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

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.

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

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.

Lacuna Passage is out now on Steam Early Access

Lacuna Passage - the first-person, open world Mars exploration and survival game - launches for PC and Mac on Steam Early Access today. Check out the new Early Access launch trailer here: youtu.be/XbMXvPBOpFU

Having smashed its Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns with a superbly realized Martian setting, Lacuna Passage invites players to set foot on the Red Planet and experience what it will be like for those first adventurers. The game will release in two phases:

1. Survival Sandbox - Steam Early Access - Out Now
2. Story Mode - Full Steam Launch - In Development

Launching on Steam Early Access today, the Survival Sandbox mode of Lacuna Passage will challenge players’ technical smarts and problem-solving skills, as well as enabling early astronauts to test drive the core mechanics ahead of the arrival of Story Mode.

“I was hugely inspired by the 2012 landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars,” said Tyler Owen, founder and lead developer at Random Seed Games. “As I waited for the first images to beam back to Earth I realized that the closest I would ever get to walking the surface of the Red Planet and taking my own photos would be if I made a game where you could do just that. With Lacuna Passage we’re focused on creating a science-fiction interactive experience that will inspire others to get interested in space travel and science.”

What is Lacuna Passage?

Developed in Iowa, USA by Random Seed Games, Lacuna Passage is a Mars exploration and survival game based on real mission technology and Mars terrain from NASA satellite data. Here are some of the key features:

● Stunning first-person, open world of Martian exploration and survival.

● 25 square miles of explorable terrain generated from actual Mars satellite data.

● Survival mechanics based on real metrics like blood glucose, heart rate, caloric intake, and more.

● In-game photography that allows you to capture any moment and document your discoveries with higher quality than your PC or Mac can handle in real time.

● An immersive HUD that is accurate to potential future space exploration physical display technologies.

● A hauntingly beautiful dynamic soundtrack that responds to your actions.

● Survival Sandbox available now on Steam Early Access.

● A mysterious single-player story that encourages non-linear play (Story Mode) coming in a future update.

Survival Sandbox - Steam Early Access - Out Now

Waking in a landing pod, players must check their equipment and venture out onto the red Martian soil in search of a nearby habitat. With 25 square miles of the Red Planet to explore and survive, they must gather resources from randomized points-of- interest, supply caches and other habitats in order to continue their mission. Survival is more than just tracking status bars; maintaining life-support equipment is just as important as maintaining health. Players must carefully manage vital resources or they will find themselves stranded in the great red wasteland with no food, water, or oxygen. Chief among the available tools is the stunning photography feature, which allows the budding Martian adventurer to capture higher quality photos than their PC can handle in real time.

Story Mode - In Development

Jessica Rainer - the only survivor of the second manned mission to Mars - investigates the disappearance of the first. With several tools at her disposal, most importantly her skills of observation, Jessica needs to uncover mission logs, recorded audio files, and other physical clues left behind at critical mission locations in order to uncover the story. An interplanetary trail of breadcrumbs awaits. With 25 square miles of open terrain around the crash site to explore Jessica can’t explore blindly to find the missing crew of the Hermes. Will she simply try to survive and await rescue or will she put her own life on the line to discover the truth? In Lacuna Passage, time and the elements are your enemies...

Assets and info

● Steam Early Access page: store.steampowered.com/app/252090

● Early Access launch trailer: youtu.be/XbMXvPBOpFU

● Additional game info and press asset pack: lacunapassage.com/press

● Follow Lacuna Passage’s development on the devblog

● Check overall progress on the roadmap

Lacuna Passage is now available to purchase ($14.99, €14.99, £10.99) and download for PC and Mac in all countries on Steam Early Access.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #67 - Inventory and Container Management

As you may know if you have followed us for a while, every month we have two development blog posts on the site. One from Spencer where he details new art that he has been working on, and one from me (Tyler) where I go over the programming/system development. This last month our progress has been a bit slower than usual. Partly due to the fact that both of us and our families all took a vacation to Nashville to unwind for a week. Unfortunately, soon after I returned we received news that our new puppy has some serious health concerns that may be lifelong.

