Lazarus update for 2 May 2019

As you know from reading our [Discord](discord.gg/spiltmilk), due to a bug introduced to SpatialOS, we had to delay this update, but finally we’re pushing it live! The original post is as follows…

Last week marked our 9th Birthday! That’s 9 years since we left AAA development and went independent. We’re so excited to see what the next 9 years bring!

It didn’t stop us smashing through the bugs in Lazarus, and we’ve got a nice performance-focused update for you, ahead of our new content planned for the near future. Read on for the full deets!

NEW:

• The player is now invincible for a period of 3 seconds, with an accompanying visual effect, after you undock, to prevent unfair kills. We’re working on getting it for all the rest of your respawns (i.e.: on your first spawn of the session, after you die) as well, and that should be in the next update of course! Only works for your current Ship, so swapping ship will mean it doesn’t happen… but again we’re fixing for the next update.

• We’ve integrated [Discord](discord.gg/spiltmilk) rich presence, so you can see what everyone’s doing in Lazarus, live! We track and show:

• Which server you're connected to (EU or US, etc)

• Your location in the game (the Territory name)

• If you’re on the Main Menu (stop fiddling with the settings and get stuck in!)

• When spawning into game (yeah let’s get going!)

• When you’re exploring space/bimbling about (lovely colours)

• When you’re in combat (need help?)

• When you’re docked in a Xenotaph/pottering in the menus

• When you’re undocking from a Xenotaph (get back out there!)

• If you’ve just died (oh noes)

• When you’re choosing where to respawn (maybe go somewhere a bit less dangerous)

FIXES:

• We’ve fixed an issue that meant you could get in a situation where only the SH15 was able to capture Xenotaphs and territory. This was a real pain in the ass to track down, but it has been squashed!

• We’ve fixed a main cause of occasional ping spiking. This has been fixed in the past and the fact that it has come back since an update to SpatialOS means that we have to ask you to be on the look out for it!

• We’ve addressed stuttering that happened when enemies were spawned in. This is addressed by preloading a lot of the associated assets (meshes, shaders, etc) and we think we’ve got this 100% locked down now. Yay!

• We fixed an issue that meant your HP would reset (to 100%) when you crossed a worker boundary in the game. It was handy, but also didn’t do a lot for the game’s balance, so… yeah. It’s fixed.

• We also fixed the issue that meant your equipped Systems Hotbar would refresh (with visuals, ceremony and sound effects playing) every time you crossed a worker boundary. This may well have been fixed by the same work as the previous bug 😉

• We fixed an issue that meant you could be shown a respawn map that did not highlight your valid spawning locations, making it hard to get back into the game.

• We fixed an issue that was reported by our lovely [Discord](discord.gg/spiltmilk) community. It meant you could not swap to a different Ship during the same session in which you failed a swap request because of a lack of Lazarene – regardless of how much Lazarene you saved up since then.

• We fixed an issue that meant occasionally your Ship would show an HP bar overlaid if you took damage from an Asteroid. It was distracting, inconsistent and pointless, so we fixed it!

• We fixed an issue that meant if you swapped to a Ship with a lower Energy stat, then it would incorrectly display the previous Ship’s energy value on your HUD until you used some. It was confusing!

• We fixed an issue that meant Xenotaphs thought Melees were Carriers, which would feed incorrect information to the Map and Players.

• We fixed multiple issues within the Xenotaph reporting code, meaning a lot less data is being sent and the game runs a lot more efficiently and smoothly now.

• We fixed multiple issues within the Lazarus Manager code, meaning fewer and smaller updates about the world state are sent to all players, and again the game runs a lot more inefficiently and smoothly. As you can imagine, this got a lot worse the more players were connected and the older (read: more populated by Drones) the world was.

• The work we’ve done on various improvements and stability (see above) means that the Asteroid movement unpredictability on spawning is a LOT less pronounced now.

TWEAKS:

• We tweaked the Spawn particle effect for Drones (from Xenotaphs and from Carries) so it looks a lot better now, and properly catches your eye.

KNOWN ISSUES:

• We’ve done everything we can to address the rubber banding on entity movement that became obvious since the SpatialOS upgrade. We’re in touch with the developers to try to find a solution, and while it’s much less pronounced on the Asteroids, enemies that move fast & change direction more often are still occasionally annoying.

• Occasionally the server browser will return no servers… but this usually goes away after another attempt.

• There’s some infrequent issues around repairing ships. Sometimes they’re fine, sometimes they report that they never died (so you don’t have to pay money to repair, yay!), and sometimes the repair won’t work even if you’ve got enough Lazarene.

• We’re aware of an issue that means the Map gets… WEIRD. Basically, it is to do with the Wipe getting ‘stuck’ and players being let back into a world that had not properly been wiped and repopulated. We’re tracking down the source, and it rarely happens, but seeing as the Wipe is now every 7 days we can damage control until we have a confirmed fix. Just let us know if you see it happen!

• Sometimes Asteroids and Enemies will take 0 damage, as well as sometimes deal 0 damage. It's very rare, and we're keeping an eye out.

And there we are, we’ve taken HUGE steps over the past two updates to get Lazarus to a really smooth, fun, stable state which we can build on top of with our planned features on the road to Early Access launch. We’re terribly excited!

Want to chat to us? Hit up on our [Discord](discord.gg/spiltmilk) and let us know what you want to see in the game!

Please consider telling a friend and getting them to join in the fun with us!

Want to play? Hit up www.playlazarus.com and claim a steam key right now.
The servers are live 24/7!

We've filled up our lovely wiki over at the Official Wiki - please do pop in and check it out, help us fill in any gaps, or let us know what it's missing!