dust storm

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Lacuna Passage - Devlog #82 - The Pop Tent Update - v0.59

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poptent1.gif

v0.59 now provides a new way for you to escape the elements of Mars. Emergency Pop Tents are now deployable items that you can enter to protect yourself for dust storms, eat while on EVA, and save your progress by sleeping.

The rest of this update is a little lighter on content than usual because I have had to spend a lot of time updating the game code to be compatible with the latest version of Unity. Unity required a security update and I figured it would be a good time to also just update everything to the latest version. I've gone from Unity 5.3.8 to Unity 2017.1. This required a ton of little fixes to ensure everything will work as it did before, and I'm still not entirely sure that everything will be functional. If you find something that seems out of place or inconsistent with how you remember the game working before, please let me know via the official bug reporting and feedback forum

Change Log

  • Updated engine to most recent version of Unity for performance and compatibility improvements.
  • Numerous bug fixes for issues related to Unity version update.
  • Loading of interior and exterior scenes should be faster.
  • Habitat interior lightmapping has been improved.
  • Terrain dynamic shadows have been improved.
  • Fog distance and blending with horizon have been improved.
  • Added deployable Emergency Pop Tents that allow you to take shelter from dust storms, eat consumables, and save your game while on an EVA.
  • Remote outposts with permanent pop tents are also useable now and they produce their own ambient oxygen so your suit reserves will not deplete while inside.
  • Added quick reference panels by interior airlock doors to see the status of your exterior life support modules at a glance while inside a habitat.
  • Equipped portable solar panels will no longer charge your suit battery while inside an airlock.
  • Dust storms now properly impact exterior module power production based on proximity to the storm’s epicenter.
  • Dust storm particle effect visibility due to proximity to storm epicenter has been adjusted.

Many of these changes were prioritized based on feedback provided by players on our Feedback Forum[lacunapassage.userecho.com]. Help me determine future development priorities by posting your ideas, suggestions, and bug reports there.

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Lacuna Passage - Devlog #81 - The Dust Storms Update - v0.58

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v0.58 marks the major feature addition of randomized dust storms to Lacuna Passage. The best way to quickly experience the new dust storms is to start a new game with the Big Storm scenario detailed below. If you want a quick timelapse of what dust storms look like you can check out this video:

Change Log

  • Added randomized dust storms that can slowly move across the map and impact your visibility, mobility, and navigation functions.
  • Added a survival sandbox scenario select screen with three currently available options: No Dust Storms Mode, Standard Mode with occasionally spawning dust storms, and Big Storm Mode which will start with a large dust storm hitting Habitat Alpha within the first 3-7 Sols.
  • Added small blowing dust clouds over the entire map.
  • Added randomly spawning dust devils.
  • All habitat interiors now have an airlock exit sign to differentiate the two doors.
  • The screen no longer fades completely to black during exterior module repairs. You can now see time pass in your HUD and the cost to your oxygen and battery in accelerated time during the repair.
  • Fixed issue with exterior module resource generation when sleeping for long periods.
  • Fixed issue with RTGs not generating exterior module resources properly at night.
  • Fixed incorrect description of Multitool. Multitools now explicitly mention that they can be used as a Cutting Tool, Building Tool, and Engineering Tool.
  • The objective LAT and LONG is now updated while placing a custom objective in the Navigation app.
  • Fixed issue with some Drill Rover locations not being added to navigation.
  • Fixed incorrect randomization of exterior module component integrity values for the southeastern-most habitat location.
  • Scanner is now automatically disabled when entering a habitat to prevent unintended scanner highlights while indoors.
  • Fixed issue with incorrect habitat resource values being displayed when accessing the EVA suit management screen between two different habitats.
  • Fixed incorrect texture on water reclaimers.
  • Fixed incorrect exhaustion recovery value when consuming water.
  • Sleeping for 0 hours is now allowed as a way to save without sleeping. Was previously only accessible by cycling the time value in one direction.
  • Fixed issue with the starting landing pod changing positions after loading a saved game.
  • Fixed a floating rock at a solar panel discovery location.
  • Fixed issue where some exterior module components were unable to be removed.

Keep in mind that this now makes the weather monitoring functions of the Waypoint Stations worth maintaining since they can warn you of an incoming dust storm and you can track the visibility at each WayStat location with the function enabled via installed fuses.

Many of these changes were prioritized based on feedback provided by players on our Feedback Forum. Help me determine future development priorities by posting your ideas, suggestions, and bug reports there.

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Lacuna Passage - Devlog #73 - WayStat Navigation and Weather Monitoring

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Waypoint Stations (WayStats for short) are crucial science installations that will assist you with your navigation and weather monitoring. In the survival sandbox mode you will need to discover these WayStats and activate them before they're data can be accessed.

If there are no active WayStats within a certain radius of your location your suit's navigation functions will be offline. As you can see in the images above we have discovered a WayStat, but the HUD at the top shows our navigation is offline. To fix this we must first turn it on.

With navigation features back online we can now see our custom objective marker heading on our HUD compass and our own location in the navigation app on the datapad.

