After a long(ish) and refreshing summer vacation, we're back with another major update! This one unlocks two new areas in the game: Frost Horn and Undercrown. There's also a new Animal Friend Skill, and lots of smaller fixes and tweaks.

About Localizations

Before we get to the update highlights, a few words about localizations. Full localizations will be coming before the full launch, which will take place later this year. (The estimated launch time frame is late October / November at this point, but we'll know better after the next update). The current game version has Simplified Chinese localizations, which we're using to test that things work properly. However, you may see some English in the Chinese version after this patch as we're still waiting to get new strings translated. To speed up the launch of this update, we decided to launch this update as is. If you want to play the more complete translation, wait another week or switch back to the 'previous_default' branch. I know this is not optimal, but I think it's the best compromise we can make at this point.

Update Highlights

Frost Horn

Frost Horn is now accessible. Trying to keep this more spoiler free this time. You'll be visiting a dam and wondering what's at the bottom of that artificial lake. Maybe there's a way to get to the bottom of it?

Undercrown

After progressing enough in your Main Quest, you'll be granted the access to the Undercrown - the last fortress and shelter of the good people of the island. Note: [spoiler]the underground map is HUGE, but you won't be exploring all of it. We may expand it later, but currently we're mostly only focusing on the parts that lead you to the Crown Station[/spoiler].

Achievements!

We've finally added Steam Achievements! Each of those should be hopefully attainable with your current save states. Some of them, like the Gatekeeper, which is unlocked when you beat the first miniboss, can be unlocked by just walking near the position where you originally killed the monsters. Same for the bigger bosses. Anything that requires doing thing X certain number of times should unlock after you do it one more time, even if you already have the required amount for that. I hope that made sense. You will probably also notice bunch of them unlocking automatically when start the game after the update.
Obviously some of the achievements such as the one above are not yet attainable for you guys. There are still a few more campfires and link towers you can't reach with the latest version.

Animal Friend

You can now befriend the animals running around in the wilderness with the new skill Animal Friend. Each skill level makes the animals less and less afraid of you, and also unlocks some new interaction features. Skill level I allows you to craft Animal Treats item and feed the animals. Once fed, they'll start following you like bunch of creeps. Expand your selection of Animal Treats, and you'll be able to lead a whole flock of animals where ever you fancy. (Although, alas, the animals (not affected by Mana) are still being respawned when you rest at the campfire or die. There may be a solution coming for this later.)
So you remember that baby deer? With Animal Friend skill level II you can also pet it like a boss, and go awww all day long. There's even a heart symbol shown. If the animal is injured, petting also heals it.
But don't worry. You can also continue murdering the animals senselessly and feast on their flesh. Your call. While we're planning on keeping this feature pretty simple, we're likely to expand this in the upcoming patches. So do let us know your thoughts on this!

Local Shared Screen Co-op Tweaks

To be honest, we expected all sorts of problems with the co-op as the whole feature was added in a bit of a hurry, but there were surprisingly few issues with it. We've fixed most of the issues people have reported (thanks!), and we're almost ready to take off that additional Beta text from the feature. Almost. So everything should a bit more fluent and foolproof now. For example, both players can now use mouse+wasd controls as long as the other player is using gamepad.

Linux Support Through Proton

The game is not officially available on Linux, but we've heard it works pretty well using Proton. Or it did before the last patch broke it, but it should be fixed now. Can't make any guarantees about the performance, but let us know if there are any crashes and we'll hopefully check it out. We're also planning on doing a native Linux version at some point.

CHANGE LOG

ADDED

- Access to 'Frost Horn'. - Access to 'Undercrown'. - Level Cap is now 42. Up by FOUR levels! - You can now install the fourth fuel cell to the Escape Pod. - Added Achievements. - Added Animal Friend skill levels I (feeding) and II (petting). - Added Animal Treats item for taming animals. (Placeholder art) - Added Sleeping Bag upgrade levels for sleeping longer and better. - Added medals for farming, building, and animals tamed. - Added water sound effects for rivers, waterfalls and coasts. - Second co-op player can now join using keyboard+mouse. (The first player uses a gamepad in this case.) - Bug reporter text editor word wrap. - All map filters can be toggled by pressing space or gamepad Y. - New 2D art for all fish types.

CHANGED

- Sleeping rested bonus effects depend on sleeping bag upgrade level and hours slept. - You can level up with experience you get by storing materials - Readable objects are now indestructible until after you have read them, so you don't miss anything by wildly swinging around. - Memory usage optimizations.

FIXED

- Chromatic aberration effect doesn't stay on when you die during it. - CTD fixes. - Memory Leak Fixes - Usual open world visual glitch & terrain fixes. - Tomb Guard positions are properly reset in Solaris Tomb. - All stage ground is generated before showing the first frame. - Grammar fixes. - Fixes to numerous sound effects. - Fixed Ark doors being shut if left the Ark or game before they got opened. - Fixed D3D11 renderer Linux proton support. - Some quest objectives are now more implicit and clear. - Fixed losing inventory (including Fuel Cells) in co-op. If you got stuck because of this, just finish all the bosses and go to the Escape Pod and the main quest will continue. - Cold and heat buildups now work correctly with coop.

Up Next

This is both scary and exciting, but we're actually seeing the end of the road here -- for version 1.0.0 that is. There's probably only one more huge content update, which will add the remaining areas (including the Crown Station, shelters, etc) and features (like building turrets). After that, a couple of smaller updates with balancing, minor content, proper voice overs, and the localizations. We're not yet sure what will happen post-launch, but in any case, we'll be doing some updates after the 1.0.0.
Against our hopes, we're still working semi-remotely as COVID-19 took a slightly bad turn here in Finland. But well over half of us have already gotten two shots, and the situation is getting better, so we're hoping to fully return to the office in September. This is the last stretch in any case, but then again the game is almost finished as well, so maybe this won't have that big a positive effect on the schedule at this point. Anyway, exciting times ahead! The next update will be massive as it should contain all the content we're still missing from the game. You can expect it to be available in some time September.

[ 2021-08-21 12:03:39 CET ] [ Original post ]