Hello again everyone! The team is back from our much needed vacation and are back at it again. This week’s update is a pretty tasty one with some crucial improvements and fixes that we can’t wait to get your feedback on.

You asked, we listened! There is now a quick-heal button and also a way to get rid of all those extra unwanted resources, craftable element cubes. In the Engineering menu you will now find element cubes. These cubes can then be stored in containers for later use, or recycled for profit. But more importantly, you won't find yourself unable to harvest or craft anymore because you're full of Chromium.

The other major bullet point for this update is a potential fix for the dreaded ‘Black Screen’ bug that has been plaguing some players. This would entirely block people from playing the game when it happened and has been extremely difficult to track down as we cannot reproduce it ourselves. If you were experiencing this before, please let us know if this update has fixed it for you. It is currently our top issue that we’re trying to resolve.

There’s a ton of other great stuff in today’s update like a new video player plugin that completely eliminates those horrible lag spikes we were having with the tutorial videos. Saving and loading is significantly more reliable now and disappearing buildables should be a thing of the past. Check out the full list below and let us know what you think in the comments below.

PS: Thanks again to everyone who has posted in the discussions about suggestions and bug reports. The emails we get that include save files and debug logs have been invaluable and your continued support is definitely appreciated and positively impacts the development of PAMELA for all to enjoy.

Features

• Quick-Heal button added (Default ‘4’ on the keyboard). This will scan your inventory for healing items and use the lowest one available. (Order is Medi Hypo, +, ++, then Supra Hypo, +, ++)
• You can now craft element cubes in order to store/sell excess resources.

Balance / Improvements

• Element cubes no longer instantly give elements upon pickup, you have to ‘Use’ them.
• Element cubes now hold 100 units instead of 50.
• Turrets now shoot a burst every 5 seconds instead of every 0.5 seconds.
• Shield Doors, Shield Pylons, Storage Containers (Small & Large), and Sentry Turrets now have new placement meshes that represent the open/activated versions of themselves.
• Low and critical health sounds play less frequently, now set to 6 seconds.
• The main menu image effects have been completely changed to match the ones used in the main game. The main menu was still using some old legacy effects from before our Early Access launch that possibly were causing the ‘Black Screen’ when loading the game for some people. A few other visual tweaks were also made.
• Cursor now locks to the edge of the screen. This will prevent players with multiple monitors to accidentally click outside of the game view when using menus like Pause and Inventory.
• All environmental audio was playing at all times for the entire world. This has now been fixed so that only sounds that you can hear are actually playing. This should reduce memory and CPU usage.
• Tutorial video system replaced with a new plugin which completely eliminates all of the lag spikes when videos were being loaded and unloaded.
• Buildables will no longer appear to reactivate if you walk far enough away from them and quickly look away and back at them.
• Many crafting item categories have been changed from "Junk" to a new category called "Engineering".

Fixes

• Potentially fixed the dreaded ‘Black Screen’ on startup bug. Please let us know if this is still an issue as we are unable to reproduce it on our end but know it’s affecting a lot of people!
• Element cubes now save and load properly when inside a container.
• Fixed an issue that was causing buildables to disappear when loading your game sometimes. This also solved several other miscellaneous issues caused on a game load.
• NPCs no longer walk through buildable objects (especially noticeable when attacking turrets).
• Fixed a problem when you picked up an Ion Core out of a Power Transmitter while your inventory was full. The Ion Core would come out, but the transmitter wouldn’t open up to allow you to place in another one, breaking it permanently.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Ion Cores inside Power Transmitters to glow forever. This would block sight of the power level remaining.
• Fixed several bugs related to Ion Core capacity issues.
• Fixed several missing colliders in the Garrison Barracks.
• Fixed a missing collider in Novus in the Promenade.
• Fixed several missing colliders in the beginning cryo area.
• Fixed a bug that made the critical health sounds not play if the low health sound was already playing.
• Fixed a bug that caused buildables to disappear from containers after a cryo-core respawn.
• Fixed a bunch of coroutines that were not being killed properly when you left the game back to main menu.
• Fixed some incorrect text in the tutorials that still referenced double-clicking items instead of the new middle-mouse click.
• Fixed a bug that made the IVG Repair Durability meter display 0 health for buildables that had full health.
• Fixed an animation issue with several buildables that would load in incorrectly. This was certainly apparent on Shield Doors after loading a game.