Alongside these changes, we also spent some time this week speaking about some of our ongoing work and upcoming features we’re excited to be debuting.
A large Performance Improvement is planned, and we go into depth about what the changes we’re making are, and our expectations for how this will impact performance overall. We also speak about our upcoming Dynamic Quests in Open World, and finally the P2P (player-to-player) benefits and changes as a result of our upcoming Data Decentralization.
Update On Performance Optimization
Performance is always something at the front of our mind in our work on Icarus and while this has been a long-standing issue, addressing it has remained a priority. We have identified an issue that in early testing could result in large performance improvements for a number of players.
Icarus heavily utilizes Unreal Engine’s Runtime-Virtual-Texture (RVT) technology to provide terrain texture details and environmental blending for our rocks and cliffs. We have found that our heavy use of this tech has led to a bottleneck on the GPU. We're working hard to remove this bottleneck which we expect to significantly improve performance, but this change will take a while to implement due to us having to make changes to a large number of terrain assets.
Improvements such as this are time-consuming, and once discovered the work to rectify them may overlap one or more of our regular weekly updates. However, a portion of our team is dedicated to improving performance, and their work is integral to our future plans and ongoing improvement of the Icarus experience.
Coming Next Week - Open World #2
We are moving ahead with our plan to develop the next stages of this feature, starting with the first expansion to the world next week, Dynamic Quests.
Open World has been a big success for us, and your support of the new mode has been incredibly encouraging and a proud moment for our team.
Dynamic Quests require you to build a new ‘Short Range Radio’ on the planet, which you can interact with to trigger the start of these objectives.
These Dynamic Quests will provide objectives in the local area and biome to where you have built your Short Range Radio, keeping your missions close to base and your resources.
Completing these Dynamic Quests will reward you with a specialized pod that drops down to the surface, and when interacted with, will provide you with a few different options to choose from such as food, ores or tools for your payment.
Depending on the difficulty of the quest, the rewards will scale appropriately, and players will also receive XP for completing these quests.
Dynamic Quests are the first step in our efforts towards building Open World into being a vibrant, engaging game mode, and the early support you have shown us has given us acknowledgement of your appreciation for this effort. We’re excited to build into the future of this mode with you.
New Features
We’re excited to be bringing some highly requested features to Icarus as part of the fourth installment of our Community Feedback patch series.
Due to popular demand on Feature Upvote - You are now able to sit on chairs, allowing you to finally enjoy the comforts of your elegantly designed bases and homes. Set your team up around the dinner table, or rest in front of the fireplace after a long day of surviving the elements, the choice is yours.
We’re also releasing the Water Bomb, a feature we’ve been working on for a while and are excited to bring to the tech tree. Designed as a fire deterrent, the Water Bomb explodes on impact and is far more effective than the fire whacker at dealing with infernos with double the radius and guaranteed effectiveness.
The Water Bomb fits into the grenade class, although its specialized purpose for dealing with fire makes it ineffective in combat scenarios. The other grenades (Smoke Grenades and Frag Grenades) are also receiving improvements in this week's update.
Finally, we’ve also added the only missing trophy from the collection, the Wolf Trophy, so you can display all your conquests on the walls of your base.
Reworked Features
Alongside our new features, we’ve addressed some other community-led changes to existing features that have either been highly requested, or come as a result of other changes we’ve made recently to core game systems.
- The Repair Hammer and Upgrade Hammer have been merged into a single item, removing the need for two item slots for a singular tool that shared too many similar characteristics to warrant its own space and recipe. There is also a new input hint in the bottom right of the UI to teach you how to use the item in its new form.
- The Tomahawk Talent which provided the ability to throw axes has been removed and replaced with ‘Berserker’, which provides greatly increased damage and attack speed at the expense of durability and stamina costs. The subsequent talent has also been changed to an alternative, ‘Controlled Rage’ which lowers the impact of these durability and stamina cost penalties.
- The Bow Crosshair has now been applied across all weapons which have a ‘charge’ effect, such as all bows, throwing spears, and throwing knives. This provides a more informative UI when using these weapons.
Decentralization Update
With Data Decentralization nearing, we wanted to address the impact on players who choose not to use Dedicated Servers for their Icarus experience, and rather prefer to play in the standard P2P model.
There are numerous benefits to a decentralized data model, but to explain to people who may not understand the tangible differences, here is a brief explanation.
All Icarus data will now be stored on players' individual PCs. In the past, this has been stored in the cloud on servers we used from companies such as Microsoft Azure. This data includes player accounts, missions, save games, and more. This data is stored in tiny files, no more than a single megabyte, so won’t take up space on your PC’s hard drive and is written in plain ‘.json’ format so it is easy to access for modders or people who are curious about their game data. This transfer of data from the cloud to players' PCs, is ‘data decentralization’.
