Hey Folks!

Update v0.14.5.5 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a feature update to our "Across the System" milestone, which improves several player-requested changes to the inventory system, among other fixes.

Saves from v0.14.0.0 and later should work. Note that if you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.

Note: 📢 indicates changes inspired by community feedback!

• No more inventory ground window. Pickup/drop items directly in world now.

• 📢 Pockets and pouches are now consolidated under their parent's inventory window.

• 📢 Paperdoll and item grid windows can be moved around, pinned, and unpinned.

• Tooltips and item highlights now work in the paperdoll area.

• Paperdoll now has a Trash slot, for discarding unwanted items.

• 📢 Pickable items under cursor will highlight, and change cursor, when inventory UI is up.

• Cursor now shows feet when inventory UI is up and item is out of range/LoS.

• New music tracks when visiting VORB and VNCA.

• 📢LoS range slightly longer for characters without vision impairment.

• Sleeping AIs will now force awake if they oversleep their sleep shift, or are suffocating.

• AI shouldn't endlessly drop items as often when on AUTOTASK mode.

• AI should no longer refuse to pick up items if there is only room in sub-containers they carry.

• AI's attempting to walk from an unwalkable tile to an unwalkable tile will no longer animate in place eternally.

• Save files with empty AI action memories will no longer fail to load.

• Ships with placeholder tiles along edges will no longer cause zone/room errors on load.

• Loading a save where a non-Default Vizor setting was active now allows returning to Default via hotkey.

• There should be fewer null exceptions thrown when reloading a save from the Escape menu now.

• Splash screen now appears immediately after launching the app, instead of after all game data loaded.

• Loading a save after renaming an item no longer auto-selects that item.

• Game should no longer freeze indefinitely when all batteries on the ship are drained.

• Super fast-forward while an LEO or pirate was docked will no longer teleport the player to the nearest station.

• Super Fast Forward will no longer have null errors due to missing stations, causing infinite-time death.

• Special events and deaths in Super Fast Forward now correctly use RNG tables.

• Taking off a helmet while paused and then using Super Fast Forward no longer insta-kills players.

• Characters walking into ship edge tiles created by placeholders no longer spike their CO2 build-up.

• Broken bones now heal correctly over time.

• The EVA suit's battery will no longer drain when the suit is equipped in a hand slot.

• The EVA suit's remaining charge now works in the MegaTooltip.

• Field coils now work more consistently with other sub-floor fixtures, like fusion canisters.

• Sub-floor bins can now be filtered in the PDA orders like other floors.

• Attempting to add a zone along the boundary of a docked ship should now work reliably.

• San Diego mall now has adequate cooling to avoid killing anyone not in an EVA suit. (New games only.)

• NAV and COMMs UI both use consistent range info now.

• Breakout Turf floor uses correct sprite now.

• Several typo fixes.

• 📢Modding: FaceAnim2.aPartNames is now defined by loot.json TXTFacePartNames, instead of hard-coded.

• 📢Modding: FaceAnim2.aLayers array driven by loot.json TXTFacePartOrder, instead of hard-coded.

• Modding: Added support for animated sprites, with an example "Heater Model B" in cooverlays.

The biggest change in this update is to how inventory works. The ground grid is now gone, and you can pick-up and place items directly in the world.

The ground window created a number of issues that were pretty hard to solve. And what's more, just about every new user we watched play the game would intuitively try to drop items into the world, not the ground window. So we decided to make it work the way most users initially expect it to.

Players have also been asking for some improvements to the inventory UI itself. One of the biggest requests was for pockets to consolidate more efficiently. Another was to make windows remember where the user moved them. And the ability to move the paperdoll itself.

So in this update, we changed the way pockets rendered to be consolidated under their parent's window, and added code to restore window positions the next time the UI opened.

There is also a new rule: the inventory will not close with an item on the cursor. This was necessary to avoid "ghost" items and other stacking item bugs that could break saves. Now, if a user wants to exit the UI, they'll have to find a valid home for it, or walk to a place that has space.

We've also added a new Trash slot, in case there were situations where it is impossible to find space for a cursor item on an entire ship, as well as to let users tidy-up space more conveniently.

You'll also notice some other, minor changes, like tooltips and item highlights now working in the paperdoll. Plus some cursor icon changes to help with usability.

This patch also includes 2 new soundtrack pieces from Josh Culler, which you'll hear when visiting VORB/Venus Orbital and VNCA/Newcal aerostat maps. VORB, in particular, was the first place many players would see after their first, grueling torch drive trip. And it'll be nice to have something new to hear upon arrival!

Apart from the above, the update also includes a range of fixes for things like AI behaviors, loading and saving, super fast-forward, and other issues.

Plus, some new modding features for our more technical users!

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!

Best,

Daniel Fedor

Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC