[2021] Update: Among the Ancients

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Hello everyone!

The Among the Ancients update has just been released. Take a look inside to find...

• Overhauled alien ruins. New art, layouts, monsters, traps, and missions.
  
• Overhauled human characters. Reworked visuals and improved character customization, now also for singleplayer.
  
• Talent system. Earn talent points in campaign mode to unlock skill specializations and even new items.
  
• Genetic enhancements. Discover alien items and research and refine them to upgrade your character.
  
• Improved health interface and submarine status monitor for easier use and more in-game information.
  
• A long list of fixes and other improvements! Find the full changelog further down.

Head over to our blog[barotraumagame.com] to read more about the new features, and be sure to update your game to the latest version to be able to host and join multiplayer servers. We hope you enjoy Among the Ancients!


v0.15.12.0

Alien ruin overhaul:
- Overhauled ruins: completely remade sprites, monsters, layouts, items and puzzles.
- New Scan mission: scan an Alien ruin by placing down provided scanners at target locations and take the scanners back to the outpost.
- New Alien Ruin mission: kill the guardians inhabiting the ruin and destroy their pods.
- Added an additional ambience track for the ruins.

Character overhaul:
- Completely remade character sprites, ragdolls and animations.
- Option to customize the starting crew in the single player campaign.
- More customization options (skin, hair and facial hair colors, more accessories).
- Added a button to randomize character appearance in the character customization menus.

Health system improvements:
- Streamlined the health interface.
- Allow administering meds by clicking on the "suitable treatments" suggestions in the health interface.
- The health interface displays a prediction of how much a medical item will reduce/increase the afflictions when hovering the cursor over one.
- Certain afflictions can make the characters' face or body change color.
- Physical injuries to the head can cause concussions.
- Improvements to the blood particle effects when a character is bleeding.
- Damage to arms reduces aiming accuracy.
- Crippled legs slow the player down more.

Talent system:
- The new talent system allows you to unlock things such as special skills, buffs and fabrication recipes in the course of a campaign, with experience points gained from completing missions.
- Three different talent trees for all the character classes.
- Dozens of new items.
- Item quality system: certain talents allow you to fabricate higher-quality versions of items.
- Characters lose some skill points when respawning mid-round. The talent system makes it easier to gain skills and permanent improvements to the character, and this change is intended to balance that out.

Overhauled status monitor:
- Improved visuals.
- Indicates the locations of the crew's ID cards.
- Indicates the locations of alerts.
- Electrical view, indicating locations and health of junction boxes, reactor and batteries.
- Allows searching for items and indicating the hulls in which they're located.

Balance changes:
- Reduced loot in wrecks.
- Difficulty affects the amount of loot.
- Reduced the amount of weapons and grenades in wrecks, pirate ships and abandoned outposts.
- Disabled stacking quality-based items (experimental change, feedback is welcome).
- Reduced diving suits damage resistances.
- Buffed vigor and haste.
- Modified characters' base vitalities.
- Adjustments to monster stats.
- Reduced mission experience gains, level difficulty affects mission experience.
- Made welding tools a bit less effective early to compensate for increases to their effectiveness from quality/talents.
- Upgrade system reworked to work better in conjunction with new talents and quality systems. Quality of life upgrades made better or cheaper, hull upgrades are less effective towards the lategame but are better early, reorganized categories.
- Diving suit and human ragdoll damagemodifier changes: the suits now offer less protection, but humans have a bit more natural protection towards physical damage types.
- Adjustments to outpost distribution: natural formations greatly reduced in the 1st zone, cities slightly reduced in the 1st zone, outposts (including specialized ones) increased in the 3rd and 4th zone.
- Made magnesium a little more common in stores and wrecks.

