Icarus Dev Tracker

Welcome to Week 138.

This week continues the expansion of the Icarus weapon tree. To make pistols more useful, and avoid only adding onto the end of the tech tree, the current One Shot Pistol is moving to Tier 2, along with a new a cheaper ammo recipe. This makes space for the new Semi-Automatic Pistol on the Machining Bench at Tier 3.

The Free Prometheus Expansion is progressing well as we implement feedback from closed play testing. We explain more about how you'll use Beacons to explore the ‘Null Sector’ dark zone below.

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This Week: New Pistol & Rebalance We’re adding a new Semi-Automatic Pistol this week at Tier 3.

This comes with a rebalance and restructure of the pistol tiers to clearly differentiate the different weapons.

Here are the core details about the new pistol:

• Crafted in Tier...

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

Welcome to week 137.

We’re looking at farming again today, this time by adding the new ‘Farmers Satchel’ which is a tier 2 upgrade on the Seed Pouch.

This has all the benefits of the Seed Pouch, but with more slots and uses than just seeds that makes it more useful when working with a large amount of crops.

We’re also talking today about the upcoming Prometheus Map Expansion, with details about how the mini-map works in this new ‘Null Sector’.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements:

• Medicine crafted on the person will head straight into the Medicine Satchel
  
• Fixed spoil timer showing {0} instead of the correct time
  
• Reduced spacing in the objectives list to better-fit missions with many objectives

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This Week: Farmers Satchel
We’re adding a n... Read more

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

Welcome to week 136.

This week we’re implementing comprehensive changes to how seeds and crops interact with biomes and weather patterns.

One of Icarus' unique foundations is the immersive weather system, which requires genuine consideration in many decisions you make including building materials, biome selection and even structural design. Biomes add unique resource pools and availability, along with impacts to survivability and ailments.

One area of the game which has not been affected by these impacts, however, is farming. While rainfall amounts and glasshouse bonuses have a modest effect, it has largely ignored many of the other impacts that are prevalent on other game features.

We are expanding on that this week with biomes, extreme storms, freezing temperatures and exposure now playing a part in the crop growth simulation, making this feel more natural and connected to the rest of the game.

This includes new tiers of shovels and cro... Read more

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

Welcome to Week 135.

This week we’re introducing a new building tier, Stone Brick, which will be available in all maps and biomes.

We’ve also got an update on Prometheus Part II, upcoming building piece variations and next week's changes to crops and their interaction with biomes and weather patterns.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements:

• ABYSS Mission. Fixed a case where you could have no objectives because the mission waits for you to return to the island before the final objective triggers
  
• The context menu for items while not on planet only ever shows 'repair' and 'destroy' now

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This Week: Stone Brick Building Tier
We’ve added a new Stone Brick building set at Tier 3, giving you a new aesthetic to experiment
with on your base.

Stone Bricks are c... Read more

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

Nau mai ko wiki kotahi rau toru tekau mā whā - Welcome to week 134.

This week we’re celebrating Matariki, the Māori new year here in New Zealand, with a special free operation DLC for all Styx owners and the new Kiwi bird and Kiwifruit plant.

The new operation, REPOPULATION: Research tasks you with introducing a new species to Styx, the elusive Kiwi.

We’ve also got an update on our Prometheus Part II project.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements:

• Fixed a crash that occurred when opening the map
  
• Adding tooltips to exotic deposits (Trees & Veins)
  
• Fixed Bug where you could not craft items while mounted

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This Week: Matariki Operation
We’re celebrating Matariki this week by introducing a new mission.

REPOPULATION: Research will be gr... Read more

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

Week 133 features three new Styx Operations playable in Open World mode that have been converted over from Missions. This completes our Styx section of this work, and we’re now moving on to Olympus map which has several Missions suitable for conversion.

We’ve also got an update on the next map addition, Prometheus Part II. This will be a hardcore expansion of the map including new missions, quests and creatures.

Finally, we’ve got some news on next week's update, with a special New Zealand flair to it.

Jump in and have a read.

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This Week: New Styx Operations
This week we’re introducing three new Styx Operations that have been converted over from Missions.

These are RENDEZVOUS: Delivery, ABYSS: Research and REMNANT: Extraction.

This is part of an ongoing process to convert all applicable Missions over t... Read more

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

This week we’re introducing the second-place finisher of our Discord Poll from two weeks ago - the CHAC ‘Sentinel' Pistol.

This new 4-round magazine pistol is quick to both fire and reload, making it great for a tight situation where you need a get-out-of-jail-free card.

We’re also introducing a new ammo type - the Jacketed Pistol Ammo. This can be bought from the Orbital Workshop in boxes of 25.

Jump in and have a read.

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This Week: Workshop Pistol
This week brings the new Workshop Pistol - the loser of our Discord poll two weeks ago but still, an exciting new item for players to purchase and use in their missions.

The CHAC ‘Sentinel’ Pistol has a 4-shot magazine that reloads as a magazine (rather than per individual round) and uses standard pistol ammo.

Compared to the standard pistol, it has +25% d... Read more

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

This week we’re introducing the winner of our Discord Poll - the Automated Defense System: Pistol.

The new Turret packs a wallop, with a 400-round chamber, 120 degrees of horizontal rotation and a 50m max range.

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This Week: Turret
The new ‘Automated Defense System: Pistol’ is a powerful new Turret system for you to deploy in defence of your base.

It sports a 50m max range, five rotation degrees per second, a two-second cool down between shots, 45 degrees of vertical rotation (pitch), and 120 degrees of horizontal rotation. It consumes 3000 power while in action and 1500 while sitting idle, so make sure to keep it supported by a robust power network.

For this powerful defense system, there is a large cost to match. You’ll need eight Titanium Plate, 12 Electronics, 12 Composites, 12 Aluminum Plate, one Pistol, 20 Steel Screw... Read more

In our previous Free Laika update we added pet companions to the game, as well as new DLC with extra content for those wanted to support development. Some of this content wasn't ready in time, but we kept working on it and now it is ready for this update.

For more information, checkout the Laika Update below
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1149460/view/4191238396441414580

This week debuts two new four-legged friends - the Pug for the owners of the Animal Companions DLC and Laika herself ... Read more

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

Performance improvement is an activity we undertake constantly, but it is a bit like prospecting for gold in that it can be a lot of work with no outcome. This week, we have some specific performance improvements for late-game hitching.

We’re rolling out the late-game hitching fix we’ve been discussing for the last two weeks after some rigorous testing. Simply-put, this will reduce or eliminate the hitching when traversing the map in open worlds that you've been playing on for a while.

Why don't we do performance every week? People often say this in comments. In fact, we work on performance constantly at significant project expense. This work is very exploratory. In this case, our solution was extremely complex and risky. It involved redeveloping our custom voxel mesh generation to be multithreaded, combining several of the most complex areas of programming together. Results in performance optimizations don't come in a straight line, so w...

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

Welcome to Week 128.

After a couple of big weeks of Project Clinic updates, we’re returning to our normal cadence and making some changes to the carts we recently introduced in Laika - letting you ride them rather than just lead them as they operate.

We’ve also got some more information on the performance work we’re currently undertaking, particularly the mined stone deposit loading threads we discussed last week.

Finally, we’ve got news on what to expect next week - hint, you’re going to need a bigger dog bed.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements

• Adding small dog drinking and eating animation duplicates for montages and adding unique audio for both sizes to differentiate between the small and big dogs
  
• Updated modifier times on tooltips to show in minutes if over 120 seconds
  
• Added APEX DM meshes, as well as many of their blueprints, for multiple buildable assets for all tie...

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