Gratuitous sad puppy photo

Naga - a dachshund, basset hound, jack russell mix - will be having a skin biopsy soon to confirm if she has vasculitis, a condition that impacts her immune system and causes a lot of discomfort. Over the last couple months we have been dealing with the symptoms and trying to manage the side effects of various drugs we've used to try and treat her. Hopefully we will have more answers soon, but the many doctor's visits and close attention she requires has been stressful and has impacted my work. I wish I had more development progress to share with you today, but sometimes life just gets in the way.

All that being said, we have still managed to make some very important progress with our inventory management system. I thought it might be kind of fun to do a more informal development video covering these features where Spencer and I discuss some of our design process. As with everything else in these blogs, nothing is final, but the discussion featured in the video might give you some insight into the kinds of conversations we often have when trying to shape how the game will function. Sometimes we don't always agree on how something should work.

Progress has been made in a few other areas including terrain tile loading and game state saving, but unfortunately none of those aspects are very visual so they don't make for very interesting blog posts. Let us know what you think about the inventory UI in the comments.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #65 - WayStats, Habitats, and Survival Events

I'll have plenty for you to read about this month, but let's start out with a video instead. We've been working on our survival sandbox randomization features and that includes the random placement of 16 different Waypoint Stations around the map. Check out the video below for more info.

Having these early randomization features in feels great, but we have more than just WayStats being randomized. We recently completed an early test for full habitat randomization, including exterior/interior transitions which you can see in another video below.

Last month we gave some details about how these habitat locations are randomized, but now we actually have them physically represented on the map along with loading transitions to randomized interiors. This is a big step towards being able to test our new "Survival Event" system.

Survival Events

"Events" will form the backbone of our survival sandbox game mode for Steam Early Access. We've shown how the physical components of the map can be randomized and remixed for each playthrough, but with our events we will be able to randomize the gameplay as well and keep the player on their toes.

Those of you who have read or watched The Martian will know where we are trying to go with this system. The intent is to surprise the player with many "mini-disasters", but to hopefully make the player feel like they have just the resources they need to solve the problem if they think quickly.

If you watched our previous devlog video about crafting items then you will have a better understanding of how these events will be "fixed". Similar to how you might craft items, the survival equipment in the game may have components that break and need to be replaced. Some materials might be useful for crafting and for equipment repairs, so you will need to ration your supplies carefully and choose which items might need to be broken down for their component parts.

Space is an unforgiving place, so you will have to face increasingly difficult challenges the longer you survive. If you haven't had a chance yet, you can check out our previous art devlog to see some of the equipment that you might be tasked with repairing.

Thanks again for following along with us on our blog. Come back in a few weeks for more progress!

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #63 - Survival Sandbox and New Interior Lightmapping

Sorry for posting this a day late, but the wonderful and confusing tradition of the Iowa Caucuses put a wrench in my plans to post yesterday. This month we have been adding some crucial features to our Survival Sandbox mode, including the brand new unique map.

We wanted the Survival Sandbox mode to stand on its own with a different map built specifically to maximize replayability. Most importantly that meant creating a map that has entirely unique terrain formations. We are happy to say that this map is nearly complete. We still plan on adding more large rock formations that are not pulled from the NASA satellite data. Generally we like to lean more towards realism, but many of our sourced heightmaps are fairly sparse. Mars is incredibly geologically diverse on a macro scale, but on the micro scale it is mostly flat and empty. So while the following screenshots do have a decent amount of variation we will still add lots of cliffs and larger formations to fill in the gaps.

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We are happy to say that this new map is exactly the same scale as the one we will eventually be using for the story mode. Nearly 25 square miles. This gives us a ton of room to work with for some randomization features that will be largely unique to the Survival Sandbox.

