Welcome to Week 163.

This week's theme is bug fixes and QoL. Thanks to feedback over the holiday period, we have addressed a number of issues. We have also fixed an issue that was limiting client performance.

We also have some details on what is to come next week involving the Lava Hunter present on Prometheus.

Jump in and have a read.

• Coconut Trees grown in crop plots now provide Wood when harvested
  
• C0NT4CT Radio will now find the most upgraded C0NT4CT device to connect to, rather than the closest
  
• Modifiers (Buffs / Debuffs / Auras) have been optimized so they will not perform updates every frame
  
• Fixed various issues with Crop Plots as they would sometimes take damage when sheltered, but not in greenhouses
  
• Made adjustments to SMPL3 quest rewards not to include outdated items as rewards, and added new items where applicable
  
• Did a balance pass on all fillable objects (Canteens / Water Troughs etc). In general, they have received a greater maximum capacity

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This week, we are releasing a number of smaller bug fixes and some small quality-of-life improvements that have been requested in the past. With the new year, we thought we would take the time to address some of these issues.

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In the past, we have spoken about ‘occlusion optimizations’ regarding buildings (week 153). Recently, we performed the same treatment on deployables (benches / trophies / decorations, etc) and came away with some performance improvements.

When we pushed this live a few weeks ago, we made a mistake: it was only active on servers or single-player, so players connecting to others or a server would not receive any of the improvements. This has now been enabled so that all players will receive the improvements.

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Next week, we will enable the Lava Hunter to Respawn on Open Worlds so that it can be fought again once the operations have been completed.

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https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/49493/Icarus_Weekend_Deal_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

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[expand type=details expanded=false]

• Hot and cold post-processing effect blending is no longer done via multicast, it is now entirely client-side
  
• Damage number spawning is no longer a reliable multicast
  
• Hot and cold post-processing effects are now gradually eased in and out when applied, should fix bug where effects would pop in and out if player moved quickly between cold/normal/hot areas
  
• Tooling to detect buried voxel brushable actors so they can be adjusted. Added actor transform manipulation tools
  
• Add overlapping/duplicate actor detection to Prefab tool
  
• Update Crocodile crit setup to be more accurate and provide more predictable hit-reactions
  
• Significantly increase weight of rifles and shotguns. Rescaled pistol weight (T3 reduced, T4 increased).
  
• Reduced weight of pistol rounds, increased weight of shotgun shells.
  
• This will better differentiate firearms and have weights be more reflective of the weapon size
  
• Fixed a typo in the kiwi mission
  
• Fix crops taking damage when sheltered but not inside a glasshouse
  
• Shrink thickness of Floor weather culling mesh to prevent weather leakage when jumping into the piece from below
  
• Adding updated destructibles for Turrets
  
• Fixed mission explosive (used in Zephyr and new missions) using an unessecary skeletal mesh instead of static mesh
  
• Updated Turret destructibles
  
• Tweaked Light Assault Carbine gunplay to be a little more tame (animation, screenshake), improved muzzle VFX
  
• Modifying the Contact Radio logic so that it always finds the most upgraded closest mission device, this will mean it always finds the most upgraded mission device rather than just the closest
  
• Adding IM_A prebuilt structure
  
• Moved Seed to the Resources section of the Field Guide so it shows the recipes it is used in
  
• Fixed Turret Stand DM material. Add logic for spawning additional turret DM pieces upon destruction
  
• Rename actors in Olympus from StaticMeshActorXXX to actual mesh name for readability/organization
  
• Remove HLOD texture/material setups for underwater rocks causing additional texture loads, no MIP biasing and poor visuals for no performance gain. Upped DFAO bias to remove artifacts
  
• Fixed Medic Cabinet collision to ensure shelter is correct when the cabinet is inside
  
• OLY: further level actor cleanup
  
• STYX: Remove empty mesh actors, clean up Outliner folder structure
  
• Increased Rope albedo resolution to 1k and fix missing phys mat define
  
• Removing final(tm) traces of unncessary materials from levels
  
• removed 'GT' from Geothermal atmosphere as it is missing from MPC_BiomeTransition and causing errors
  
• Clear usage of unwated materials in levels, prepping for deletion
  
• Set BloomKernel texture to 512px, saving about 30MB of VRAM, matching later engine update optimization
  
• Remove Outpost002 as the map entry for Space row in D_Terrains, causing fishing data to be incorrect on Arcwood. Add DT Validation to catch this
  
• Fixup redirectors across project
  
• Fake change to Prom to trigger worldgen
  
• Remove unnecessary material overrides in Cave Prefabs
  
• PROM: Cleanup Outliner structure, delete empty SM actors
  
• Add utility for viewing all processors & generator/transmutable times
  
• Fixed Arctic Vesper trophy crafting not granting bestiary points
  
• Add Max Stack size text to Field Guide
  
• Fixed Beeswax Advanced Set being called Base set in the tech tree
  
• Clean up Fillable data (removed unused & combined duplicates), removed related & obsolete Item data
  
• Fix Deployable Highlightable and View Distance initialization being server-only. Now Deployables with custom highlightable setups (single mesh highlighting for multi-mesh setups) will work on Clients and so will the recent view distance optimizations
  
• Fix Wood Cupboard being uncraftable on Maching Bench and Fabricator
  
• Updated DTs and Validation: Ignore validation on certain bespoke items. Disable Meshable root bone rotation checks because they're being ignored and slow validation. Remove duplicate Decayable rows, genercise names and update previously used defines. Update DeployableSetups as per navigation validation requests
  
