In case you missed last night's AMA stream, HAVE NO FEAR!
A lot of important things were covered, and not everyone likes to watch videos (or has an hour to sit through it) - Bossa Fureniku did a write up of the entire thing!
FULL write up post can be found here: https://www.worldsadrift.com/forums/topic/todays-ama-announcement-stream-lag-issues-pve-and-more/
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The DL;DR sum-up, ignoring all the questions asked (that can be found in the above post), is two things:
LAG the lag is an ongoing issue that we are investigating. We would appreciate feedback and reports from players - you can either report in the Discord server (there's a special channel for it), or send in a support ticket
PvE Servers are coming! This is a big announcement, and there's a lot of questions about it. I advise reading the AMA if you're confused or have questions, as they may already be answered. The biggest questions, summed up:
I thought this wasn't possible? We can't turn off the physics. People could still ram your ship, or drop panels on you. However, pistol and cannon damage will do nothing to players and their ships, and you can't salvage enemy ships.
But this is a PvP game! This is true. But, there's a lot of people out there who don't enjoy the game because of the constant PvP threat, or haven't even bought the game because of this. By no means are we leaving the PvP crew behind, but merely expanding so that more people can enjoy the game.
Live Stream in 10 minutes!
Hey everyone,
We're about to do a live stream from the Worlds Adrift steam page in which Herb, Ric and Oliver will discuss the present and future of the game, also taking your questions!
Hope you've all had a good week despite the lag-overcast-weather the servers have been having!
The News
PTS: As you may have already read, the PTS has unfortunately been delayed. This due to bugs relating to Alliance chat on the PTS build. Obviously, the devs are doing their best to fix it up as soon as possible, because we really want you to try it all out before it hits live! But we also don't want to delay the actual Alliances any longer!
Lag: We are aware of the severe lag some players experience; some were working on a hotfix last week, it didn't work too well in testing, so we decided to fix things up manually until we figure out something that works! As it currently stands server-side devs are continuing to deep dive investigate what's causing the lag. Technically, we already know that all the entity despawn tools have failed to do their job (Blight/Understorm), so there's deposits lying around that we started to clean out during maintenance until we fix the tools themselves. Plot twist has been that even after an intensive cleanup lag sometimes hits you anyway! So onward with the investigation.
"Julia, where the hell did Tech Tuesday go?" - Well, glad you asked! I wasn't comfortable pulling devs away from fixing more pressing broken things (see above), and will try to give them breathing space for next Tuesday. I promise, however, once this is all done, we will get you a nice, in-depth techy blog post! Got any suggestions about what you'd like to read about? Comment below!
The Good News
We are painfully aware (and have been actively reminded by the CCC and the playtesters) that we haven't released anything juicy in quite some time. is the non-codey folk are beginning to crack on with shiny new... CONTENT! So once all this is sorted we can move onto exciting things! On top of that, there's an announcement incoming next week. *eyebrow wiggle*
Also, the ROADMAP. IT IS UPDATED!
What have the devs been working on this week?
As a side note, if you feel like you want to make a contribution in terms of direct feedback? Test some games which may or may not be Worlds Adrift? Answer some vague questions? Vote on what you think the best artwork is?
Unfortunately due to technical issues the PTS (Public Test Server) release is delayed until we get everything fixed up – we want you to try out Alliances, after all!
We are also aware of the lag problems on live, and we are continuing to investigate.
⛵Captain's Log⛵: Community Cloud Council
Last week we have announced the coming of the Public Test Server, and now we have Community Cloud Council!
10 awesome community members will be ambassadors to the community, bringing your feedback directly to the game's development! You can read more about the CCC and how to become a member in the future HERE
👇👇👇
https://www.worldsadrift.com/captains-log/captains-log-community-cloud-council/
But what have the devs been up to last week??
-Working on Tier Zero requirements and features
-Steam capsule art revision
-Overhauling food system, over a dozen new recipes and ingredients that add temporary buffs such as impact damage reduction and sprint speed
-New resources such as cloth etc continue, alongside pigments allowing players to customise clothing colours if they can find the schematics
-Working on alliance stability
-Alliances bug fixing
-Fighting visual studio to get integration tests running with the new snapshot tool. Learning to use the new build system to deploy Improbable’s hopeful fix to some of the deadzone issues
-Investigating and fixing massive lag issues on live
-Releasing 0.2.2.5, and preparing hotfix 0.2.2.7
-Working on a new ship part for cooking
-Fixed rope reel-out sfx after max length
-Fixed creature’s harvest sfx
-Fixed glider not functioning after logout and log back in
-Potential fixed the helm throwing player off and not able to gain control bug
-Fixed the looking at ship frame schematics breaking UI bug
-Implemented scanning tooltip’s proc colored icon
-Prevent equipable item from putting into functional hotbar slot
-*BOOM! cah-chunk* (check out the full blog post for sound :D )
ICYMI Tech Tuesday: Public Test Server
Greetings Traveller,
Today is going to be a short but sweet Tech Tuesday.
