Subsistence News

Hi guys. Today's update introduces a new fishing mechanic into the game. A highly requested feature since the introduction of water into the world, players are now able to craft fishing rods and float-fish in the ponds and lakes (it is not currently possible to fish in running rivers). The rod can be crafted from the default player crafting menu.

Once the fishing rod is crafted, players must craft fishing tackle. Fishing tackle requires a tree grub (a new item), which can be harvested from the large fat-trunked trees dotted around the map. Tree grubs can be eaten by themselves in desperate situations, but provide very little nutrition.



There are currently two types of fish that can be caught in the lakes and ponds; Salmon and (a generically named) small fish. Salmon can be eaten raw, or can be filleted to produce fillets of meat, and fish-oil (which can be used in medicinal crafting).

Small fish can also be eaten raw, or cooked whole (providing better nutritional value). Being small, they take much less time to cook than other proteins. Instead of being used for meat, players can choose to instead harvest them for oil.

I intend for the variety of fish (and their purpose) to expand over time as things continue to progress.



Medical items now require Medicinal Tonic to craft. The tonic can be crafted using fish oil and medicinal herbs.



Meats have always used up way too much inventory space. I had kept them as single items due to complications with handling the various cooked states and perish timers.

Here are the new rules:

• Meats can be stacked providing they are at the same cooked state.
  
• Only single pieces can be cooked at a time (per cooking slot).
  
• Perish timers are maintained for each individual piece even when stacked.
  

I’ve also removed the individual rotten states for each food type, and have simplified it into a single (stackable) “rotten meat” item. This should lead to cleaner inventory management. A greater purpose for this item will be added at a later date (currently you can only recycle it).



For a long time, players have been able to store small dead animals without risk of them perishing. This exploit devalued efforts to keep food fresh and presented issues with storage space. This has now been patched. Rotted animals can still be butchered but yield less resources (and no meat).



Various models for base items had some fairly janky UV mapping, so I spent a bit of time cleaning these up. It’s a subtle change, but one that has been bugging me for a while, and i feel looks much cleaner now. Examples:



Many players reported frustration of accidentally clicking “eat all” when extracting tomato seeds etc. I’ve now put limits on all consumable items to avoid this:



Many players have reported that it takes too much wood to make repairs after hunter attacks. I’ve increased the amount of hit-points per repair. However each standard repair now takes 1 nail. This should help balance the dwindling need for nails during the later game.



Thanks to the help of a few community members, I was able to trace down certain conditions that would prevent specific hunter teams from attacking player bases. It was based on the combined locations of the bases, and intersecting bodies of water. The issue is now patched, so if you weren’t experiencing attacks before this patch then you may want to keep and eye out for incoming attacks. This issue was affecting normal and revenge attacks.

• A splint now takes two sticks to craft.
  
• Fixed bug that was allowing small dead animals held in player inventories to become alive again after reloading a save.
  
• Increased hit-points of floodlights and and solar panels. This will make them more resilient to base attacks.
  
• Fixed bug that was preventing the bleeding icon from showing for hosts of co-op games.
  
• Fixed bullet/water impact fx to play correctly in deep water:
  
• Fixed issue whereby transparent buildable mesh would become invisible when viewed in front of water.
  
• Updated bow so that you can now hold down “aim” while the player is equipping the weapon, then it will transition into the aim state without having to re-click key.
  
• Fixed bug that prevented the profiles launching if there were special characters in the profile name or password.
  
• It now takes less time to cook rabbit and chicken.
  
• Added rocks and other visual tweaks to rivers/waterfall.
  

Please note that the new fishing system is intended to be iterated and improved on, so I welcome feedback once players have given it a try. I’m excited about the new possibilities this opens up for future updates. Thanks for everyone’s support and patience as the game continues to evolve. I’ll be on the forums as always, so please let me know your thoughts on the new changes.

Have a great week!
ColdGames

Hi guys. Today’s update introduces a large expansion to the world and offers a much greater space for players to explore, build, hunt, fight and survive. I’ve been meaning to expand the world boundaries for a long time and decided to spend some dedicated time and focus on doing so.

My hope is this expansion and new varied terrain will offer greater immersion and freedom for players. More varied build locations and base design potential, and present a more interesting challenge to orientate and navigate the world.

You’ll find a new river winding down the slopes of the expanded area, running down into a new big lake. Rivers and waterfalls will open up new possibilities for gathering and game-play mechanics for future updates. Many players have requested fishing, and I totally agree this would be awesome. I have some ideas of how the mechanic could work and will be putting more thought into it.

There are also new stretches of open beach and small inlets for players to explore:

The addition of the new lake area has also opened up some areas of deep water. I’m keen to expand on this, and give players meaningful incentives to dive and explore the depths. I personally love when games allow you to explore deep underwater. Please stay tuned for more on this.


New trees (increased performance)
I’ve gone ahead and replaced many of the old pine trees throughout the entire map. The old trees were very high-poly and put a lot of demand on hardware with their high alpha calculations for shadows and light shafts. They were also fairly small, making it hard to create a sense of density to forest areas. They were also somewhat dull with a very muted color palette.

