[2023] Icarus Week Sixty Four Update | New Salt and Deep Freeze for preserving food

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

Week Sixty Four introduces our newest mineable mineral - Salt. Found around the map on the sides of cliffs and mountains, Salt can be used to preserve food items twice as long.

This comes with a new bench, the Salt Station, where you can place any food item along with salt to give it a ‘Preserved’ buff.

We’re also introducing a Tier 4 ‘Deep Freeze', which preserves food while it is powered, and have kept improving dropship landing zones and dynamic quest locations.




Salt & Food Preservation
There is a new mineral to discover and mine on Icarus - Salt. Salt can be found in the wilderness in similar areas to Sulfur, Oxite and Silica.

Salt can be used in preservation, doubling the time it takes food items to spoil. This can be done on the new Salt Station crafted in Tier 2, and providing alternatives to using ice boxes and fridges.

The Salt Station works by putting any food item on the bench with Salt in the other slot. This will produce the salted version of this item for you instantly.



Deep Freeze
To provide even more preservation options, we’re adding a new ‘Deep Freeze’ recipe and item in Tier 4 on the Fabricator.

This is a high-tier item and provides unlimited preservation of items inside. It requires a lot of power to keep temperatures below freezing, so a strong power source and consistent stream of electricity is critical.

Due to the incredibly low temperatures, the Deep Freeze will also slowly accumulate Ice, providing another source of Water on the go or to fill Ice Boxes taken on adventures.



Dropship Landing & Dynamic Quest Fixes
Last week we spoke about our ongoing work on dropship landing locations,dynamic quest spawning and drop pod locations, and we wanted to give an update on our work here.

The feedback received on our changes was constructive and showed signs of improvement on the previous iteration. We’re continuing to build on this work this week with more tweaks and improvements, aiming to provide dropship landings unobstructed by the environment and closer, easier-to-access mission-reward drop pod locations.

Keep providing feedback on these improvements, and specific details if you do run into any blockers such as dropships landing in trees so we can address these quickly for you.



Changelog v1.2.40.107951
New Content

• Adding Salt item and setup
  
• Adding Salting Station setup, Talent, Recipe and Functionality
  
• Adding 'Salted' Alteration which increases spoil time by 200% (subject to change)
  
• Adding Salting Station UI and setting up Functionailty to Salt Items, including various errors
  
• Adding salting meat crafted audio and event and data table entry
  
• Added DEP_Bench_Kitchen_Salting
  
• Small increase in volume to salt bench craft audio
  
• Removed animation in Salting Station UI which referenced object that doens't exist and clean up BP logic. Removed second Close button that did nothing
  
• Fixed Salting Bench DM not referencing materials correctly
  
• Add Salting Station icon
  
• Remove Salt from Salting Bench recipe
  
• Fixed Salting Bench meshable entry not referencing Deployable context
  
• Fixed weight on Salting Bench itemable
  
• Adding Salt to Voxel Distribution, hooking up textutes, materials etc
  
• Fixed conifer outside salt spawn weight
  
• Test Salt Commit
  
• Reduced amount of food preserved per piece of salt to 1 per from 5 per.
  
• Lowered spoil time reduction on preserved items to 2x from 3x.
  
• Halved the frequency of salt in the world
  
• Set Salt Station to Core
  
• Added salt icon to itemable datatable
  
• Preserved Food Spoil Item Visualisation now incorperates stats into visualisation
  
• Updating Inventory Item Widget to fix spoilage time
  
• The 'Salted' Alteration is now Called 'Preserved'
  
• Adding Deep Freeze
  
• Added Deep Freeze icon to Itemable table
  
• Added text for Deep Freeze item
  
• Fixing Deep Freeze Talent

Fixed

• Fix several dropship spawners being located too close to trees on Olympus and Styx
  
• Added tool to detect and select dropships with trees too close
  
• Added more logging to identify which UMG the game thinks is open when it isnt, thus stopping mouse input on death. Also refreshes when you open a new menu
  
• Improved the fireplace chimney smoke effect, increasing the thickness and height of the plume and distance it can be seen from
  
• Increased stack size of pickled carrots to match other items stored in glass jars
  
• Fixed bug where ores regenerated using thumper weren't requiring the correct tier of pickaxe to be mined
  
• Fixed hang when incorrect password is entered when joining a server
  
• When player dropship topples trees, make the spread of toppled trees more radial
  
• Fixed a few small typos in item names and descriptions
  
• Fixed a typo in cooking bench description
  
• Fixed offset of Concrete Frame destructible mesh, so it does not move position when swapping to the destructible mesh
  
• small update to dropship textures
  
• Fixed bug where LandShark world position wasn't updating for clients when it went undergound and resurfaced somewhere else. Fixed bug where LandShark spit/melee attacks were being dealt to clients who weren't able to see the worm
  
• Fixed cause of some error 65's. This was being caused by a malformed packet being received by the net connection during level transitions on dedicated servers
  
• Change the EQS query for collection, retrieva and delivery pods to bias closer to the querier (quest, deployable etc.) but to still factor player distance
  
• Change the EQS query for reward pods to select between player distance and querier distance
  
• Tweak the min/max distances for EQS queries on some quests so that pods spawn closer
  
• Fix an issue with sentry report submission
  
• Increased many dynamic quest location minimum distance as they are now correctly biased towards the active objective
  
• Rotate the shape used by drop ship spawn probes by 45 degrees to allow more room for players to get out
  
• Slightly extend the radius from drop ship for trees that will be blown over by drop ships
  
