Another month, another patch. It sometimes saddens me that 'daily test builds and monthly content patches by a single developer' hasn't gotten me one jot of publiclity - anyone know anyone famous?

This month has been an especially odd one. To get the patch out in time for Christmas has meant that the patch cycle's only been about 2 and a half weeks, which means I haven't been able to touch much in the way of risk. On the good side, I've taken the opportunity to put some plans in place, and do some engine/tech work. So!

Engine and Tech work

You won't SEE any of this, but I feel that communication is important, and it's good for you to know that I haven't just been playing Astroneer all month. Just a little bit.

• Major engine work on non-gameobject linked, threaded instanced rendering. Speed+++. Not available yet.
That's a picture of the test bed - I can shunt 100m-150m verts to the screen at ~60 fps using this technique! (No Man's what?)
• Work on supporting proper multiple languages. Not available yet.
• Added a HUGE amount of VR-specific work. This build will automatically run on your Vive or Oculus Touch but I DO NOT RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO AS IT'S NOT VERY GOOD YET.
If you want to run in 2d, and you have a VR headset, just hit space bar on the loading screen. If you don't press space bar after 10 seconds, then it'll go to your HMD. If I get enough people expressing their interest, I'll do some more work on it. Details here : http://steamcommunity.com/app/254200/discussions/0/154643795210839159/?ctp=5
• Moved to Unity 5.5. This should mean improved performance and a *lot* of crash fixes.
• New BC7 Texture Format should allow a massive reduction in texture sizes without the corresponding loss in quality.

Changes and Fixes you might care about

• A small present to all Dapper DLC owners, as a 'thank you'
• Wooden planks should now correctly boost movement speed, along with Dyed Marble
• Added loads and LOADS of loading hints! <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/254200/discussions/0/1843493219417867240/?ctp=2
• Clicking the magnifying glass now clears the search
• Plant entity updates are now 300% - 500% faster than before. Thank you, new Unity 5.5 profiler!
• Storage Hopper Unity-side update now about 3x faster.
• Improved LPT beam detection rendering; saving 1.5ms for 1300 machines!
• Substantial improvements to Conveyor Belt CPU cost.
• HBAO now lower in quality (more speed, minor visual impact) for detail settings lower than Fabulous.

VR only changes

• This isn't going to get by on VR minimum spec. 1060 or above, pick a lower detail setting than 2d!
• Should work on Touch and Vive
• There's no specific plans on release or support.
• This is just a preview version, so I can get feedback
• It'll either be free, a paid-for DLC to cover the cost of the work, or a completely separate version. It depends on the scope of the work, really.
• Ins, Home and Page Up toggle quickly between low, medium and high quality renderscales.
• The game will start up in a quality BELOW low - this should hopefully give you the hint to change it ASAP :-)
• Left Control toggles between fixed and floating hud modes
• All 2d menus have to be nagivated using a mouse - look for the spinning circle of particles. That's the mouse cursor. I plan to allow that to be controlled via the controllers. (Update - you should be able to drive the cursor around with the left touchpad now, but you need to click with the mouse)
• F1 will toggle the 2d mirror output
• F2 should recenter you.
• Left Touchpad will override the mouse position in a fairly ugly way. You'll need to click the mouse tho.
• Touchpads should no longer control your look
• Use your Right hand to aim, as you would normally aim in FC
• Use the new Teleport Gun to teleport to where you're currently aiming. (left trigger == teleport)
• No support for switching used items yet! (so you're stick on the scanner)
• Mildly improved main menu experience (Space, Space is still the fastest way to your world)

Known issues:

• Typing /help/ as a client is just completely useless. Sorry.
• Server name override isn't working correctly
• Grappling Hooks and player Laser shots aren't synced
• Literally 30 seconds of testing of the pause system has thrown this up.
• [Pause]Grappling hook not affected
• [Pause]Robots don't move, but continue to animate
• [Pause]Gravity continues to work
• Recommendation is never "Fix your damned Ore Extractors"
• Conveyor belts continue to animate when the game is paused, as do many other machines using SinRot or UVScrolling.
• Tabbing away from the game whilst the inventory is open doesn't pause it.

Minor Changes and Fixes

[*]Lots and lots of specular highlight changes
[*]Fixed T2 pipe glare
[*]Fixed issues with Conduits not working if the player removed and fixed the battery within 1 second (Thanks Mad Vandal!)
[*]Fixed mission report derp
[*]Fixed plants visibility to use the very cheap segment-based vis
[*]Bloom tightened
[*]Fixed LPT glow; it's now based on firing and stored charge
[*]Missions will no longer instruct you to build an OET after all overminds are dead
[*]Missions will now guide you through T4 again
[*]Base Reports will now guide you to building an OET
[*]Lancers and Melters no longer play annoying audio the first time you go near them
[*]Stomach has recovered from VR week
[*]All list variables fixed in Base Manager - no more escalating Mynock counts!
[*]The game no longer nags you to build an Orbital Power Transmitter once all overminds are dead
[*]Removed a bunch of tunnel nuker debug log spam
[*]Moved plasma head charger to Advanced Mining Upgrades.
[*]Fixed a number of poorly-performing non-instanced rendered machines
[*]Base reports no longer fires when the player is using the jetpack
[*]Base Report no longer fires when the player is moving
[*]Upgrading a lense on a server should now correctly recalculate packetsize and power storage size. Ty MrWorm and co for the debug reports.
[*]Hid away 'Robotics' error message.
[*]Boosted Durability of non-Plasma Charged Cutter Heads.
[*]Reworked Scan Effect
[*]Mission Reports are no longer broken in Creative.
[*]It's not often that patch notes aren't completely inclusive, but, just for once, I plan to drop a large new resource feature without piecemeal stuff - so; did some secret work on [redacted]
[*]Wrote a new InstancedMesh system, allowing generation of THOUSAND of graphical elements without any GameObjects. Super fast!
[*]Spent the morning debugging the LAN in my house - my wireless repeater had gone nuts and taken out my router. Morning, wasted! :(
[*]Removed HODOR and Fuel Compressor erroneous spotlight
[*]Added substantial, yet very incomplete, VR support.
[*]Moved to Unity 5.5.0p3, in an attempt to fix some of the memory allocation crashes that are present.
[*]Moved to Unity 5.5.0p1, in an attempt to fix some of the VR crashes that are present in their engine.
[*]More sensitive fix for the ""Error, ended up with DF" bug
[*]Lifts speed now reduces to a maximum of 1.2 metres/frame - this should, maybe, alleviate the 'falling through the lift' issues.
[*]Moved to Unity 5.5
[*]Instancing crashes should be fixed




See you next month for Patch 16!