[2023] Icarus Week Sixty One Update | Fixes for Week 60’s Weather Systems

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

Week Sixty One focuses on correcting issues that arose from our Week Sixty update, something our community was vocal about and helped us to act on quickly.

Weather events and the system that operates them have been scaled back and improved. We haven’t scrapped the changes altogether, allowing us to keep the positive elements and strip out the ugly parts.

The irony isn’t lost on us that only hours after releasing this update, our home city of Auckland was hit by the worst storm in its history and promptly flooded.

Thankfully our team is OK and this week's update also includes a large performance optimization focusing on ‘ticking’ (described below). We expect this improvement to be more noticeable on lower-end PCs and large Open World bases.

Have a read, and stay dry team!



Weather Fixes
We’ve spent a week adjusting our new weather systems with all the feedback you have given us. This has been incredibly valuable, and we’re grateful for your constructive suggestions and candor.

• Weather now generates one event per weather block
  
• Weather ‘Blocks’ are now longer (often twice as long or more)
  
• Reduced frequency of weather events to a more reasonable and manageable amount
  
• Weather events are now picked again via the ‘weighted list’ system, rather than a rolling queue
  
• The Weather Forecast has been extended to three days
  
• Reduced and rebalanced the severity of weather in various prospects

These changes aim to provide a balance between reverting overwhelming elements of the new system, while still improving the new system with feedback so features such as the Weather Forecast and storm severity are kept.



Optimizations
We’re introducing some new performance optimizations that our team has been hard at work, looking at some of the areas we discussed in Week 59.

One word you’ll see a lot through these optimizations is ‘tick’ or ‘ticking’.

Ticks are an action that game objects perform, typically multiple times per second. Reducing the number of things done by each object every tick, reduces the strain on the CPU and therefore improves performance. Likewise, reducing the number of objects that tick also means better performance.

• Fixed the loading of certain assets during gameplay that could cause hitches. These were being loaded, used, and then released for garbage collection every few seconds
  
• Optimized the 'atmosphere controller' to rely more on cached data
  
• Optimized building pieces to cache several ‘commonly-accessed’ data table values
  
• Weather events now use cached building data, reducing hitches when the system is calculating which building pieces to damage in storms
  
• Building pieces no longer ‘tick'. Any ticking logic that they previously had (such as updating stability), is now controlled by their 'owning grid’ and has their calculations spread across multiple frames. When loading prospects with large amounts of building pieces these operations would previously sync up and cause noticeable hitches multiple times per second
  
• Nativized (converting Unreal Engine Blueprint code into C++ to improve efficiency) several building grid background tasks, which are now managed by an ‘owning system’ that evenly spreads these tasks between all building grids. This evens out performance with large numbers of different building grids present in the world
  
• Optimized the spline system used by electrical/water pipe systems
  
• Optimized deployable objects and benches. Deployables now have a custom ticking system that groups all of the deployables together to reduce CPU overhead
  
• Removed the tick process from almost all 'trait components' that were present on items in the game

Under Development: Resource Respawning
An upcoming feature that some of you have seen in the detailed changelog is our resource respawning options. While this is not releasing this week, we are working on the behind-the-scenes technology for deployable items that will respawn various resources.

Firstly, we have upgraded and optimized the way we create and render caves. We are also re-running our entire world generation, which will ultimately add regeneration capabilities to voxels, trees and plants.

In the coming weeks, two new items are to be introduced that will allow players to respawn voxels and flora.

This has been a highly requested feature ever since the release of our Open World game mode. We’ve put a lot of thought into introducing this feature in a way that adds to the experience without detracting from performance. We can’t wait to share it soon.



