Astroneer's Pre-Alpha Early Access will be updated to version 0.4.10221.0

Update 221 is a followup to the Excavation update, including an update to rover connections, some quality of life changes, and bugfixes/multiplayer fixes. While we continue work on a major December milestone and large content update, we wanted to still ship a patch on our monthly cadence. 

UPDATES

You can find these updates in 0.4.101221.0, the current build of the game.

Added rigid joints between rovers

The old rover joints created all sorts of physics issues caused by the individual rover bodies flipping over, colliding with other rovers in the train, and generally just being extremely wonky. The new joints are much more rigid, allowing for more stable rover trains overall. As always, rovers are still a work in progress, and we hope to have a complete overhaul of their physics, maneuverability, and controls when we get closer to our 1.0 launch. 

Patch Notes now on the home screen

Both Steam and Xbox "Play Anywhere" users should now see a "Patch Notes" button on the home screen of their game. This first iteration will point to Excavation Update changes, but in the future this link will change dynamically and have "message of the day" type information. 

Contextual Quick Stow enabled

This feature is a small but extremely helpful one. Currently Astroneers have three kinds of storage. Backpack space, Aux Slots (top of the backpack), and the terrain tool slots. Things like augments are useful on the terrain tool or stored in the backpack, while solar panels and small wind vanes want to be on the top of your backpack to be useful. With this new behavior, while quick stowing items, (Shift + Mouse 1) on PC (Right Trigger + X) on Xbox items will naturally try and slot to the place that makes the most sense. This should also work with items currently in your inventory, so swapping a solar panel to your aux slots should be a bit easier now!

New music and sound implemented

• [AS-1822] - Implement New Music Assets
• [AS-1839] - Audio - Update "negative" UI sound effect
• [AS-1861] - Audio - cleaned up foley SFX

Oxygen/Power/Resource Plinths removed from planets

The "infinite" power and oxygen towers in the game have been removed. They were first implemented as a "fix" for players that got lost, but their frequency changed the exploration experience in a bad way. Exploring far away from your base should be viewed as a trek that requires planning and preparation. You can still find oxygen and power on cave walls, but otherwise, plan ahead or bring a vehicle or meet almost certain death.

If you want to see the other stuff that happened this month that didn't make it, check out our vlogs for weekly insight to what the team is doing. Of particular interest is Spencer's work on basebuilding, which caused him to visually explore what monster truck rovers might look like:

https://youtu.be/yMbaXLwTIN0

BUGFIXES

• [AS-1752] - Hydrazine Catalyzer now shows the name of the resource (Ammonium) required to make Hydrazine.
• [AS-1779] - Fixed an issue where the Fuel Condenser wouldn’t fill an entire canister with fuel in five battery cycles.
• [AS-1802] - Fixed several Multiplayer issues causing Canisters holograms to frequently not appearing for the Client player.
• [AS-1803] - Fixed an issue where empty canisters some times display as full on Client
• [AS-1805] - Fixed a Multiplayer issue where the Mineral Extractor module would become temporarily invisible for the Client player.
• [AS-1806] - Fixed an issue where the ‘'Enclosed 1-Seat' would be un-selectable in Vehicle Bay after the player cycled away from printing it.
• [AS-1815] - Player can no longer jump infinitely off of items on the deform tool with the backpack open.
• [AS-1817] - Fixed issues with inconsistent power usage by Augments.
• [AS-1818] - Objects dropped from backpack upon death are no longer buried when the player returns, instead items that were slotted into the Deform Tool are now found on a Deform Tool near the body.
• [AS-1819] - Fixed some awkwardness for players getting out of vehicles while they were upside down.
• [AS-1830] - Fixed a major Multiplayer issue which prevented players from rejoining a game after they quit to the Main Menu.
• [AS-1831] - Fixed a Multiplayer issue where Tether lines would not go dark for Client players when they were disconnected from an oxygen source
• [AS-1835] - Fixed a visual-only bug in Multiplayer games where the Mineral Extractor canisters looked full for Client players
• [AS-1856] - Crane controls once again work for gamepads!
• [AS-1868] - Fixed a crash in Multiplayer games that occurred when Client players left the game while seated in the respawn Habitat.
• [AS-1906] - Instances of the hilarious, yet annoying Rover Rodeo have been reduced, but may still occur in extraordinarily laggy network situations.

Thanks to the community for reporting, documenting and triage-ing bugs for us to smash!

ROADMAP HIGHLIGHT

The following major features are continuing during development, but are not included in this release. This month we spent a ton of time working on "spec" documents for future features like weather/climate, hazardous discoveries, new UI and more. View our full roadmap here. https://trello.com/b/UoZgKrd3/astroneer-development-roadmap

Dedicated Servers

We now have a fully operating dedicated server running in house! Brendan tweeted last week:

"Just brought online our first always-on @astroneergame headless dedicated server in the studio. It gets automatic updates from daily builds." "Still a ways from a public roll-out, but a big step closer."

Carl has continued work on dedicated servers, and we are moving towards the goal of having them roll out to the larger community!

Terrain 2.0

Terrain 2.0 tech is moving along well! We now have the new tech in-engine and work has begun on authoring tools, which will allow us to start crafting new biomes, caves, & planets! There has also been a ton of work to figure out what weather (& weather related dynamic events like lightning, sandstorms, radiation, heat & cold) might look like in an updated planet in Astroneer.

Modularity

The power system and basebuilding system is making lots of progress. As mentioned above, basebuilding had some unanswered questions around moving base modules, which spawned visual explorations for xl rovers that can house and move base modules.

Research 2.1*

We have internally playtested, revised, and subsequently playtested another version of the new research 2.1* gameplay loop. We are now balancing and tweaking it for a larger rollout.

Next month's CU is going to be a big one, as we are celebrating our one year anniversary of launching into early access, and are looking forward to announcing a major milestone in Astroneer's development! Thanks to everyone who has been sharing, reporting bugs, and providing feedback on the current state of Astroneer! I am looking forward to sharing our plans for December soon :).

-jt