Hey, everyone! The new build is here, and we do hope you won’t be disappointed. Of course, there are a great deal of under-the-hood changes which are very important for the game and future updates but doesn’t make much difference now. Still, this build has a lot of improvements in level design and a new quest.
Also, we managed to make a lot of other changes, improvements and assets for future updates. And since a lot of players asked us on forums and via PM to share more about our plans, we won't keep silence until these updates are ready.
From now on we are going to make posts about our development, and progress, and future changes, share concept art and assets with you. I believe it will benefit both players and us, devs, because we will keep you posted about everything what's going on with the game, and you can share your ideas and give us useful feedback on our drafts.:dwYellowStar:
If you are wondering about the star in the end of previous paragraph, it’s not a simple decoration. We always believed that it is very important to listen to our players and correct our plans according to their expectations and vision. And through the times in Early Access we've already made a lot of changes based on your feedback and very grateful for your impact, your thorough reviews and interesting thoughts. That’s why we decided to highlight changes made with your help. From now on, :dwYellowStar: means community choice, alterations made with your feedback.
ROADMAP UPDATE
Exoplanet’s roadmap also got a huge update. At the moment we decided to put our efforts into making the game a true RPG while postponed a few other tasks. Thus, you will have a chance to see the very first version of our role-playing system when it’s ready. If you never heard about our roadmap before, you can learn more here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/531660/announcements/detail/1654384966961614188
A few tips for Trello. Take a look at #1 on the picture above. There are some icons on the card. Thumbs up shows how many people voted for the card, next icons say that the task has description, a number of comments, attached files and related tasks, and a checklist.
At #2 you can learn more about the roadmap and also track every activity on the board. Usually I attach a few screenshots or artworks to show the progress on the task and then place a comment on the top with short description of what we did.
#3 has orange label which was added recently. It means that we worked on the card before, there is some progress on the task but it was postponed for some time due to other priorities. That doesn’t mean you won’t see these tasks done for a few years. For example, WEAPON UPGRADES on the picture and another task below, NEW BUGS, will probably hit the update before the Summer Sale if we manage to do it in time.
Speaking of thumbs up icon, another big change is voting system.:dwYellowStar:
Players asked us about it, and from now on, you can vote for any task you like. Unfortunately, this option available for Trello users only but you can easily register with your Google account. With a Trello account you can vote and also watch cards you like. Also, keep in mind that a lot of other games using Trello for roadmaps.
Voting system will help us to get your feedback about which features you’d like to see as soon as possible, so please, take some time to vote for tasks you’re fond of. You can do that by clicking cards and using ‘Vote’ button on the right. You can also ‘Watch’ any card to get updates on your mail.
Also, if you want to learn what we are planning to do with the game in the near future (brand new area with tutorial and quests, more assets to significantly improve the existing starting area, main quest and more), you can check this long read:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/531660/announcements/detail/1690432065527447093
Thank you again for being with us, for all the testing and sharing, your patience and support. Your opinion is very important and we are always glad to discuss your ideas or answer your questions on forums, Discord and socials where we started to regularly post a lot of interesting things, join us:
CHANGELOG
WORLD
- improved Scalphunters’ Camp
- improved Smugglers’ Camp
- improved Big Hat dwelling (Big Hat's Secret Room)
- improved Scrap Master’s Workshop
- improved the cave with bandits and poisonous mushrooms
- improved the cave with poisonous antigravium
- improved a number of other caves
- improved a number of areas by adding oases (The Big River, Hunting Grounds, The Crossroads)
- improved a number of other areas
- added idols of Gods-in-Earth to Outcast Camp and Stonehenge
- added sprouts and young version of palms and other trees
- added arphant’s bones to a few places
ENVIRONMENT
- improved eating corpses by crucases
- bonfires go out within 12 hours
- arphants near Hunter’s Rest are now vulnerable to attacks and will defend themselves :dwYellowStar:
- some of the harvestable plants can only be harvested once
NPCs
- added new Outcast guards model
- added new shaman sectarian model
- implemented a knockout state—key NPCs in the new quest Broken Crane can be knocked out
- Msasi and Vorga doesn’t look the same anymore
- Junior and Jorgen doesn’t look the same anymore
QUESTS - new quest Broken Crane
AI
As you may know, Exoplanet is developing on our own custom built engine and still has a few legacy issues from old demos. If you ever play the game, you know that our AI system was pretty basic and limited for complex sequential actions. For example, we had an issue when some players managed to get rid of most of the Scalphunters in the cave on their own during the quest, ignoring other interesting possibilities it offers, not to mention that our hero is pretty weak in the very beginning of the game while Scalphunters being described as very tough to eliminate.
