The last few months I’ve been obsessed with making graphical after effects so this latest update doesn’t have as much content as normal however has almost 100 different visual distortions, glitch effects and other cool visual cues.
While I have added some things and fixed a bunch of bugs (thanks to everyone that has been reporting problems and improvements to me) most of time this month has been spend making everything feel like it has more impact... enjoy.
This new patch is called the Wibbly-Wobbly-Screen patch.
I have deployed this new update onto the Steam Beta Branch which you can get to by right clicking the game in your Library > Properties… > Betas > Code: cooltestpilot I will deploy it to Live for everyone to play next week.
I’ve just launched a large content update so I thought to celebrate I would do a weekly discount. If you haven’t already now is the time to get Undercrewed.
Pick up Undercrewed with your friends as a great team based PvE game.
You’ve got a week to grab Undercrewed at a discount so don’t miss out.
Lots of love > David Strachan
New Feature Patch Deployed in Beta
Greetings captains
I’m deploying a big feature patch onto Beta now. If there are no problems I will put it onto Live in the following days for everyone to play.
This patch is called the You-Destroyed-My-What? patch and is all about visualising damage and better destruction on everything.
If you want to get your hands on it early you just need to right click Undercrewed in your Library > Properties… > Betas > Code: cooltestpilot
Some of the big changes:
As well as shields and turrets internal parts of enemy spaceships can now also get destroyed. So you are now likely to see popups come out of the enemies saying things like “Crew downed”, “Internal fires”, “Engines destroyed”,"Ships cat on startled".
This will help you better know what enemy ships you should be targeting and which ones are more of a threat.
Just a reminder of some of the related changes in the Follow-That-Enemy patch:
> Hit markers when you damage an enemy:
> Camera that follows the action. > Laser pointer so you can see where guns are facing better.
Minor changes:
Visual flash when crew takes damage
Dynamic scaling of crew when camera zooms
Players ship wobbles with impacts
If enemies get destroyed while offscreen warp their debris so they float onto the screen
Player attacks not hit more parts of enemies ships
More sounds added to tutorial level
Sound balance changes
AI aiming now takes into account the rotation of the ship
Bug: Bots walking on the spot if they are kicked out of a room (part of the moonwalking bug)
Bug: AI doesn’t attack things sometimes on First Level
The next patched comes out very soon with more content and a new level.
Lots of love > David Strachan
Deploying the Follow-That-Enemy patch onto Beta
Greetings Captains!
I’ve just deployed the Follow-That-Enemy patch onto beta.
For those that want to get a preview you can download the Beta version of Undercrewed by right clicking the game in your Library> Properties… > Betas > Code: cooltestpilot
Once I know it works fine I will make it available to everyone on live in a week or two.
Main Features:
Camera changes that follow where the action is
Hit Markers that show where you hit enemies
Rumble support on gamepads
Crosshair showing you where guns are pointing
Plus at least 31 other bugs and changes that I wrote down
There are quite a few known bugs like I’m pretty sure there is one achievement that is glitched and impossible to obtain, however I’m still recording the stats for it so anyone that achieves it will still get awarded it next time they play.
Let me know if you have any problems (either with this update or anything else)
Lots of Love > David Strachan
Coming soon the Follow-That-Enemy patch.
Greetings Captains
I’m breaking radio silence to show you some new things that are coming in the next few weeks. The latest patch has been all about making you feel more engaged with the events that are happening and feel more involved with the enemies. This build is called the Follow-That-Enemy patch. It was originally called the Shaky-Shaky-Shaky patch because of the new rumble features however there is far more content now and maybe telling people it was a shaky patch didn’t sound so good?
Here's The Big Things:
> New camera that highlights where the action is > Rubble support on gamepads > Hit markets that show where you hit the enemy > Crosshair laser showing where guns are pointing
Hitmarkers are displayed whenever you do damage to an enemy, they solve a few problems; knowing if a shot connected, knowing what damage that shot did, knowing what type of damage was done and displaying how much health the enemy has left.
Before this patch to know the enemies health you had to use various tricks. I've put an image below where you can see damage on the hull and those energy orbs getting smaller. Other ships would have lights that would flash faster but it wasn’t very intuitive.
Coming Soon:
I have 3 patches almost ready to deploy however to make them more manageable I’ve decided to deploy them one at a time, that way I can get feedback on changes for each one and it's easier to catch and fix any bugs.