Changelog v1.2.36.1071213
Fixed

• MAELSTROM: Added respawning to explosive loot container
  
• Improve shadow settings validation for FLOD. Fix FT/BP assets to make sure their shadow settings match (disable shadows in AC assets as it is too harsh). Unified settings on lots of FTs back to default
  
• AVALANCHE: Increased size of travel location for preceeding through pass step. Updated highlight text for placement location of laser
  
• FORSAKEN: Fixed Damaged Gyroscope tagging to ensure this goes into the ship's gyroscope slot. Removed additional inventory slots, preventing items from being placed in inaccessible slots
  
• First pass at optimising weather audio system. Create a weather audio subsystem to manage weather controller events centrally and distribute updates to weather audio components much more efficiently
  
• Fix Flashlight and Biofuel Lamp being extinguished when the player is submerged
  
• RESURGENCE: Updated last quest step to require returning to the dropship, rather than the original ship location. Updated other quests steps capitilization
  
• Fix several issues which were causing tree fall sounds to behave incorrectly for clients on dedicated servers, and fix cypress tree landing sounds sometimes not playing the correct surface for clients
  
• Update voxel final hit audio behaviour to work with voxel re-initialisation changes
  
• Added a few more cases for the shield to delete itself on the off chance that the shield is not being deleted
  
• Tweaked storm prediciton timings to reduce frequency of back to back storms.
  
• Added additional initial storm steps and applied to specific missions
  
• Doubled the likelyhood of cosmetic storms appearing. This is mainly for Tier 0 / easy difficulties to have a significantly increased likelihood of cosmetic storms
  
• Fixed multiple async load warnings
  
• Fixed loading of certain assets during gameplay that could cause hitches
  
• Optimised deployable objects/benches. Deployables now have a custom ticking system that groups all of the deployables execution together to reduce CPU overhead
  
• Optimised atmosphere controller to rely more on cached data
  
• Optimised building pieces to cache several commonly accessed data table values
  
• Building pieces no longer tick. Any ticking logic that they previously had, such as updating stability, are now controlled by their owning grid and are processed across multiple frames. When loading prospects with large amounts of building pieces these operations would previously sync up and cause noticeable hitches multiple times per second
  
• Nativised several building grid background tasks which are now managed by an owning system that evenly spreads these tasks between all building grids. This evens out performance with large numbers of different building grids present in the world
  
• Removed tick from almost all trait components that were present on almost every item in the game
  
• Optimised spline system used by electrical/water pipe systems
  
• Weather events now use cached building data, reducing hitches when calculating which building pieces to damage in storms
  
• Multiple other small optimisations
  
• Swapped Flash Storm and Storm weather event tiers.
  
• Reduced Tier4 storm building damage during chaos events (still damages the same types of buildings, but for less damage)
  
• Range check and curve check when using SetTimeScale cheat (internal dev only/editor only)
  
• Updated Weather Generation based on adjusted design and feedback, reduced frequency of weather events back to a more reasonable amount
  
• Weather is now picked again via a weighted list
  
• Weather now generates one event per weather block
  
• Weather Forecast has been extended to 3 days
  
• Weather Blocks are now doubled in length
  
• Removed unused functions and variables after WeatherForecasting refactor and added more logging
  
• Fixed new modifiers moving across the screen, blocking reticule at 6 modifiers
  
• Fixed crash caused by components being removed from Deployables before they have unregistered with the deployable manager
  
• Tweaked storm frequency, adding in longer periods of quiet and more varied durations on weather forecasts
  
• Fixed potential issue with Error 65 reconnection and added additional logging around fail states
  
• Reduced default logging level of LogModifierState to reduce spam
  
• Reduced the severity of many early game missions in Olympus and increased some midgame missions that were using the easiest forecast.
  
