from the 3rd – 7th so no one will be in the office to respond to the forums as well as there won’t be an update next week. We’ll be back on the 10th, so until then keep up with all of the awesome feedback.
Features
Items now save their positions inside containers. This at the same time fixed a bug where sometimes full containers would appear to delete items due to the sorting algorithm not being able to find space to place items.
Balance / Tweaks
Added new earlier warning levels for hunger and thirst that will notify you when you’re at the half way mark
Controller Support: Added left/right stick navigation to pause menu (was previously D-Pad only)
Fixes
Fixed an error that occasionally happened in some of the full-screen tutorials
Added colliders to some objects that were missing them in Origin Station
Fixed an issue that would cause vendor kiosks to not give the player items
Fixed a problem with a few Power Switches that would cause them to stop showing their UI
Fixed a bug in the inventory that would cause items to disappear sometimes when you clicked the middle mouse button
Fixed some bad animation states on doors, especially the ‘gates’ that would cause them to appear half opened after loading a game.
Upgraded to Unity 5.6.2p1 which will now fix two spammy errors that seemed to be causing crashes for some players as well as performance problems.
Controller Bindings: Fixed Block, Sprint and Crouch not working when you had the IVG equipped.
Shield Walls can no longer be moved outside the range of a Power Transmitter to create infinitely long walls.
Fixed a specific string of events that would prevent some new games from spawning items in the world
Fixed shield doors not correctly detaching from linked pylons when you picked it back up
