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Expanded Underground, Item Recycling, Full Screen Map, LOD Fading, and Optimizations. Consisting of the past 6 weeks, we decided to give this body of work the name “Dark Horizons.” Vast underground areas have been added along with the expansion of many core features, such as adding recycling of items to the crafting system, so the name seemed to fit perfectly. Sleep Mechanic (Single Player Only) Now, in any bed or hut, you can choose to sleep for a few hours of game time. This kicks off a cinematic event where you can watch the time go by, compressing many hours into just a few seconds. LOD Fading Unity has a fancy LOD system that actually works well and is performant, but does not have a native shader to handle the fade. We augmented this feature to allow for true dithered LOD fading, which completely removes the ugly LOD popping. On top of that, since it's 1 bit alpha, the LOD shader sorts perfectly with the atmosphere and is extremely fast to render. VSync Off We trying something else this week: forcing Vsync to off. This will uncap the frame rate. There's a few artifacts that this caused (like the logo flickering when loading a world) but it's really fun to play at 120 fps! Crafting Unlock Progression We are also trying a new progression system to add clarity to the tech tree progression. Simply build from your current build options to sequentially unlock new buildables. We have tried all kinds of fancy unlock systems and gates in the past, but sometimes simple is better. So far, we like the simplified approach, but let us know what you think. Creatures Come Out At Night Yet another gameplay balance idea we're testing, is having creatures mostly come out at night. The goal here is to have them start emerging while the sun is setting, then more and more come out under the shade of darkness. Oh yeah, night is a little darker too. Improved First Person Lots of updates here. We found the physics springs that run the boyancy on the camera were clamped at 30FPS, creating a jitter. We opened this up to an unlimited speed, which gives the result of silky smooth spring movement in first person. On top of that, we added a nicely modeled helmet interior and cleaned up the DOF settings. UI Version 3.0 The in game UI got lots of treatment. For instance, you can now move while in menu. There's a status bar on the top, and we'll be making progress on getting more full screen with the UI panels, such as the skill tree. Minimap and Map Markers The mini-map is back with new features, the map now shows your placed markers. Simply right-click on any marker in the GPS to designate it as either Marker 1 or Marker 2, and these markers will display on your Minimap. You also have full Latitude and Longitude lines from before, and the map is a little smaller and more transparent, so it satisfies the goal we had to reduce its impact on the overall scene and exploration. Creature Spawning The day and night change from last week was a good experiment since it showed us that nights full of aliens is the right feel, but agree that it felt there was missing during the day. We added a lot of detail to how and when various creatures would spawn through the day and night, and went through and adjusted all the creature spawns throughout the entire game. This allowed us to really dig into the ecosystem of the alien life, adjust what creatures appear where and when, which gives the world a more natural feel. Unlock System and Proficiencies We decided we like the Unlock System of buildables and revised the unlock logic further. We also added a unlock hint in the corner of each buildable that unlocks other buildables, which gives a nice subtle hint that these objects can be valuable to create. We also added the Proficiency Points to the Skill Tree screen. How you receive skill points is still being decided - we may more this into an overall “Level Up“ event, but for now this is a nice subtle evolution of this system. Proteus 2 Mines and Hives We've been building up the art for these for a while now, and are so happy to share these new beautifully dark and dank underground dungeons with you! We added a lot of dungeons to the world too. And there are multiple entrances and exits. And they're sprawling. And they're full of dangerous creatures! Revamped Space Walk Movement in low orbit has never been better, and both first and third-person modes have been upgraded. Full Screen GPS An expanded map system with more tools allows you to find what you're looking for. You can also place Map Markers through the right-click menu.
