Weekly Update: February 2, 2024
Author: justkevin,
published 7 months ago,
As promised last week, the first Jupiter build has been uploaded to an unstable beta branch.
It's been quite a while since the last named update, partly due to spending more time doing post-launch Icarus patches, but mostly due to my goal of introducing an ending to the game's story. Late in the process I found myself caught in the trap of "the players have waited so long for this build, they won't be happy unless I do X". But this eventually becomes a self-perpetuating cycle as X inevitably takes longer than I originally thought, and I feel compelled to add Y and Z. I finally reached a point of deciding that it's better to get some feedback on the new stuff and defer some known items.
Consider this a warning that this build might be a rougher build than previous opt-ins. There aren't any known game breaking bugs, but some content isn't quite as done as I would like, there have been untested balance changes, and some of the late areas may have performance issues. Some players have already started playing since I posted about it on Tuesday, but as most of the changes are in the late game, no player has made it that far and I still don't have a sense as to whether there are any serious bugs.
So [i]very[/i] brave commanders who want to venture forth into the Jupiter build, have at it. Once I get feedback from players who make it all the way through, I'll give some guidance in the weekly update on how rough it actually is. ([url=https://wx3.com/early-access-updates-and-save-games/]Opt-in instructions here[/url]).
Non-spoiler list of changes:
[list]
[*]Prologue transition
[*]End game credit screen
[*]New mid-game story, faction
[*]Two new void mini-quests, encounters
[*]New late game story, mission
[*]New end game story, missions
[*]Two late game "easter eggs"
[*]Fix for missing void encounters
[*]New weapon variants
[*]Refactor fixed weapons, control schemes
[*]Anomaly soundscapes
[*]18 new anomalies
[*]Numerous new actor dialogues
[*]New modules
[*]New techs
[*]New enemies, abilities
[*]Damage type logic, refactor resistance
[*]Refactored Station operations logic
[*]New techs highlighted
[*]Additional analytics
[*]Hints/fixes for several stuck scenarios
[*]Engine turbo sound fades out
[*]Numerous balance changes
[*]Numerous new VFX
[*]Minor changes to dialogue behavior
[*]Improved mission authoring tool
[*]Improved testing tools
[*]Changed autosave timing
[*]Fix for vsync not being saved
[*]Fix for secondary weapon not being saved
[*]Several performance optimizations
[*]Various QoL changes
[*]Numerous bug fixes
[/list]
Build 16006 patch:
[list]
[*] Fix for new analytics telemetry potentially logging player name, which would make the analytics non-anonymous
[*] Added canvas scaler for prologue text
[*] Fix beams not targeting fighter drones after object re-pooling
[/list]
Until next week!
- Kevin