• GFur settings pass & optimization across entire project. Updated tooling to find incorrect settings
  
• Update Gfur settings on Cold Steel items for improved physical response to movement (looks less like underwater). Removed GFur from Axe/Pickaxe/Sickle as its not visible in FP making it a wasted performance cost
  
• Disable Light Functions on Medium shadow quality (not just Low) for a potential performance boost without needing to disable shadows entirely
  
• Updated SMPL3 quest rewards, adding Brambles and Coconuts, and their seeds
  
• Removed Thermos drinks from SMPL3 quest rewards as they were for the old drink system
  
• Increased Enzymes reward count for SMPL3 quests to 2-5
  
• Grants a small amount of XP when harvesting bones
  
• Cleaned up usage of Fillable data by genericising row names, deleting duplicates and reassigning.
  
• Add DTValidation to pick up on duplicate Fillable rows.
  
• Balance tweaks include increasing Large Water Trough from 15L to 30L, increasing Filtered Water Trough from 30L to 60L, decreasing Water Barrel from 300L to 150L, increasing Watering Can from 5L to 10L and Watering Cart from 300L to 250L
  
• Fixed Biofuel Radar not playing deploy animation by gating tick logic off the deploy animation being completed
  
• Fixed Biofuel Radar screen visuals by adding a black screen behind UI widget
  
• Prevent Radars from being interactable before deploy animation has finished
  
• Tidied Base class blueprint for readability
  
• Add Socket to Biofuel Radar mesh so that the widget is properly connected to a bone
  
• Fixed Highlightable on Meta Radar with separate Head mesh
  
• Fixed RMA on Biofuel Radar being wrong preset resulting in it looking wet
  
• Fixed Radar materials not having Physical Materials set
  
• Rename MA_DEP_Radar (which is a unique shader that is not required) so it can be deleted and MA_ITM used instead
  
• Fix low resolution textures on Biofuel and Electric radar meshes
  
• Fixed NOMAD progress breaking if players disconnect while the starting dialogue is playing. Ensured Tomato grow properly skips to next step

[/expand]

Welcome to Week 162.

This week we go over a multiplayer weapon fix that has now been tested, and the performance improvements that come along with it.

We also feature the new Coconut Seeds, which will drop from wild coconuts and can be planted to grow your own crop back at your base. These can also be brought down from the Orbital Workshop.

We’ve also got a look ahead at what to expect next week.

Jump in and have a read.

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As mentioned previously we have had an experimental build up over the holiday period testing a fix for players connecting to a multiplayer game and being unable to fire weapons in some circumstances, particularly in older prospects.

Guns, bows and crossbows were unable to be fired by players in older prospects unless they were the server. These types of items have their own special inventory controlled by a container inventory manager. They differ from the the regular inventories on benches as they track ammo & attachments. This meant the game was not aware of ammo levels, as it was waiting for the information to be replicated from the server. The replication was not occurring because of the sheer number of these inventories that needed to be replicated. Other items that act in a similar way are the medical kit, seed pouches and anything that contains an attachment (so most T2 equipment and above).

There was a few different things that were causing the issue.

• We were not always cleaning up old container inventories. These could come about by having items be created, used and discarded or destroyed, their inventories would still exist. We have now improved this so the inventories are now cleaned up appropriately, we have also added checked when a prospect starts up to clean up any unused inventories to cater for ones that should have been cleaned up but were not.
  
• There was too much data to replicate to clients all at once. As prospects get older and people create new weapons, seed pouches and medical kits the amount of data to replicate becomes quite large. We have also modified the way this data is replicated to allow for targeted updates to prevent network flooding every time a single gun is fired and its inventory its updated.

These fixes provide a performance improvement by having less inventories to manage and keep updated for each player in the game. This also means that we are sending far less networked data which allows clients to be kept in a better up to date state and reduces the amount of unnecessary replicated data to process.

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From this week on, when you harvest coconuts, you may get a coconut seed. Like all seeds, this seed can be used for crafting or planted to grow your very own coconut tree for harvesting.

In addition, there will be packs in the orbital workshop so you can bring seeds down to the surface. This will also mean you’ll be able to grow coconuts on maps where they aren’t found in the wild.

Coconuts have also received a small QoL as they are now stackable, their weights have been adjusted and they now yield more from wild harvests.

This was added to ensure that all food plants were now growable, regardless of location.

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Next Week we are planning on addressing several bugs and issues found over the holiday period that have been reported and some other small QoL improvements before we start back up into the planned work for the year.

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https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/40692/Icarus_Pets_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

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• Enabling Coconut Seeds, Workshop Coconut Seed pack and Coconut Palm which is growable in crop plots
  
• Coconuts now stack to 10
  
• Coconuts weight Adjustment 200 -> 800
  
• Upped Coconut yield when harvesting locally (1 to 2-3)
  
• Doubled maximum partial network bunch size from 64kb -> 128kb
  
• Added a fix for prospect files where clients couldn't use or reload various ranged weapons
  
• Server host now cleans up orphaned inventory container component data on prospect load, this should prevent issue where clients weren't getting inventory containers (weapon mags, seed pouches, etc.) replicated to them because the initial replication packet was too large
  
• Increased various default network connection timeouts from 3->6 minutes