The Public Test Server (PTS) for Worlds Adrift is jingling on its way! Like Santa Claus, but not at all and in the middle of Summer. Not sure where that analogy came from.
The intention of the PTS environment is to provide an opportunity for players to test and feedback on upcoming changes to the game before they are released into the live servers. Here's how you can make a massive difference:
Who is it for?
Love breaking the game in new and fascinating ways? Wanna test a new feature and help us tweak it? Or maybe you like finding new bugs?
This is for you! You will be able to test upcoming features, help us find big scary bugs that we haven't encountered, and probably encounter things that are very unstable or simply do not work properly at all: enter the PTS with this in mind!
The feedback and bug reporting on what you find on the PTS is CRUCIAL, and it’s the most direct way you can shape the future of Worlds Adrift.
What is the PTS?
The PTS will be a separate server running an early version of a future Worlds Adrift patch. You’ll see future patches on the PTS as well as more theoretical or radical ideas that our team want to try out with the community before working on them further. You'll be able to log in to a duplicated version of the live world, and mess around to your heart's content. What happens on the PTS stays on the PTS - meaning no progress or changes to the world will ever get copied back to live. In fact, during the duration of a given PTS version, we may wipe or update it frequently. We're planning to release a PTS build about two weeks prior to its release to the live servers.
In addition to getting feedback early, your feedback on the PTS will help us find game-breaking bugs, so we can fix them before releasing to live. But since the turnaround is just these two weeks, we won't realistically be able to fix all bugs that aren't game-breakers. This does mean that these things will already be logged and ready to fix two weeks sooner than normal (yay!). We're letting you into the sausage-making process of game development here - you'll get to see first hand the hard choices between fixing annoying but not game-breaking bugs or shipping a release on time, and unfortunately there's rarely consensus on the final call!
How will I access it?
Disclaimer: Only the existing players (at the point a given PTS release cycle goes up) will be able to access the magical realm.
In short:
We will post specifics on the day and help you log in correctly.
How will I leave feedback?
You've probably seen there’s a feedback button in the game! If you're as attentive as I am - it's in the upper right corner, or you can just press F2.
You will get an open window to leave us some feedback. Try to do your best leaving all possible details of what you were doing to cause the issue.
The PTS will be landing NEXT WEEK, so jump in then, test things out and tell us over on the official PTS forums what you think does or doesn’t work - we’re excited to hear your thoughts !
See you in the skies!
The Quick Fix Update - PATCH NOTES 0.2.2.5
NOTABLE BUGFIXES AND CHANGES
OTHER FIXES AND TWEAKS
Tech Tuesday: How to get YOUR islands IN-GAME!
Hey y’all, it’s ya boi Malford. King of islands and God of Hats (Julia: Malford destroyed the hat economy on our last Hunt a Dev stream Recap: CLICKY).
We originally built the Island Creator as an internal tool so we could build islands for Worlds Adrift, but after Tom made it excellent we decided to release it to the community. The islands you guys have made are one of the most amazing, impressive and beautiful things about our game and we’re forever grateful to our amazing community for that.
The Island Creator is a great creative tool, and we love people having fun with it and making cool, creative stuff. As we use the community crafted islands to build our world we’ve been asked plenty of times what our criteria for choosing islands are by people keen to increase their chances of getting an island in-game.
The key thing we look for in an island is that it’s believable. This is all a bit vague though, what specifically do you need to do to make a “believable” island?
Here are some tips:
We can’t guarantee that every island submitted will eventually make it into the game, but we hope this gives you an idea of what we look to include. These guidelines will keep evolving over time with each update and addition of extra features of the Island Creator.
You can also find more tips and discussion via the Island Creator forum, where some amazing community guides have already sprung up, and where you can share your own guidelines to help others.
Stay creative and see you in the skies!
Captain's Log: Melting
Greetings Travellers,
Hope all is well in your lives and games!
We've had a bit of a hectic week, if you follow the Bossa Studios twitter account, you'd have seen some of us were at Develop, the rest of us were trying to survive the heat of London.
For those of you not living UK - London is a big, busy, beautiful city absolutely not equipped to handle any kind of weather! So in a heatwave we kinda melt, so not much happens around that. No drama or anything.
So, what have the devs been up to this week?
As always, see you in the skies,
Julia <3
Next Patch pushed back to the 24th!
Greetings Travellers,
Unfortunately 0.2.2.X is pushed to the 24th, this update will concentrate on bug fixes. The good news is this update is going to pave the way for 0.2.3 which will at long last introduce Alliances, big old bug fixes (the ones you think of as a part of the furniture), and something super special to boot!
There are big BIG changes ahead. Apologies they are taking so long, IT WILL BE WORTH IT! 😀