Above you can see a top down view of the entire Survival Sandbox map. The frame labeled "All Map Points" shows you all of our possible points of interest that can be randomized during each play through. Without giving away too many surprises for when we launch on Early Access, here are some basics of how the randomization works:

• The Pink labeled dots are potential habitat locations, nine in total. Every time you play you will start near a different habitat around the outer edge of the map. There will be three habitats spawned for each playthrough, but we use an algorithm to ensure that they always form a natural "path" across roughly one third of the total map area. In Survival Sandbox mode it is likely that you will need to make your way from one habitat to the next after you run out of supplies, so this placement algorithm should help keep the same map feeling fresh with a different path every play through.
• The Red labeled dots are our Waypoint Stations, 16 in total for each playthrough. These are important navigational checkpoints that help you in many ways we will be detailing later, but as you can see in the sample randomizations above they don't always appear in the same locations.
• The Dark Blue labeled dots are currently referred to as our "Primary Objectives". Each objective will be unique, but they all function as a sort of "oasis" in the vast Mars desert. They are carefully positioned hubs that can expand your overall search radius when found. One example might be a broken down rover that contains an oxygen refill tank and a battery for recharging your suit. As you can see above, we use another algorithm here to ensure varied placement of Primary Objectives.
• The Light Blue labeled dots are what we call our more general "Points of Interest". These will be our most heavily randomized objectives on the map. They are smaller and less important than Primary Objectives, but the more you find the more likely you are to maintain your extended survival on the red planet. These might be emergency food storage caches, downed weather balloons, geological research plots, or any number of other mission-related sites.

In general, the quantity and frequency of the sandbox map objectives may be greater than what you might expect in a real Mars mission, but we feel very good about the variety this adds to the gameplay and the real sense of discovery you get when stumbling upon these locations.

As you can see, our Survival Sandbox mode is not entirely procedural, nor is it entirely static. We are using light randomization features to add variety for replayability. We are applying this method with our habitat interiors as well. There will be nine possible habitat interiors to match our nine possible habitat spawn locations. So, even if you happen to spawn at the same habitat location on the map, the interior of that habitat may not be the same as it was before. Since each of these nine interiors are still designed by hand it allows us to have a higher fidelity for the art and especially the lighting. We have reintroduced the use of lightmapping to have the most realistic rendering possible. Below you will see our first pass at using our new lightmapping and reflection probe setup. You might also notice a few shots where we have managed to swap the lightmaps to simulate a power outage which you may encounter on your mission simulation.

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Next month I hope to be able to share some details about our "survival event" system which will effectively serve as your primary antagonist for the Survival Sandbox mode. We really want you to feel like Mark Watney dodging curve balls left and right that might drastically impact your chances of survival on Mars. Creative problem solving and resource management will be key to overcoming the odds.

If you have any questions let us know in the comments!

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #59 - New Cliffs and Rocks for Terrain

Normally our devlog posts at the beginning of the month are reserved for general development progress and gameplay systems, but Spencer and I wear many hats here at Random Seed Games and I've actually been working on some art related stuff over the last few weeks in preparation for our first survival sandbox map design.

We want to make the survival mode a unique experience from the story mode that will come later. So that means a unique map on release, and hopefully multiple unique maps over time. I decided that this would be a perfect time to revisit one of the most criticised aspects of our terrain... the rocks and cliffs.

The NASA data that we use for our terrain generation is incredibly helpful for creating basic formations, but there are some definite limitations. The data resolution and the inability to create overhanging rock formations combine to make the terrain look like a continuous flowing surface without many rugged features. To combat this we need to create rock meshes that protrude from the surface and form more realistic cliffs, etc. In the past we have relied on the Unity Asset Store as much as possible for rock models, but for cliffs we had difficulty finding appropriate models. So I spent some time this month creating my own cliff models using real Mars cliff photos as reference.