3 upcoming patches are:
Follow-That-Enemy patch
New camera
Help popups
Markers when you hit enemies
Laser crosshair
Gamepad vibrations
You-Destroyed-My-What? patch
Better destruction on enemies
Enemy parts that get destroyed are displayed to player
We're-Off-to-Jordaria patch
New mission with 7 new enemies
Lots of other things
List of all changes so far in the upcoming patch:
> More changes than I can list to how the camera moves around > Made all spaceships faster in a balancing change > More changes to make the AI driving feel less twitchy (still not totally fixed so even more changes will have to come) > Balances to the sine wave gun > Rumble on gamepads > Cursor gets hidden when in game (I might bring this back if one or more people complain about it) > Etten bug - Pressing numpad minus would lock gamepad players in a room which they couldn’t get out of (this happened because it was a left over debug key) > Etten bug - Some additional onscreen help for people using push-to-activate or lock-in-room controls. > Jesse bug – Steam Cloud would move encrypted save files over which could crash on a different computer > Kata/Setheng/Ascander bug - Intruders not pathfinding so warping to the top left of the screen (0,0). Also known as the “Green Man in Top Left Problem” Also known as the “Holomedics not working Bug” Also known as the “Cant Pathfind Glitch” Also known as “Whats that up there Dave?” > Changes to how the enemies behave when off the camera (now that two networked players might have slightly different camera views > Pathfinding fixes and improvements to Elonsium defenders > When displaying crew HP there was no period in the font file so it would display 90.5 health as 905hp. This should be rounded to solve this > Restoring energy when the ship has full energy used to lose the stockpile and get nothing from it, now the stockpile it preserved > Small graphical error when pausing, I’m sure no one spotted it but it was made worse by the new camera > Slightly resized the buttons on the pause menu because I was trying to put off fixing the camera to GUI bug > On Elonsium your defenders also benefit from any movement speed buffs > Changes to how enemies are assigned network IDs > When enemies teleport they are flipped 180degrees, this stops them getting into a loop where they spend their whole time trying to turn around just to get teleported away the moment they do
That's all for now, I will try posting updates more often. You will see the first of these patches deployed onto the beta branch in the following days.
Lots of Love > David Strachan
Achievements-And-Fixes-And-Bugs-Oh-My update
Greetings Captains!
I have just deployed 0.8.2.16 (called the Achievements-And-Fixes-And-Bugs-Oh-My update). Not only does it fix a huge number of bugs and provide a lot more onscreen help but Undercrewed now has Steam Achievements!
Steam Achievements
I have added the first batch of achievements into Undercrewed. There are some really fun and interesting achievements like finishing a level without adding shields to your spaceship. There will still be more achievements to come and I’m recording a bunch of stats that I will use in the future so you won’t lose any progress.
For a while there has been an extensive developer console in Undercrewed that allows you to edit almost anything on the fly (press ` to open it). I’ve put together a little guide to help people get the most out of it.
Captain_Richard bug: You can get 5+ people in a lobby when two people play on the same computer
Hakimodo bug: When playing online its possible for the obj_elonsium_defender to get stuck
Faces on the win/lose screen could sometimes be wrong colour
Sound effect now plays when local players join the lobby
Rare crash in networking when you get gameover
Going back to the main menu sometimes (read: always) would forget what players were playing
Loads of the new levels don't have the popup that says what their score is so far
On the menu I now count number of crew rather than number of players, this was sometimes causing things to get out of align. (and some other bugs todo with this)
Sine wave gun has bigger shots so they are easier to see
Features
After a match there are new accomplishments that it will monitor and tell you who did the best
Enemies are far less likely to pathfind under your ship
Sounds alert / animation when the ship energy / hull is low
Some more / better help on the first level
Outline for things on your ship
On main menu some particles when new player joins
Very very minor improvements to how data is saved that might improve load times?
New sounds for some rooms (those rooms might not even be available
New / better information about how bots work on menu
You now select if you want bots on or not from the main menu
Made the first level a little shorter to speed things up a little
When you pause with a gamepad the cursor is right over the main menu button so it looks like that is the default button
Rail gun now uses energy
If an enemy dies when off the screen warp them closer so the debris floats onto the screen
Popup message when there are more than 5 people in a party
Let me know if you have any problems (either with this update or anything else)
Lots of love > David Strachan
Achievements-And-Fixes-And-Bugs-Oh-My update on beta branch.
Greetings Captains
I am deploying the Achievements-And-Fixes-And-Bugs-Oh-My update onto the beta branch of Steam (also called 0.8.2.16). Not only does it fix a huge number of bugs and provide a lot more onscreen help but Undercrewed now has Steam Achievements!
For those that want to get a preview you can download the Beta version of Undercrewed by right clicking the game in your Library> Properties… > Betas > Code: cooltestpilot
Once I know it works fine I will make it available to everyone on live in a week or two.
Steam Achievements
I’m super excited to have Steam achievements now, this is just the first batch and I will add more in the future once I’ve got a gauge of how easy/hard they are.
You can see the achievements here, can you guess where the quotes are from?
I’m tracking a whole bunch of things I think might be used for achievements in the future so you won’t lose out by playing now.