• Extend drop ship spawn query rather than using point traces
  
• Added search area for Dynamic Hunt mission, kills outside this area still count toward the objective but this gives players an area to search for additional spawns
  
• Added new dedicated server commands for debugging voxels (/DumpVoxelStates and /DumpVoxelTarget)
  
• Changed replicated voxel data to be grouped together. This should prevent desync if data is received out of order due to packet loss
  
• Further increase the EQS query geometery radius when spawning player drop ships to allow more room for player to get out, perform more sparse probes over a greater area

Future Content

• Added Volcano Landscape Mesh on Red Quad, DLC Map
  
• LC Red grass - enabled terrain blending in materials
  
• Added textures, material, foliage type for LC_PlantDebris_02
  
• Tundra Rocks - material parent changes on cliff mats
  
• Increase in initial footstep sizzle in lava to add a more dangerous feeling to the audio
  
• added bone armor materials,ml, textures and mesh pack
  
• FT_D_LC_Plant_Debris_02- edits to textures
  
• Started painting new LC red grass decal down in P2 Area on Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Polish Pass on the rivers in Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Started painting Dragon trees around sulfur pools, Succulant trees around red grass areas and Joshua trees around saplings, P2 Area on Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Commiting Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Volcano - added emissive details to albedo map for better distant LOD generation
  
• Adding bone armor audio loop and fmod param entry
  
• Added final assets for Prometheus Generated levels first pass. Minor tweaks to tooling
  
• LC Rocks - improved LODs for cliffs, improved collision for Cliffs 12-18+ mac 03A, material edits and parent changes for cliff and macro mats
  
• LC Rocks - texture missed in last commit
  
• LC Rocks - parent change and edits to cave entrance materials
  
• Painted New LC Red Grass & Painted Plant Debris 02 decal down in P2 Area on Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Added rock formations ontop of cliffs and Landscape painting on rivers, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Painted Joshua Trees, New LC Red Grass & Painted Plant Debris 02 decal down in P1 Area on Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Changed title card description for Prometheus on String Table
  
• Adding in extra lava hunter anims
  
• LC Rocks - LOD optimization and normal map rebaking for cave entrance meshes
  
• Adding lava hunter super heavy attack movement event and notify
  
• LC Rocks - parent changes for LRG, MED, SML rock mats, overall color and saturation tweaks to master LC mat
  
• Painted New LC Red Grass & Painted Plant Debris 02 decal down in P2 Area on Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Added rock formations ontop of cliffs and Landscape painting on rivers, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Painted New LC Red Grass & Painted Plant Debris 02 decal down in P1 Area on Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Added Brick overlay icon
  
• Adding lava hunter quick egg lay deposit sound, event and notify. Also adding vocal to swipe attack
  
• More lava hunter movement sounds and additions to most animations
  
• Added DefaultPhysicsVolume to WorldManager ignored classes list
  
• Moved Macro Cliffs from Persistant Level to Developer Levels, Green and Blue Quad, Prometheus
  
• Volcanic Rocks - added Macro 01A
  
• Updates and additions to the lava hunter animations using movement audio events
  
• Added rock formations ontop of cliffs and Landscape painting on rivers, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Painted New LC Red Grass & Painted Plant Debris 02 decal down in P2 Area & Cleaned World Outliner on Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Splitting some 1.3.0 dialogue into more appropriate chunks
  
• Fixing audio routing for new dialogue clips
  
• Second pass on Prometheus Generated assets, cleaning up artifacts. Tweaks to tooling
  
• General cean up around swamp biome of cliffs, foliage, resources in Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Adjustment to lava hunter notify timing and adding shake splatter sound for lava h out
  
• Adding Variables to the weather and atmposphere controller for Ash, Hail, Embers, Acid Rain and Smoke, so they can be included in new weather events
  
• Fix biome and storm music not playing correctly. Needed to fix broken BP node exec connections caused by a WeatherController function being made const and defaulting to BlueprintPure
  
• Adding cave entrance for the volcanic biome
  
• Adding the rest of the cave entrance events for new biomes
  
• Added New Level for Cinematic Shots and Added Water Points and Edge Splines For Lava Lakes, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Updated Enzyme Cannon textures and skeletal meshs to version 2. Added open and close animations for the Enzyme Cannon Arm
  
• Lights are now added along river splines based on distance rather than spline points for more consistent lighting/performance
  
• Add LavaLight preview support to WT_RiverSpline tooling
  
• Set Up Shots For Trailer & Added Sea Grass to Deep Water Swamp on Green/Blue/Yellow Quad, DLC Map
  
• Generated and cleaned up splines for lava lakes/rivers in P2 LC Area on Purple,DLC
  
• First pass to prepare music system for dynamic music features:
  
• Refactor location music conditions to be data-driven, and add quest music conditions
  
• Refactor quest-related notifications from PlayerFeedback subsystem to new QuestNotification subsystem, and add QuestStarted notify
  
• Add concept of MusicTrackStateGroups which can be assigned to music tracks and used to set a state parameter on the FMOD music event
  
• Split Promfractureevent17 voice lines into three events for better delivery
  
• Very small micro adjustments to overall mix. Music up a tiny bit, slightly more compression / limiting / biome ambience level balance for more consistency
  
• Fixed a typo in desert anomaly mission
  
• Navmesh generation removal from IMPs and MACs in Prometheus (set as dynamic obstacle, NavArea_Null)
  
• Navmesh generation removal from distant volcanic and glacier landscape meshes
  
• Adding test commit to force teamcity update