Additions and changes:
- Gene splicing. You can find alien genetic material inside ruins (and for the time being, wrecks), and use these materials to gain special abilities and buffs. The materials can be processed using a Research Station (which atm can be found in research outposts) and applied on a character using a Gene Splicer.
- Added a new "Return" order for ordering bots to return back to the main submarine.
- Bots can now use level waypoints to help them navigate around when they are outside the submarine.
- Play editor music in the multiplayer lobby.
- Option to specify the amount of items to spawn with the "spawnitem" command.
- Optimized cave vent and ballast flora spore particles.
- Added a 5 second "cooldown" before a junction box broken by overloading can take damage from overloading again. Prevents continuous fires and particles when continuously repairing an overloaded junction box.
- Small monsters don't eat the inventory contents of a character they're eating (the items drop instead).
- Disabled new status monitor features from handheld status monitors.
- Round water and oxygen percentage readings on the status monitor (e.g. 99.999998% shows up as 100% instead of 99%).
- Adjustments to how far creatures can see and hear the submarine and it's devices from. Moving fast now makes more noise, moving slowly less, and the monsters can't see the sub from as far as before. Effectively it should now be more viable tactic to shut the engines down and keep silent.
- Reduce sonar ping's sound range from 10000 to 8000 to make it possible to spot (some) monsters before they target the sub.
- Made a couple of monsters unable to eat characters (hammerheads, terminal cells, leucocytes, molochs, spinelings and watchers).
- Changed default creature attack key to F because R conflicts with the radio keybind.
- Disabled toggling the sonar mode by pressing the Run key.
- Added condition_out pin to various items.
- Bots no longer ignore unconscious targets that regenerate health (i.e. they will finish off downed husks to prevent them from getting back up again).
- Fabricating fuel rods now requires electrical skills instead of mechanical.
- Reactor now requires electrical skills instead of mechanical to repair.
- When the status monitor receives the oxygen/water level for a hull, it registers it on all the linked hulls as well (-> no need to put an oxygen/water detector in all the hulls of a multi-hull room).
- Removed the "burndamage" damage type (not the same as "burn") that was added as a temporary workaround to allow pulse lasers to bypass monster's damage modifiers.
- Changed the look of the skill/xp notifications to accommodate the larger numbers of notifications you can get from talents and skillbooks.
- Added a fabricator and deconstructor to Azimuth and slightly lowered its maximum speed.
- Increased Azimuth's battery out relay max power.
- Temporarily disabled magnesium exploding in water to prevent issues with talents related to it.
- Added "targetlimb" argument to the giveaffliction command (allows applying the affliction to a specific limb).
- Players who wander inside a respawn shuttle don't get automatically killed when the shuttle despawns if they weren't part of the respawning crew.
- Bots no longer ignore severe fires in reactor, engine, or command rooms. The intention for them ignoring the severe fires was to prevent unwanted casualities when the fire can be left untreated and wait for it to fade out when not ordered to extinguish fires.
- Buffs are transferred to AI-controlled husks when a character transforms.
- Projectiles shift to the left in multi-slot loaders when firing.
- Option to make terminals use a monospaced font.
- Player-controlled monsters can now grab and eat bodies.
- Added triangle and sawtooth wave types to oscillator component.
- Added "high_pressure" output to water detector.
- Water detectors round the water percentage output up, so any amount of water will be at least 1%.
- Focus on the password field automatically in the server password prompt and allow submitting it with enter.
- Made pirates a little less accurate when they're operating turrets: they can no longer magically aim exactly at characters inside another sub.
- Biome noise loop volume is tied to sound volume instead of music volume.
- Endworms no longer always bleed to death when their tail is cut.
- Lever state is visualized on its sprite.
- Enabled NVidia Optimus on Windows.