Some of the benefits to players will be have immediate impact. These include:
- There will be no cap on character limit, as with this data stored locally, we don’t have to artificially limit it to protect our server performance. This encourages players to investigate specialized builds for unique scenarios.
- With data stored locally, characters can no longer be ‘lost’ or be mysteriously deleted by a fault in the servers, as this data is all stored locally and won’t be susceptible to any problems communicating between the server and the player's PC.
- Characters are no longer ‘bound’ to an individual Prospect, Open World or Outpost, and can be active across multiple sessions simultaneously. You’ll no longer be required to remove a character from a prospect or mission to take them onto a different one. This also means the ‘remove from prospect’ button will be retired, as it will no longer serve a purpose.
- Workshop Items can now be tracked in bundles and stacks, allowing us to provide a similar experience to planet-crafted items. We are also able to track durability, allowing for more crossover between different prospects and sessions.
- Mission rewards can now be granted upon the completion of objectives, rather than the completion of the prospect encompassing them. Talent unlocks, Item Unlocks, and Ren can be immediately granted, and players won’t be restricted from receiving their rewards if one player can’t leave the mission or another similar problem arises.
- Exotic Extractions will no longer require you to leave the planet's surface, with the addition of specialized exotic drones you can load and send into orbit, all while carrying on your missions on the planet's surface without impact.
- With data being localized, this greatly reduces the strain on our servers to withstand large-scale changes and additions, which opens the door for us to dive into some of the more ambitious projects and detailed improvements we’ve been wanting to make for some time. With the impact on your personal hard drives being near non-existent, we can execute these projects without fear of causing further problems for players' in-game experience.
- Many of you will remember some of the large server outages we have faced over the last year, and some of these have unfortunately been a result of forces outside our control, including our server providers. With the move of our data to a decentralized format, we will be removing the reliance on these providers to maintain their part of the motor, leading to a more reliable, less affected player experience with the game's active state.
Changelog v1.2.24.103878
New Content
- Add new BuildingHammer actionable setup which combines both Upgrading and Repairing
- Apply new combined building actionable to existing hammers
- Add keybind UI for hammers to show their inputs (LMB to Repair, RMB to apply Upgrade, R to select upgrade)
- Remove original Upgrade Hammer as it is now deprecated by all other hammers
- Hooking up Sitting anim bp to the chair base logic
- Add Trophy setups and Heads for Conifer, Snow and Desert (Hyena) wolves. Shuffled some rows so they're grouped better
- Add support for sitting in Rustic Dining and Living chairs
- Remove bed projection widget logic
- Added killcam availability to throwing knives and spears
- Set waterbomb blueprint unlock to be accessible
- Remove Talent unlock requirement for waterbomb
- Tweak waterbomb throwing data
- Reworked Tomahawk talent, removing throwing from axes but granting greatly increased combat capabilities.
- Reworked Oh wait, I need that talent, reducing the penalties for the reworked Tomahawk talent
- Removed throw action availability from Axes now that none can be thrown
- Reorganized talents in the Habitation: Repairing talent tree after removal of the waterbomb talent from this tree
- Disconnect flammability from grenade payload as part of damage refactor. Will instead buff base damage number
- Add icons for new wolf trophies
- Fixed grenades (and other forms of radial damage) not correctly displaying damage numbers
- Double base damage of Frag grenades to bring them more in line with current average creature health
- Increase outer radius size of Grenade explosion to be 50% larger
- Increase max throw distance of grenades and waterbombs
- Add min throw charge for Grenades so they can't be tap dropped at your feet
- Fixed Grenade and Waterbomb to use the same StaminaAction handle
- Removed water tags off of Waterbomb to stop UI showing that you can water crop plots with it, because this is not possible
- Water bomb: Moved talent to T2 crafting bench.
- Berserker talent: Increased damage and reduced attack speed even further. Greatly reduced wear rate penalty.
- Controlled Rage talent: Now grants less reduced wear rate, increases felling yield
- Tomahawk and Controlled Rage talents: Renamed row, causing players to lose these talent and be refunded talent points if they are not already at maximum.
- Tomahawk: Reduced durability penalty, increased damage and reduced attack speed.
- Controlled Rage: Added addiitonal yield from felling trees
- Cleanup Character assets part 2
- Fix wrong PM being used in several assets which would have resulted in broken visual/audio effects
- Add validation checks in AssetInfo tool to pick up incorrectly used PMs
- Cleanup unused, old assets to de-clutter project
- Delete unused and expensive assets in Developer folders
- Fixed Meta Extractor not animating (no AnimBP hooked up)
- Removed unused particle system from Extractor base class
- Fixed Meta Extractor AnimBP not compiling due to previously removed variable
- Remove unused recipe holographic preview logic/assets from ProcessorBase
- Remove level BP logic in ReplyTest map that doesn't exist anymore and was flagged during PIE
- Fixed Platinum Crossbow repair requiring composites, now correctly requires platinum.