The weather monitoring functions however will require a small upgrade to the WayStat's components. If we try to access the new weather app on our datapad right now we will get a "NA" label at the location of the WayStat.

So you must access the component panel of the WayStat and install a new fuse.

Now when we access the weather app we will get a percent value that represents the visibility at the location of the WayStat. A 100% value means that there is no sign of a dust storm near the WayStat.

A single active weather monitoring WayStat will allow you to check your weather app to see if visibility is reduced, but you will need three active weather monitoring WayStats in order to get advanced warnings for incoming dust storms.

Related to navigation, we have also added a new gameplay purpose for photography. Some game discoveries like WayStats and habitats will have permanent map markers, but others like small supply caches will not. In order to catalogue your discoveries you will need to take photos of them (and perhaps save them to your favorite photos folder). Then you can access them in the photo app and use the "Set Custom Objective" feature to find your way back to their location.

And as you can see in the above gif, we are starting to fill in our landscape with these discoverable locations. 92 semi-randomized locations to be exact. We've only just really gotten started, but here's a closer look at one of the smaller supply cache locations.

As we work towards filling in our survival sandbox with interesting locations to explore we will probably keep most of them a secret so that finding them for the first time will feel like a genuine discovery.

And finally we want to show you how the terrain will improve as we continue to place more unique rock structures. The comparison below shows you the bare terrain from our NASA satellite data and what it looks like after we have manually placed more detailed rock formations.

That covers everything from this last month of development. Thanks for reading and make sure to let us know what you think in the comments.

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Lacuna Passage - Devlog #69 - Randomized Weather Events

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Over the course of development we have shown several weather-related effects that will come to play a major role in the gameplay of Lacuna Passage. Well, with the upcoming survival sandbox mode we have started to polish these weather effects and randomize them as part of the overall survival system. A fair amount of work has been invested in these weather features to make them feel organic and natural, but instead of going into a ton of detail I thought we could share some gifs and videos of our progress with simple explanations to accompany them.

Cloud Formation Transitions

Mars is not known for its particularly cloudy skies, but there are certainly some clouds on the Red Planet that we have observed. We've shown off our cloud shader in the past, but now our clouds will cycle between different formations throughout the day-night cycle. The above timelapse helps make these transitions more noticeable, but in realtime these cloud effects should be quite subtle. Hopefully the skybox will feel just as alive as the terrain under your feet.

Improved Dust Particles

One thing that helps our terrain feel dynamic is the blowing dust particle system. You've seen these random dust particles before, but previously they only blew in the general direction and speed of the wind. Now they follow the the contours of the terrain as well. This is a subtle change, but it allows us to place these particle zones in a much wider range of possible locations where they can adapt to the terrain shape automatically. If you watched our devlog video from a couple months ago you will have seen how the wind direction and intensity is already being randomized and reflected visually with the weather monitoring instruments on each Waypoint Station.

New Dust Storm Transitions

We are taking a different approach to dust storms now, largely due to the influence of The Martian (both the book and the movie). We loved the idea of a dust storm being a slowly-building danger that requires careful planning to avoid. So instead of showing a distinct stormfront on the horizon, it is now a gradual change in visibility over the course of a few in-game days. Careful observation can allow you to notice a storm before it becomes dangerous, but preparation is even more important.

As we mentioned before, each Waypoint Station will have weather monitoring equipment. So each WayStat that you have active on the map will improve your chances of getting an early warning on your datapad of an incoming storm. These storms have specific trajectories across the map according to the current wind speed and direction. If you have enough warning you may have time to move from one habitat to another outside the edge of the storm. As you can see from the drastically sped up video above, a full dust storm can impact your visibility, mobility, and navigation functions of your suit and datapad. In such a scenario, your scanner may become your new best friend.

Scanner Readability Changes

The scanner function on your suit has undergone some relatively big changes. Those of you that have played the Prologue demo or watched some of our previous videos might recall that the scanner would display an exact outline of almost any man-made object, even if it were behind terrain. We decided to change to the above pictured icon-based scanner for a few reasons. Most important is readability. We were concerned that the old system provided you with lots of visual clutter and very little readable information. Now different types of items will be associated with different icon styles and their scale on screen will remain consistent in order to better identify points-of-interest at a distance.

Ignoring the color artifacts in the above gif compression, you can see some variations we are experimenting with for scanner icons. Right now they also grow in size when you approach within a certain radius of the object, indicating that you have "arrived".

The original outlines around entire objects also felt a little to "science-fiction"; and while we are certainly bending realism throughout Lacuna Passage, we want things to feel plausible whenever possible.

Importantly, your scanner does not have infinite range. You will still need to explore the map and activate additional WayStats in order to increase your scanner range.

Thanks for reading!

We hope you like the changes that we have made in preparation for the survival sandbox weather randomization. We have lots more planned for the coming months so make sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to stay in the loop!

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Lacuna Passage - Devlog #14 - Random New Stuff

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In this week's devlog we cover a bunch of new stuff we've been working on including audio, dust storms, map navigation, and a nearly completed rover model.

In this week's video devlog we cover a bunch of new stuff we've been working on including audio, dust storms, map navigation, and a nearly completed rover model.