Developer Console
While I have had a developer console in the game for a long time (press ` to open it), I haven’t had any guides or explanation of what it can do. So I’ve posted a small article with some examples of how you can use it.
Bugs and Fixes
With every version of Undercrewed I deploy I always think it has the most bug fixes in it, well this one might actually have the most (if not the most maybe it has the most visible ones). I’ve fixed a few rare but game breaking bugs and knocked out some that had been on my todo list for far too long.
Most substantial bugs:
Captain_Richard bug: You can get 5+ people in a lobby when two people play on the same computer
Hakimodo bug: When playing online its possible for the obj_elonsium_defender to get stuck
Faces on the win/lose screen could sometimes be wrong colour
Sound effect now plays when local players join the lobby
Rare crash in networking when you get gameover
Going back to the main menu sometimes (read: always) would forget what players were playing
Loads of the new levels don't have the popup that says what their score is so far
On the menu I now count number of crew rather than number of players, this was sometimes causing things to get out of align. (and some other bugs todo with this)
Sine wave gun has bigger shots so they are easier to see
Features
After a match there are new accomplishments that it will monitor and tell you who did the best
Enemies are far less likely to pathfind under your ship
Sounds alert / animation when the ship energy / hull is low
Some more / better help on the first level
Outline for things on your ship
On main menu some particles when new player joins
Very very minor improvements to how data is saved that might improve load times?
New sounds for some rooms (those rooms might not even be available
New / better information about how bots work on menu
You now select if you want bots on or not from the main menu
Made the first level a little shorter to speed things up a little
When you pause with a gamepad the cursor is right over the main menu button so it looks like that is the default button
Rail gun now uses energy
If an enemy dies when off the screen warp them closer so the debris floats onto the screen
Popup message when there are more than 5 people in a party
This isn’t my standard format for a news update, but I thought the last patch was interesting enough to write a short article about. So if you’re interested in a more ‘behind the scenes’ peek on how the AI works, then keep reading…
I've always been really happy with the AI that your crew uses, so the question you might be asking yourself is “why does it sometimes do stupid things?”.
How the AI Works
Let me tell you (with great excitement) about how the crew AI works... I often tell people “The AI learnt how to play the game” but what I mean by this is that it kept doing random tasks until it worked out the best strategy it could find, I put in the code for how the little bots should pathfind between rooms and how each room works, and I let it play the game for hundreds of hours randomly assigning rooms to the AI crew.
It would record information about the situation it was in, what rooms it was using, and how well it coped with that situation.
So now I have a database filled with loads of information that can answer questions like; Was better to use shields or guns when there were 3 enemies attacking and 2 crew were dead? Was it better to drive to the next point or should it be repairing rooms when the enemies were not doing much damage? Was it helpful to be on the shields when there was nothing to block?
What’s the problem?
The problem comes when the AI thinks it's doing the right thing but it doesn’t actually understand the situation. I’m going to list a bunch of examples below however this update has been all about me finding as many of these odd cases and program exceptions to fix them. Now, if you are not a programmer you should know that programmers hate it when they have some simple elegant code and have to go around adding a bunch of messy exceptions to deal with weird small little exceptions to the rules.
In no particular order:
Problem 1:
AI standing in a room while it waits to be given a task. While this doesn’t sound like a problem they might be unintentionally draining the spaceship of energy or using ammo.
Solution:
When I first made the AI system it was always better for an AI to be in a room when it wasn’t needed than for it to leave and have to walk back, for example it was better that the crew manned the shields when there were no enemies because it just meant they were more prepared, but as I added more complex rooms they would use energy or other resources that the AI didn’t take into account before. The fix for this was just to make them stand elsewhere and wait when they don’t know what to do. In the future I might make this even more optimal by spreading out around the ship or maybe waiting outside a room they are likely to need soon.
Problem 2:
People get to build their spaceship in Undercrewed so how do I even know if they put shields on it? Are there guns that the AI can still use? The AI might be able to fly the ship but is there even anything to drive to? The AI is really close to make energy, but does the ship actually need more energy?
Solution:
Before I let the AI system loose assigning tasks I check what tasks are even possible. I check a small number of things like; exclude rooms with someone already in, exclude rooms that don’t have enough energy to use, exclude rooms that are too far away from their target (lasers and tractor beams). However there were a bunch of other reasons a room couldn’t be used like if it had been EMPed
Problem 3:
The AI assigns itself to spawn holomedics but the player gets to the room first (so the AI thinks it should also be in this room (shooo I was in here first)).
Solution:
When the AI was selecting from possible tasks this was the only time it would check if the room was free. So quite often an event would happen that caused both the AI and the human players to know they needed to use a room. You can see how this would happen quite frequently and since I can't mind read what the player is wanting to do I just get any AI bots to check if their room is occupied every few frames.
Problem 4:
Sometimes there will be an event that requires all the crew to get into one room but rarely an AI member will just go about it's business burning in the radiation like nothing is happening.
