NEW UPDATE! Sandbox Alpha v.163


Raphael van Lierop

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  • Hinterland

NEW! Sandbox Alpha v.163 -- Major Gameplay Update!

***IMPORTANT*** This update invalidates save files from previous versions. If you do not wish to lose your in-progress game, please do not update.***IMPORTANT***

A NOTE ON TUNING & BALANCE

Gameplay tuning and game balance is always a Work in Progress. That's part of why the game is in Early Access. If you experience tuning or balance that you feel is incorrect, please share your feedback in the community forums. Keep in mind that there are vastly differing opinions on what the "correct" game balance is. We take all feedback into account, and consider it against our vision for how we want the game to play. Bugs can create unexpected and intentional issues that affect balance. We appreciate your patience as we address these, whenever they come up. On average we update 3-4 times between major updates to address any bugs or issues that arise. Whatever bugs or issues arise tend to not exist in the game for very long.

MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS

* Major overhaul on the Wolf Struggle system. The intention is to create more meaningful and discrete choice for the player. In the revised implementation, an attack without much strength build up (AKA "Light Attack") does very little damage but has a small chance of causing the Wolf to flee. Building up Strength, then releasing it will result in a "Strong Attack" that does much more damage. Damage scales on a curve, so that the more Strength you build up, the more damage it does, with a full strength attack doing significant damage. Button mashing will now have little effect.

* Major overhaul to Hunting. All wildlife now have location-specific damage. Only headshots are now one-shot kills. Injured animals will bleed, making it possible to track them. Depending on the injury, animals may eventually bleed out.

* New First Aid interface. This interface addresses general usability and player information issues, and is a model for future interface improvements. This is the first pass on the First Aid interface.

* Added Ice Fishing to the game. Players can now craft Fishing Hooks and Lines, and use tools to open up Ice Holes in the Fishing Huts. There are both Freshwater and Saltwater fish, all with different potential weight ranges.

* Major performance improvements. Most players should find a 25-30% improvement to frame-rate for all interior locations.

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

* Added 6 new Achievements.

* Widespread art improvements throughout the game.

* Added new ambient exploration music cues.

* The game now Saves after every Affliction.

* All Clothing items now have a Toughness rating that provides protection against Wolf Struggles.

* Clothing can now be damaged by: Wolf Struggle, Falling, Fire, and Very High Winds (Blizzards). Fire and Falling only damage clothing on Legs and Feet. Only the current exposed (Top) clothing layer is damaged.

* Players can now press ESC to interrupt all in-progress Harvesting, Repair, and Crafting actions.

* New icons have been added to the game.

* Running now generates a small Warmth bonus.

* Wolf flee times and distances have been reduced. Wolves fleeing from flares or struggles will now likely circle back and find you if you do not put some distance between you and them.

* Bandages are now stackable.

* Updated the Rifle model, texture, and reloading animations.

* Updated the coniferous Tree models to improve their look and shadow-casting properties.

* Tuned ankle sprains so they are more directly related to Falling and other navigation choices (i.e. less random).

* Increased the falling distance required to do damage trigger the chance of Sprains.

* All Container capacities have been retuned.

* Snares that catch Rabbits can now be re-used.

* Gut can now be Harvested from Wolf carcasses.

* Knife, Hatchet, and Prybar Struggle damage modifiers have been rebalanced due to updates to the Struggle system.

* Reduced min/max values for harvestable meat on a Wolf carcass.

* Added a Subtitles option to the Display settings. Subtitles default to "off".

* Fixed some two-door containers to be considered a single container for the purposes of searching and Supply capacity.

* Reduced the number of searchable containers in most of the Coastal houses.

* Replaced desk in Camp Office with Workbench.

BUG FIXING

* Fixed issue where players could fall out of the world from one of the Coastal houses.

* Fixed bug with Wood foraging where the time calculation would be based on the last type of fuel foraged, not the currently selected one.

* Fixed the Moon not sorting correctly with tree billboards.

* Fixed issue where some telephone poles in Coastal Highway did not have collision.

* Fixed issue where the wrong label was applied to melted snow/boiled water.

* Fixed issue where distance travelled was mislabeled in the Log

* Fixed issue where Inventory would sometimes incorrectly show [Wearing] for non-worn items.

* Fixed issue where Wolf audio would sometimes play on an endless loop.

* Fixed issue where some Food items could have a Condition of over 100%

* Fixed issue where individual Rifle rounds had the incorrect weight.

* Fixed issue where wildlife would occasionally get stuck in one place, disappear, or become locked in feeding animations.

* Fixed issue where the Bedroll would occasionally disappear when dropped.

* Fixed issue where Rabbit Meat Condition would not update when Cooked.

* Fixed issue where the game would soft-crash when players started a fire in the "transition" zone.

* Fixed issue where Cans that were opened but not fully eaten would lose their opened state.

* Fixed issue where ice-cracking audio would play after leaving the breakable area.

* Fixed issue where first person items might come back into view when putting back an item from inspect mode during a container search.

* Fixed issue where a first person item could come back into view during fade-out before sleeping.

* Fixed issue where the aim dot could be displayed while zoomed if you were crouching.

KNOWN ISSUES

* We are experiencing some issues with some new lighting effects rendering incorrectly on the Mac. As a result, we have temporarily removed the "god rays" lighting effect from all interiors (on Mac only). We are working on a fix for this and will update ASAP.

### END OF RELEASE NOTES###

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Great news! Lots of great improvements it seems.

Played a few short sessions to test some of the changes.

* Major overhaul on the Wolf Struggle system. The intention is to create more meaningful and discrete choice for the player. In the revised implementation, an attack without much strength build up (AKA "Light Attack") does very little damage but has a small chance of causing the Wolf to flee. Building up Strength, then releasing it will result in a "Strong Attack" that does much more damage. Damage scales on a curve, so that the more Strength you build up, the more damage it does, with a full strength attack doing significant damage. Button mashing will now have little effect.