The new trees are much lower poly-count (1/3 of the previous trees). They have a more dense foliage spread, meaning certain familiar areas may feel very different. I’m also using a fairly high saturation pallet for the materials, meaning the greens are way more vibrant. This should make the world feel more colorful.

The increased foliage density from the new trees may have an impact on resource gathering and predator/hunter encounters. It will be less easy to spot items and enemies in the world. I’ll be keeping an eye on how this affects balance (may need some tweaks). I welcome your thoughts and opinions on this.

I’ve decreased the fog density at higher altitudes, giving players better visibility. I’ve also decreased the depth of field over distance to account for the larger vistas.


Few other minor tweaks:

• Reduced hunter movement speed while sprinting.
  
• Added distance-based low-pass filtering for all footsteps.
  
• I replaced the (annoyingly) loud Unreal logo when booting the game for a quiet one (many players had mentioned this was hard on the ears).
  
• Added correct weapon impact sounds for many base items (campfire, lights, beds, switches, etc).
  
• Fixed issue where hosts of co-op games could not see water-based bullet impacts.
  

World expansion is something that will continue as the project continues to progress. However with this new expansion now merged to the main build, I’m excited to start focusing on new gameplay features and mechanics for the next update. I have a long list of ideas I’ve been eager to work on.

I hope everyone has an awesome holiday with their families and friends. Thanks so much for all the continued support for the project. I’m really looking forward to continue evolving the game into 2018. See you on the forums!

CG

Up until now, hunter bases would remain statically placed once they set-up camp. This could lead to some frustrating scenarios of players not being able to push the hunters out of their area.

Today’s update allows player to completely destroy hunter bases, forcing them to abandon their post and start building from scratch at another location in the world.

This change will hopefully allow players to truly influence the world and the situations they find themselves in.


To destroy a hunter base, players can now craft the BCU Cracker at the workbench.

This device can be placed on any BCU. Once placed it will auto-activate and result in huge damage to the base (and ultimately destroy the BCU). Once hunter BCU’s are destroyed, they will abandon the base and need to find a new building location to start from scratch.

Hint: Destroying a hunter base does produce some additional loot, but it can also attract rogues so keep your guard!

Note: Remains of abandoned hunter bases will slowly decay over-time.


Up until now, there was little incentive to hunt down rogue hunters. However the BCU Cracker requires Gears (a new item type), that is primarily found on dead rogues.

The hope is this will provide more interesting and varied later-game goals. Rather than avoiding rogue squads, players will have meaningful reasons to engage in combat (when they choose to do so).



Players can now craft grenade-tipped arrows at the workbench. They can be extremely handy for base defence when dealing with groups of hunters, and also do significant damage to base structures.

Hunters are also now trained to use grenade-tipped arrows. They will favour using them when they feel they are unable to get well placed shots with standard grenades. Please let me know if this feels off-balance!


Due to the heavy power/mass requirements of the BCU cracker, there are now some additional means to generate power.

Reared animals now produce higher quantities of fat, which can be rendered down into biofuel to power the base.



Another new means of generating supplemental power, medicinal plant seeds can now be grown and harvested. Once harvested they can be crafted-down into biofuel.



I’ve added an option to join co-op games via IP. I know that port forwarding has been an issue for many players, so I hope this offers more options for those wishing to host (LAN or VPN).

I know a lot of work is needed to make the hosting/joining process easier. This is high on my list and will continue to be worked on. Thanks for your patience while I continue to work on this.


I’ve added a basic chat client for co-op games. This can be opened by hitting ‘return’ while in game (which can be rebound in the controls menu).



During co-op games (and singleplayer), it can be frustrating (and unfair) when an animal levels-up after killing a player when on low health, leading to it becoming more powerful and having fully replenished health. Now when an animal levels-up, it only regains 30% of its health.



Previously it was difficult to identify when base items were damaged. This often led to critical items being destroyed during attacks (sometimes entire storage chests full of gear). I’ve added damage skins for nearly all base items so players are more aware of when items need repair.

• The bow now costs slightly less cordage to craft.
  
• Bed spawns now only cost 350 power (rather than 400).
  
• Slightly reduced power usage of fridge (from 0.25 per sec to 0.20).
  
• Power generator now uses ⅔ the fuel, but generates power at ⅔ the rate (so needs to be run for longer durations).
  
• Ash stack count increased from 200 to 250.
  
• Nails stack count doubled from 100 to 200.
  
• Fixed bug where premium arrows would show as normal arrows for hosts of co-op games.
  
• Added models for premium and grenade-tipped arrows to third-person perspective.
  
• Slightly reduced the volume of the generator running.
  
• Increased detail of Wellhead texturing.
  
• Fixed bug that was causing single-player profile day-counts to be reset.
  

As always, thanks so much to everyone that has been supporting the project, and welcoming and helping out new players. I excited to continue moving forward with new features. I know there is a ton of work needed, and the road ahead is long, so thank you for your continued patience moving forward!

I’ll be on the forums so please do share and issues and feedback on the new changes. Have an awesome weekend!

CG