The thing is, this AI system is very old and has a great deal of restrictions, that’s why some time ago we decided to create a new one and transfer every character to it. It wasn’t an easy task and it is surely took a lot of time. Transfer of the protagonist alone took two months due to the fact that some parts of old NPC’s AI system was used for controlling Jack’s action as well, and this spaghetti code had to be resolved. But I am glad to report that we finally managed to finish this. From now on, our protagonist as well as all other characters and animals are working with the new system.:dwYellowStar:
What does it mean? Now everyone has their own behavior tree which could be expanded as we like to create more immersive and complex things like daily schedules for NPCs, special attacks and different combat behavior for enemies and animals and much more. That’s another big task for us and we are going to release these updates gradually, over time.
Anyway, despite the fact that’s mostly a big under-the-hood alteration, it changes a few in-game things at the moment:
- the protagonist behaves more stable visually, his movement became smoother, especially while falling and getting down the stairs
- progress bars appear in rare cases now (when action can be aborted), interaction’s time depends on character’s animation
- removed a bug with Jack’s animation, and now you can stop digging at any time
ENGINE
Another big change is migration from OpenAL/cAudio to Wwise. That's one of the very best state-of-the-art commercial sound engines which gives us many benefits and useful turnkey solutions. Wwise offers a lot of features for managing sound effects, music and character voices, processing and mixing, testing and optimizing platform resource usage during the gameplay as well.
Since Exoplanet is developing on our own engine we had to spend some time to set everything. We decided to restore old functions in the very first place: playback, positioning, the Doppler effect, and functioning of world editor's audio component. Also, we added cone attenuation which allows to set directions of sound sources, improved playback randomization algorithms, and expanded audio settings in the game menu.
There are a lot of plans for the game's audio like adding adaptive music instead of the existing static one but that's a story for another time.
IMPORTANT: The new build can lack some sounds or music compositions.
CONTROLS
- NumPad support :dwYellowStar:
- Left Ctrl and Right Ctrl support :dwYellowStar:
ITEMS - new weapon: sledgehammer
- added Electrical Tape, Cold booze, Sweet Joy and Circuit Breaker (quest item)
- added health capsules, can be used without injector so far (it appears automatically when you use a capsule)
OTHER
- improved, more accurate protagonist’s animations for climbing and descending ladders
- a great deal of minor changes, bug fixes and minor polishing
BUG / CRASH REPORTS
If you are experienced a crash or found a bug, let us know via special crash reporter tool. It shows up when the game crashes but you can also send a report in-game with F1 button.
Keep in mind, that crash reporter makes an in-game screenshot when you press F1 so you might want to be sure that the visual problem you’re referring to will be captured. Enter your email and a short description of a bug or describe last actions before the crash.
You can also let us know about your problem on technical support forum or via Discord channel.
KNOWN ISSUES / SOLUTIONS
If there's no sound after game's loading, try to alt-tab to Windows and then go back to the game.
If you're stuck / hero doesn't move, F5 (quick save) and F9 (quick load) can help you in such matters.
If you have a weak PC or a laptop (especially the ones with Intel integrated graphics), we highly recommend to launch Exoplanet from its folder, not via Steam.
Keep in mind that integrated graphic cards are not supported despite the fact we do our best to make it possible. At the moment, there's a chance you can run the game but your performance probably won't be good enough to enjoy Exoplanet.
If you have BitDefender antivirus and can't launch the game, please, unblock Exoplanet's .exe.
Follow our latest updates on social networks:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/531660/Exoplanet_First_Contact/
Changed files in this update