• Tweaked ABYSS storm timings to help provide windows of opportunity
  
• ModifierStateContainers within MountInterface and Player Inventory now have a subtle pulsing animation when modifiers are added, instead of playing the normal animated transition
  
• Move to system that loads/saves all weather events at the forecast block level
  
• Weather forecast will reset for existing saves
  
• Fixed bug where mission-specific out-of-bounds mask would override map-based out-of-bounds mask; This would cause issues where player dropships could land out of playable areas on certain Olympus missions
  
• Fixed several crash bugs caused by optimisations to buildings and deployables
  
• Added an extra null check when displaying debug data about loading a bad data table row as this could cause a crash if it was in a really bad state
  
• Final tidy up for Weatherforecasting
  
• Fixing Extractors and Drills not ticking and extracting resources
  
• Fix an issue where the weather forecast would reset the pattern index if the game was saved+loaded at the exact start time of a weather block
  
• Fixing Crop Plot Glasshouse buffs being multiplied everytime they are checked
  
• Fixing Crop plot glasshouse percentage increase not being presented on clients correctly
  
• Reduced tier of the initial rough landing forecast.
  
• Reduced duration of the initial middle ground and mini-ramp forecasts, this will result in slightly quicker storms for those prospects
  
• Temporarily removed building stability queue optimisation as it causes stability to behave erratically

Future Content

• Setup 3 new caves for Inital Testing, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adjustments to spacizliser settings of T3 / T4 communicator
  
• Volcanic Rocks - disabled complex collision on LC_Cavefloor 01-03
  
• Adding T2 Communicator audio and adjusting BP implimentation for all communicators audio
  
• Small communicator audio tweaks
  
• Adding new Notifier to Deployable Base / Deployable Subsystem
  
• Adjusting Promethus Story Mission 1 to work with Audio and Quest Steps
  
• Adding an LC_GrassB set of Red Grass assets that are more sparse than the GrassA variants, for better blending of grassy areas
  
• Adding more bones to data table for some creatures death fall and small adjustment to better reflect various creatures death fall size
  
• Added skeletal mesh for the exotic tree device as well as a starting animation and a looped harvesting animation
  
• Swamp Rocks - LOD materials, convex hull collision on SW, GL, TU CanyonWall meshes
  
• Building Transition Cave from P1 to P2 Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Started New Small Lava cave and Did a Foliage Pass On Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• First pass generation of Prometheus Landscape LODs
  
• Voxel placement pass, added and edited cliffs, p2 Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Adding correct creature in AI table for the swamp quad mount and zebra mount. Adjustments to the footstep layers
  
• Further fine tune and adjustments to quad footstep layers. Balanced mud vs dirt etc
  
• Added placeholder thumper item. Previously mined Voxels now support reinitialisation to original, unmined state
  
• Adding correct harvest sound to green tea leaf bush
  
• Added water immersion parameter to creature audio world movement sound, to help with soundset of low creatures moving through shallow water
  
• Adding needler water immersion movement sounds
  
• Transition Cave volumes added, added cliffs around macros & added voxels to P2 on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added New Small Lava Cave and Did A Foliage Pass On Both Blue and Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Swamp Rocks - LOD materials, convex hull collision on SW, GL, TU Cliffs 10-12
  
• Added first pass thumper mechanics to deployable BP
  
• Added first pass of LC_DragonTree_Var1, including FTs and BPs, as well as Chopped and Burnt versions
  
• Added DEP_Thumper with animation
  
• Voxel placement pass, added and edited foliage, p2 Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Added split log meshes for LC_DragonTree
  
• Added Tomato plant highlight text
  
• Added ActorPrefab and ActorPrefabAsset classes to set up the new prefab system for replacing cave templates
  
• Added BP_ActorPrefabFunctionLibrary which will handle all coversions from prefab data to world actors
  
• Added CavePrefab to replace the current CaveTemplate implementation
  
• Converted all cave templates assets to prefabs
  
• Replaced cave templates on every outpost and Olympus/Styx levels
  
• Added support for prefab generation during the world generation process
  
• Leveling Out Landscape Under Lava Rivers/Lake on P2 Area & Cave Template Fixes Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Foliage Pass For Swamp and Grasslands and Fixed Some Broken Deep ore Deposits, Blue and Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Replaced cave templates with prefabs on Terrain 019 Red/Yellow quads
  