- Platinum and Titanium Crossbows are now affected by cheaper bow crafting talents
- Fixed a bug preventing throwing knives and spears from consuming stamina while aiming
- Fix an issue where manually placing an item was ignoring return values from a remove only inventory, this means that players do not loose grown produce when attempting to place grown produce in a full plot
- Cleanup deprecated assets in Assets folder
- Fix incorrect shadow settings on several foliage types
- Add validation to check FT shadow settings
- Reduced weight of throwing spears and knives by 60%
- Allow Bow Crosshair to be used on more weapon type
- Implement the BP_CrossHairInterface on BP_ActionableBehaviour_Throwable
- Use the existing information from D_RangedWeapon for animating the bow crosshair UI
- This means that throwing knives and spears provided better UX to players (like bows)
- Adjust default projectile camera offset during killcam
- Fixed incorrect camera rotation during throwing knive/spear killcam
- Update icons for interior wood wall double door and window meshes
- Remove deprecated KeybindHints UMG that was replaced with FocusItemInfo
- Changed default value for KeybindPrompt to be text on the left
- Adding some additional input contexts for various items (torches, throwing weapons etc)
- Add new ST_Inputs StringTable to not continue bloating ST_UMG
- Removed throwing actionables from D_Actionable axe items
- Moved dead prospector assets in PRP folder
- Trasferred riverbanks from Blue to Green Quad level, and Alien's cave cliff and transition cave from Green to Purple Quad level, DLC
- Adding creature notifiers
- Adding in geothermal lake and pool audio and adjusting spacializer and volumes
- Creating Landmind Actor and Adding Explosion Logic
- Setting up the Final Steps for Story Mission 5, swapping quest step to self craft a beacon
- Setting up Orbital Strike Quest Spawning
- Updated Highlightable on the Mission Data Device
- moved alien fossil assets in PRP folder
- Adding lava lake audio and event and DT setup
- Final Basic Logic For Story Mission 5
- Enabling Creature Spawning on Story Mission 5
- Fixup redirectors after Dead Prospector assets were moved
- Remove deleted row reference for Pro 5 story mission
- Cleanup Character assets part 1
- Adjustments to lava lake audio
- Added Ponga Tree & Foliage Cleanup to Mega Trees Levels
- Audio setup for Aspen saplings and seedlings. Also reduced foliage placement random pitch value to match other saplings
- Added Scoria icon and added it into D_Itemable
- Replaced macros with impassable meshes, artic area, blue quad
- Painted Voxels resources in Grasslands biome and polished cliffs/riverbanks, Green Quad, DLC
- Adding Basic Mission Flow For Story Mission 6
- Voxel Resource Placement in TU & AC on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Adding Clay, Obsidian, Tomato and Potatoi Mesh Hookup
- Resource Placement in Volcanic Biome and removed Dead Trees From Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Added potato icon art and added it into Itemable datatable
- Added growing frame mesh to version 2 of the bean crops. Removed colour change in the shader and made a change in the base texture to match. Updated foliage type and farming growth stage data table
- Submitting alien fossil cave map V2 and 3D assets
- Resource Placement in Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Clean up alien fossil cave redirectors
- Delete IceCool materials which have compilation errors
- Fix Geothermal Pools not working as water and RVT not writing in runtime
- Replaced macros with impassable meshes, swamp area, blue quad
- Move proto swamp lake audio actor to persistent level as its data was getting trashed by world gen
- Placed Cave Volumes and Voids, painted voxels in Tu, AC and SW biomes, Green and Yellow Quad, DLC
- Resource Placement And Voxel Placement, Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Voxel Resource Placement in SW on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Added DLC icon art and added them to D_Itemable
- Added breakable clay node combined mesh
- Added Breakable Obsidian node combined mesh
- Fix harvesting small trees temporarily causing incorrect footstep sounds to play by tweaking harvest destructible mesh collision settings so that they don't interfere with surface checks
- SM_Breakable_Scoria combined meshes version
- Add Steam VFX to Preset Geothermals
- Apply correct settings for footstep audio on geothermal pools and lakes
- Apply correct settings for footstep audio on geothermal pools and lakes - fix reference broken in previous commit
- Add icons for Clay Brick buildables
- Fixed up asset pointers in BPs for Clay Brick buildables
- Add Beam scene for IconEditor
- Fixed ItemsStatic pointing to wrong Buildable rows for Clay Brick buildables
- Small adjustments to the swamp lake audio
- Changed mask texture on TU_Dirt Decals under Tussocks
- Polished Voxels resources in GL,TU and SW biomes and polished cliffs/riverbanks, Green Quad, DLC