Fixes:
- Fixed crashing when an attack is applied on a character from a source other than another character, e.g. propeller (unstable only).
- Fixed current_position_y output not working on nav terminals (unstable only).
- Fixed fuel rods having a bullet as a contained indicator (unstable only).
- Removed duplicate welcome messages from humpack's terminal.
- Fixed start and spectate buttons shrinking in the server lobby every time they're hidden and re-enabled.
- Fixed contained items inside contained items not moving when repositioning a container in the sub editor (e.g. when moving a weapon holder that contains a weapon with a magazine).
- Fixed issues with inaccurate tooltips and incorrectly blocked out order nodes in character-specific command interface.
- Fixed contained items' status effects appearing at the top-left corner of the container if the contained items are not visible (e.g. particle-emitting fuel rods would emit the particles from the top-left corner of the reactor instead of the center).
- Fixed hanging wires not getting selected when selecting the items they're connected to.
- Fixed "divide by zero" console error when scaling construction barrier.
- Fixed ability to wire items between two submarines as long as you stay inside the same sub.
- Fixed crew list background blocking mouse input (again).
- Fixed crashing when the majority of the players are controlling characters belonging to a non-player team while the sub is at the end of the level (e.g. if you're alone in the sub and take control of a monster with console commands).
- Fixed cargo missions sometimes only rewarding the players for 1 crate even when transporting more.
- Fixed the "use as treatment" tooltip showing up when trying to drop an item that can't be used as a treatment on the health interface.
- Fixed characters in the transition phase of a husk infection (i.e. after the stinger has appeared) getting stunned at the start of every round.
- Fixed inability to adjust max mission count in a dedicated server.
- Fixed light components staying powered indefinitely when in a container or inventory (didn't seem to be noticeable on any other vanilla items than sonar beacons, which stayed active indefinitely).
- Fixed some outpost events being possible to activate even if the target NPC is dead.
- Fixed ability to swap contained non-interactable items.
- Fixed crash when loading a container that has no containable restrictions and contains items (e.g. if you put items in a deconstructor and start a new round).
- Fixed bots not swapping oxygen tanks when they are outside and going to a target that is inside.
- Fixed issues with bot combat behavior when outside the submarine.
- Fixed ability to hold 2-handed items with one hand by trying to insert them into an occupied slot in a container that can't hold the item.
- Fixed misaligned nav terminal and status monitor in pirate humpback.
- Fixed inability to install/update mods that have periods in the name.
- Fixed nav terminals "current_position_x" output being in pixels when "current_position_y" is in meters.
- Fixed minerals sometimes spawning in unreachable spots in mining missions (on cells that are next to a cave, but at the wrong side of that cell if there's empty space behind it).
- Fixed items' "allow swapping" property being editable in-game.
- Fixed RegEx components with a non-continuous output always sending a signal out after being loaded.
- Fixed pirate subs sometimes spawning inside floating ice chunks.
- Fixed tracer particles not starting from the position of ranged weapons' barrel.
- Fixed inability to open the pause menu when the cursor is over an inventory slot.
- Fixed handcuffs dropping off from characters' hands when they die or turn into a husk.
- Fixed loadsub command.
- Cap the amount argument of the spawnitem command to 100 to prevent freezing/crashing when trying to spawn a ridiculous amount of the item.
- Fixed "infiltration" event getting stuck on one of the conversation options.
- Fixed signal source being wrong on delayed electrical signals (= signals that were delayed for the next frame after they'd passed through 10 steps). Most noticeably affected status monitors that need to know which oxygen/water detector a signal came from.
- Fixed WifiComponents delaying the signals based on the number of receivers, not how many steps the signal has actually taken, contributing to the previous issue.
- Hopefully fixed an oversight in the sub editor where changing ItemComponent colors with the HSV picker would create an error in the console.
- Fixed paralyzant (and many other meds that don't do direct damage) not triggering guards.
- Fixed sonar monitor's UI being unnecessarily small.
- Fixed contained items inside contained items (e.g. magazines in a rifle on a weapon holder) not rotating in the sub editor.
- The overdosed NPC in the "good samaritan" event can't die until the player has triggered the event (completing the event after the NPC had already died made no sense).
- Fixed console errors when an item a bot has been ordered to target was removed between rounds (e.g. an ignore order targeting a mission item that gets removed at the end of the round).
- Fixes to oxygen generator logic: the generator now periodically recalculates how to distribute the oxygen between the vents, as opposed to doing it once at the start of the round. Just doing it once caused issues if there were e.g. vents or doors that are initially open between the rooms.
- Fixed characters sometimes getting "stuck" when swimming in partially filled multi-hull rooms. Happened because the bottom of the current hull was used as the "floor" if the actual floor was too far below, even if there was another hull below the current one, causing the ragdoll to switch to walking animation and being unable to move because it's not touching the floor (unstable only).
- Fixed outpost events always unlocking the same escort mission.
- The hints about flooded rooms and ballast flora aren't shown in ruins, wrecks or enemy subs.
- Fixed "stowaway" event triggering an event cooldown, preventing monsters from spawning at the beginning of the round.
- Fixed clients (excluding the host) always considering friendly fire to be disabled, leading to minor cosmetic desyncs when a player applies afflictions on another one (i.e. there was a brief delay before the afflictions update client-side).
- Fixed inability to apply buffs on the crew when friendly fire is disabled.
- Fixed ItemContainers only applying the StatusEffects from the first matching Containable, even if there's multiple. Prevented the artifact-specific effects of artifact holder from executing.
- Fixed "giveaffliction" command's limbtype argument not working in multiplayer.
- Fixed "linesperlogfile" server setting doing nothing.
- Fixed discharge coils not working when triggered by via a wired button.
- Fixed hatch waypoint and platforms on Remora Drone.
- Memory usage optimizations.
- Fixed bots shooting enemies even when there's a friendly sub between them and the target.
- Bots take their masks off when if they have successfully equipped a suit.
- Fixed a pathfinding issue in Remora caused by too sparse waypoint distribution.
- Fixed disguises not changing the color of a character's name when hovering the cursor over the character.
- Fixed monsters' attack sounds never playing in multiplayer.

Modding:
- Implemented an item variant system that works similar to the character variants: you can create new items that inherit the properties of another item and only modify specific aspects of it, reducing the amount of duplicate XML code. See "Depleted Fuel Rod" in engineer_talent_items.xml for an usage example.
- Option to configure minimum damage for OnDamage status effects that require a specific type of affliction (see the "vigor on damage" affliction for an usage example).
- Option to make afflictions draw a full-screen overlay when active.
- Option to make property conditionals target contained items using the attribute targetcontaineditem="true".
- Added support for tileable light textures for Structures by using <light> XML element that has the same syntax as <LightComponent> does for Items.
- Added "InPressure" property to characters.
- Fixed hidden items appearing in the job loadout preview if there are other items of the same type that are not hidden (didn't affect any vanilla loadouts).
- Removed error message when trying to transfer items to a husk monster and inventory sizes don't match
- Submarine upgrades can be disallowed by category instead of having to do it separately for each upgrade in the sub editor.
- Fixed a modding related crash when trying to apply a property value of a wrong type using status effects.
- Option to create custom husk infections where player control carries over to the transformed creature.
- Display a console warning when an item's deconstruct output defines an out condition and is also set to copy the condition of the deconstructed item.