Solution:
This was caused because of the order tasks were handed to the AI, sometimes they will be told they need to go into the radiation room but later in the code they are actually told to go and get some ammo. I’ve now made the order tasks are assigned better.
Problem 5:
The AI have the ability to be very accurate with their gun shots, they know how fast bullets travel and use this to predict where their target will be, so to stop the AI becoming super human marksmen I give them an arc that they are allowed to be in. However this arc was far too big so some smaller enemies/targets would still be in the arc and the AI would happily stand their thinking they are fulfilling their criteria while missing every shot.
Solution:
AI will now try and stay within 2 degrees of their target rather than 6 degrees. This does make them a bit too good however it's better that the bots over-perform rather than under-perform.
Problem 6:
When driving towards an objective the ship the AI could get into a cycle of rotating for 1 frame and then stops rotating for 1 frame and rotating for a frame etc. This is because it so accurately knows what angle it needs to fly at it only adjusts when it needs to, however this is very jarring for the player.
Solution:
This is one example where I have made the AI less intelligent, when driving the AI now overshoots when turning. This means it will only update it's angle after turning about every 5 degrees. This makes far more smooth shapes but doesn’t reduce the reaction time of the pilot.
I’m sure there are many things I still need to improve (and I’m also sure that some areas I have accidentally made worse)
Very soon I will be deploying the Achievements-And-Fixes-And-Bugs-Oh-My update onto the beta version of Undercrewed, as you can guess it's going to have the first set of Steam achievements (to help me gauge how easy and hard they are) and a whole bunch of bug fixes as well.
As always you can see what I am working on every day on the Undercrewed Trello. Join the community on Discord. We also have a Facebook and Twitter if you want to get news about new patches and updates I do.
Lots of love > David Strachan
Exciting new content that has been added to Undercrewed!
Greetings Captains.
I’ve been releasing a lot of exciting new content recently so I just wanted to give a rundown of some of the latest additions Undercrewed.
Everything-Needs-Ammo update
In this update you will now find yourself also having to keep your ship weapons filled with ammo. As you build your spaceship placing your ammo store room in a convenient place is going to be vital because your crew are going to be running between it and the guns shuttling ammo around.
No one will be around to save you if you can’t shoot back!
AI-Not-Being-So-Stupid update
This update is a laundry list of small changes that make your onboard AI crew better to work with. Undercrewed can be played between 1 and 4 players, however there are always 4 crew on your spaceship and if you don’t have a human friend to control them you are going to want this new smarter AI to help you out.
Keep an eye out for the new “moonwalking AI crew” bug that I accidentally introduced in this patch.
You-Get-A-Shield-And-You-Get-A-Shield update
When I launched the level Celestus (oh yeah that was also in this update) I wanted to theme the enemies around having their own shield to protect their spaceships, however I found them so entertaining to blast away from enemies I actually went around and added them to some other enemies as well.
10-To-Beam-Up-date (also called the Waaaaaaarp update)
This update brought a new enemies and a mission to Undercrewed. Set on the world of Elonsium it features an enemy that has mastered teleportation, they can move everything from their huge gargantuan ships down to warping their monstrous crew onboard your spaceship. Luckily you have onboard defenders that you can activate to beat them down.
Phew, that seems like a lot for just a couple of months. And this doesn't include a huge number of fixes and smaller additions like new rooms and content. I have loads of updates coming up as well so keep an eye out for those.
As always you can see what I am working on every day on the Undercrewed Trello. Join the community on Discord. We also have a Facebook and Twitter if you want to get news about new patches and updates I do.
Lots of love > David Strachan
Hotfix onto Beta called the AI-Not-Being-So-Stupid update
Greetings Captains!
I’ve done a hotfix onto beta called the AI-Not-Being-So-Stupid update.
I will write a whole blog post about the changes because they have been really interesting.
Changes:
Internal ammo room that should give out 15% ammo actually gives out 100% ammo... whoops.
Tiny one frame bug where a turret loading in animation wasn't the correct size for one frame, you wouldn't notice but once I saw it I couldn't let it stay.
Because of change behind the scenes with where guns are on the skill tree new players were unlocking the wrong default guns.
Moved some enemy attacks to spawn closer to their turret / vehicle
AI Changes: (hopefully)
AI is more likely to get out of a room if a player is in it.
AI will not be tasked to use a room that does not have enough energy to use
AI will not be tasked to use a room that a human player is in
When the AI crew are all forced to go into one room there were some actions that would overwrite this like if they picked up ammo
AI targeting an item in space used to have some flexibility with the angle they could shoot in but sometimes small objects were seen inside this arc when they were not
AI driving the ship could be a be jerky, they will now make bigger movements.
New bugs have been introduced in this patch including the new “moonwalking AI crew” bug.