When I first read that I thought, you mean that's not how it worked in v.156? Because that's exactly how it seemed to work to me. Having fought a few wolves I understand better what you meant.

I'm not going to say it's not an improvement just yet, but I've never mashed the button as much as I have to now.

It used to be mashing the RMB to get the wolf off quickly and you're right, that doesn't work anymore. But now I have to mash the LMB much more than I ever needed to mash the RMB and that I do not like. In particular, I don't like having to mash a button at all... Having to click a button as many times as possible in as short amount of time as possible, it just doesn't work for me.

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  • Hinterland
This update looks great from the notes. Keep up the good work Hinterland Studios! It's nice to see that some of the forum suggestions have been implemented.

Love the quote in your sig!

You don't really have to "mash" either. A few quick clicks with LMB (or whatever you have bound to that action) will load up the strength bar, and RMB will release a strike.

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I know the update invalidates previous saves, but it seems I can't load any new saves either.

Unless being killed by a wolf immediately invalidates the save file, in which case, that's a problem given how many times a random wolf attack will kill you.

Button mashing or no, I've never been able to get a wolf to leave me alone after it attacks. I just die. Every time.

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Just a little heads up to the devs, this patch is certainly a huge improvement. I'd just think that the feedback will be a little slow because many people will first hesitate to eradicate their saves. Once everyone has updated the reports will roll in. But actually it's a huge achievement that most patches did not invalidate the saves. Great job.

And as a software programmer I understand that the reuse of saves over dozens of versions leads to many small problems like the 300% cola cans, and that we can't use the savegames forever. Making a clean cut when you have discovered those problems is absolutely logical to me. Everything else would waste a lot of development time I suppose.

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I'm loving every bit of the update.

I'm not a whiner when it comes to difficulty, I prefer a challenge. Just as a note: the wolves are VERY hard to kill now (at least for me). Three attacks = three deaths. I can't even shake them off. Realistic, I suppose, but I think my mouse button is taking more damage than the wolf.

May have to set up xpadder turbo button. :P

Keep up the great work!

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I have been attacked three times by wolves also. First time, it straight up ripped me apart. Second time, I was able to fight it off with just couple of scrapes. The third time the furry menace got me to 2% condition before I was able to get free, but soon died to blood loss after that.

I'm not really sure how the whole sequence works, but usually it takes a couple of fully charged attacks before the wolf backs off. The second time though, I needed only one hit.

Funny sidemention here: I got surrounded by wolves, but had a s**tload of supplies on me (maxed out on carrying cap.). I was able to get inside a cabin and decided to stay there for the night. The next morning I went out to finally reach my destination of ranger tower, but to my horror, the wolves outside my cabin had doubled in numbers during the night!

I ended up spending 53 hours in there, checking outside time to time. When I was able to count 12 wolves and my backpack was empty. I decided to dash out!

I only got about 50 meters from the cabin...

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Jetro - sounds like the v.163 wolf multiplier bug [though a lot of players blame me since I'm always asking for more wolves *lol]

Restart Steam and the v.164 hotfix should now be available (it took a while before the update became available, likely because of the huge server load Steam had with the sale going on right now)

v.164 should fix the wolf multiplier bug

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Hi, all in all great update, but when it comes to wolves, im not quiet sure.

I bought this game because because it's focus to PvE, and thats still what I enjoy most. Surely, wolves are part of the evoirment. Nevertheless, when I speak of PvE I mean gathering supplies, finding a warm place, being feared of not getting home in time.

Coming back to the wolves, I think they should be a-once-in-a-while event. They are really strong with new update, died a lot of them now, sometimes only playing close to an ingame minute. But for being that strong, they are simply too numerous.

I'm not against them being that hard to beat, but rather against the fact that they appear in every interesting spot.

Wouldnt it cause much more tension if they rarely appear, but when you dont count with them, out of the sudden? But maybe more powerfull (Maybe increase their range of recognizing the player)?

I love especially the atmosphere of the game, and that move would make me and many others very happy :)

Sorry for my englosh and have a nice day folks <3

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Hi guys!

I seem to have an issue with the hunting. After reading the patch notes I know now that I have to go for headshots for the one-shot kill (afaik a RL hunter usually goes for shot to the heart). However, that doesn't seem to do anything. The deer just runs off like nothing has hit him - and I did hit him. There was really no way I could have missed him. Also I don't see any blood on the ground and the second third and fourth bullet didn't seem to do much either. If this is not a bug, I suggest you put more bullets into the game as it will be a huge pain to bring down anything like it is now.

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Hi guys!

I seem to have an issue with the hunting. After reading the patch notes I know now that I have to go for headshots for the one-shot kill (afaik a RL hunter usually goes for shot to the heart). However, that doesn't seem to do anything. The deer just runs off like nothing has hit him - and I did hit him. There was really no way I could have missed him. Also I don't see any blood on the ground and the second third and fourth bullet didn't seem to do much either. If this is not a bug, I suggest you put more bullets into the game as it will be a huge pain to bring down anything like it is now.

Well, I tried again and this time I managed to kill a deer and a wolf - so apparently I am just not as good a shot as I thought I was. Still, the issue with the lack of blood remains.

Also, I got food poisoning twice in two days, both times from cooked meat. One time from wolf, the other from deer.

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I've encountered some problems with hunting (shooting in general) too. Sometimes I'm able to down a deer from 200 meters and sometimes it seems like the bullets pass through the animal without any damage to it.

I've had more luck with killing an animal when it's moving, but stationary or slowly walking animal is almost impossible to kill. :S

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