- Voxel Resource Placement in SW & Added IMP Around Map on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Resource Placement And Voxel Placement, Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Updating most volumes of new creatures, adding notifiers, adjusting notifiers, adjusting spacializers and general creature updates and improvements. Adding footstep notifiers for batdog TBC
- Added skeleton rig and bone mapping from the buffalo, These were used in retargeting the animations to the blueback
- SK_ITM_Sledgehammer mesh, material and textures
- Replaced old IMP with Merged IMP on Blue Quad
- Adding FLODDescriptions for Obsidian, Clay and Scoria Breakable Rocks
- updated alien fossil cave for final touches
- Adding B.Dog howl vocalisations and all footstep anim notifiers and movement audio events
- added conch mesh, textures and materials
- Add initial pass of a DPS target dummy to help balance weapons - developer only (for the time being)
- Added version one of the repair bench mesh and textures to the project
- Fortifications - Wood Gate- added prototype mesh and open animation
- Fortifications - Wood Wall - added prototype mesh
- Fortifications - Wood Walkway - added prototype mesh
- Fortifications - Wood Spikes - added prototype mesh
- Fortifications - Wood Walkway Ramp - added prototype mesh
- Fortifications - Wood Forward Ramp - added prototype mesh
- Fix scoria BP not inheriting from correct base class causing FLOD error
- Added the option to disable landscape sculpting in WT_RiverSpline
- Updated Electric Spline junction mesh to use new mesh, delete old temporary mesh, update texture settings for new mesh
- Voxel Placement In the Volcanic Biome And Swamp Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Adding Sledgehammer impact on clay resource audio and event and also corrected B.Dog with wrong vocalisation and added crossbow aim sound to data table
- Added aspen seedlings and saplings in GL biome, cleaned up resources, Green Quad, DLC
- Rework Geothermals for non-met water setup
- Clay Resource Placement Started in SW & Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Adding sledgehammer hit rock event to data table
- Adding Consumable and Usables to Tomato's and Potato's so they can be consumed
- Swapping new Transport ship system to run off an EQS with a basic backup for landing zone selection
- Prebuilt Structures now Spawn on a proper building grid and can be repaired players can build off that grid
- Adding Utility and Library for adding / loading prebuilt structures from both json files and strings
- Setting up cheat function to load / save prebuilt structures
- Fixing up various prebuilt stuctures being used in the prometheus story missions
- Updated Brick Tier stairs, ramps and Floor pieces
- Updated Brick Tier wall pieces
- Submitting Hightmap x4y4
- Adding Data table for prebuilt structures, adding new ways to build (DTRow, Raw, Json)
- Adding New MoHideout prebuilt structure json file
- Update DefaultEngine.ini to include Prebuilt Structure files in the packaged build
- Adding unique rockdog aggro state vocalisations and correcting path for sledgehammer files
- Cleaned up old ranged weapon data for previous spears
- Add spline generation tools to generic lake audio actors. Generate edge splines for all swamp lakes. Add a couple of optimisations to decrease update frequency for very distant lake audio
- Adjustments to creatures vocal spawn rates and aggro states
- Updating of Mo's Base Prebuilt Structure
- Adjustments to sledgehammer levels and balance
- Changed MA_Decal to add RMA and Sparkle Support, Packaged Alian Fossil Decal textures and adjusted MIs
- Updates improvements and additions to Needler
- Fix error in LakeSplineComponent breaking compilation of non-editor builds
- Updating EQS for Finding the supply ships landing location
- Submitting Blueback, carcass, bones, fur, lava and arctic variations
- Added first pass of Roat_Swamp. Updated data tables and created blueprints based on the rabbit asset
- Add island regions to swamp lake audio
- Added Updated texture and Gfur to the Blueback blueprint
- Stomp movements added to R.Dog and other various tweaks and updates
- Voxel Placement In the Volcanic Biome, Placement of Exotic Materials In Volcanic Biome And Landscape Painting, Purple and Green Quad, Prometheus
- Add Cliff to Green to Blue Transition, Clay Resource Placement in SW & Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- First pass setup of Blueback_Lava and Blueback_Lava_Mount added to project
- Adding Base Logic for Dynamic Quest Spawning
- Adding Stat for showing Epic Creature Map Icons so they can shown Dynamically
- Adding Experience Events for different difficulties for the Dynamic Quests
- Adding 6 Dynamic Quests with Common Reward Logic
- Adding Roaming Epic Creatures for use in Dynamic Quests
- Tidied up IcarusGameState damage numbers logic for better readability, no actual data change
- Adding in predator bird Dive behavior and corpse setup, still needs some rotation and target selection polish
- Resaving GOAP_Setup to fix validation fail
- Adding in base implementation for Wooden fortification gate, as well as the recipes and talents for the rest of the fortification set ups, currently the recipes are just 1 wood and fibre for testing and some collision bounds will need tweaking to enable all the placements we want with the walls