• Added Mega Tree Prefabs to be used in Terrain 019
  
• Converted all tree levels to Mega Tree Prefabs
  
• Cave template utility now supports creating tree prefabs
  
• Flushed grass on Outpost 008
  
• Placed breakeable Obsedian and Scoria around p2, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Replaced cave templates with prefabs on the rest of Terrain 019
  
• Added missing cave prefab for Terrain 019
  
• Added LC_SucculentTree with 3 variants, including FTs, BPs and Data Table entries
  
• Promethus Mission 2 Cave worms now do not continue to spawn and adding a quest step to clear them out
  
• Promethus Mission 2 Fixing Dialogue Ordering on Quests, and Adding Interaction Quest Step
  
• Fixing Initial Quests not always calling QuestStarted as they should be doing
  
• Adding in inital Lava Hunter assets, anims and rig
  
• Initial pass for tooling to find floating world objects
  
• Added new LandShark creature with first pass of behaviour set
  
• Leveling Out Landscape Under Lava Rivers/Lake on P2 Area & Swapped Out Tree Template Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Foliage Pass On Green Quad and Swapped BP Mangrove Trees for Prefab Trees , Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added BP_MegaTreePrefab to the list of approved actors
  
• Placed breakeable Obsedian and Scoria around p2, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Cleand up breakeable Obsedian and Scoria, foliage and cliffs around p2, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Increase Thumper Albedo textures to 4k as device is huge and needs the increased texel density. Add 'On' material variation and removed emissive setup from base material
  
• Fixed generation issues on 2nd layerof Geothermal Splines
  
• Resaved datatable to resolve build validation
  
• Adding Lava Hunter bite attack movement audio and event and anim notify
  
• Deleting old cave template assets
  
• Removed IsEditorOnly from ActorPrefabFunctionLibrary since it had strange warnings during cook
  
• Adding Lava Hunter out of lava movement audio and event and anim notify
  
• Resaved datatable to resolve build validation.. again
  
• Adding lava hunter death anim notify and lay egg audio and notify
  
• Added LC_JoshuaTree with 3 variants, including FTs and BPs and Data Table entries
  
• Adding Lava Hunter general move sounds and event and heavy slam event
  
• Leveling Out Landscape Under Lava Rivers/Lake on P2 Area Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Moved Super Kooled ice from all non iced surfaces and Foliage Pass on Blue and Green Quads, Prometheus
  
• Added various scaling mechanics to Thumper spawn events. Thumper spawning is now scaled by the amount of resources that will be regenerated. LandSharks will now spawn at high Thumper event difficulties. Fixed Unity build issue with WorldStatsSubsystem.h missing include. Added extra validation check inside ProspectSubsystem.h to prevent crash when accessing during game init
  
• Painted Reed Flowers and Yeast Plant in Swamp biome, pt2 Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Fixed mega trees generating at 0,0,0
  
• Move BP_MegaTreePrefab from approved class to ignored class so spawned trees in the world aren't doubled
  
• LC Terraces - adjusted material to better blend with surrounding rocks - WIP
  
• Adding lava hunter unique whoosh and unique stabber attack events and sounds and anim notifys
  
• More lava hunter attack sounds and footstep notifiers
  
• Thumper event can now change the resource type of regenerated voxels, but only to resource types that were already supported at that location
  
• Adding Lava Hunter unique lava footstep audio and event
  
• Leveling Out Landscape Under Lava Rivers/Lake on P2 Area Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Swaped The Final Megatrees into the Prefabs and Did a Foliage pass on Blue and Green Quads, Prometheus
  
• Geothermal banks - added material and duplicated spline meshes for use at the bottom of the terrace pools
  
• Fixed voxel-related crash when trying to reload old prospects
  
• Made Thumper recipe Dev-only