During the creation process I realized that these models might be useful to other developers working on desert environments or planets, so I packed everything up and posted it on the Unity Asset Store for $25. Each variation began as a uniform model which was modified by extruding the vertices using a heightmap generated from a high quality texture. Then each unique model needed to be optimized and adjusted to hide the texture seams as much as possible. Ultimately this provides us with very similar "building blocks" that combine perfectly to create larger formations.

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The end result looks great, especially at very large scales where the repetition is more easily hidden. So if you are a developer or know someone who needs some realistic cliff models/textures you should check out our Asset Store page.

Additionally, we are still relying on some other Asset Store packages to supplement our own terrain assets. We did manage to find one set of cliff models that will work for us, but we had to make some significant edits to make the meshes modular and lower poly. The package also contained some really high quality rocks that will look great strewn around our terrain.

Arid Environment Rocks - Unity Asset Store

After working to match these rocks and cliffs with our own we feel much better equipped to start building our survival sandbox terrain.

New Relief Terrain Pack Shader

More recently we have also started investigating a new terrain shader in order to further improve our terrain quality. Our old terrain shader is a heavily modified version of an Asset Store terrain shader and it is having issues now with the Unity 5 physical rendering changes. This new Relief Terrain Pack shader may be our best option, and after some early tests it may actually improve our workflow for terrain creation overall. We don't have any screenshots of it in action for Lacuna Passage yet, but to get an idea of what's possible with the RTP shader check out the video below.

November has been a busy month for art development. The rest of December will now be devoted to building up the survival sandbox map design version 1.0 and populating it with randomized elements that will make every survival mode playthrough a new challenge.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #57 - Survival Stats Interface

We decided to do another video this month to show off some more improvements to the Datapad user interface. We now have a simple vitals screen that helps you visualize your current survival attributes like nutrition and hydration. It may look complex at first, but hopefully after watching the video you will see that we are trying to balance realism with readability. We also have an updated sleep timer screen that will allow you to reduce your exhaustion and move time forward more quickly. And if you stick around to the end of the video then you will see a few improvements we've made to the crafting screen.

Check out the video below and please let us know if you have any feedback for the features we are working on. We hope you are excited about the prospect of surviving on Mars!

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #54 - Random Hab Modules

With our sandbox survival mode for Lacuna Passage in the works, we knew we needed to make some changes to the habitat modules.  There will be a few established habitats randomly placed for players to discover and utilize to survive as long as possible.  These habitats will all be unique and full of specialized modules that serve different purposes.  Bunks for sleeping and storage for food and supplies will be available in each hab, but things like research stations, 3D printers, and crafting areas will be randomized features in only some of the habitats you find.

In order to make the habitat capable of this level of randomization, we had to revise the way the hab is set up.  Now each component in the hab takes up an exact gridspace that can be randomly assigned in almost any part of the inner structure.  Here are a couple examples of how things may look with randomly swapped modules:

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This is also the first time we have really shown off how the new Unity 5 standard shader makes our internal areas look.  We are very happy with how simple and consistent this shader performs with all of our materials even though we have not finalized the lighting yet.  Here are some more interior screenshots with placeholder lighting:

You may notice a new workstation in those last couple screenshots that we are currently working on.  This will have a few different functions, but in this example it serves as a station for testing soil and rock samples.

We also managed to give some of the panels that fill the extra space in the hab a rework.  They previously seemed a little too extruded and they interfered with the flow and interactive elements of the hab.  Now they seem a little more streamlined and less intrusive.

Progress is definitely coming along, and we hope to show you more next month regarding some of the new areas in the habitat where you will be crafting supplies to help you survive.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #51 - Keeping up with the times (Unity 5 and Steam Early Access)

Since this is our first true non art-related development update since TIMEframe was released, I felt it fitting to reveal some pretty big news. Most immediately important is that we are updating Lacuna Passage to Unity 5. Some of you following us from the very beginning might remember that the original prototype of Lacuna Passage actually started in Unity 3. We moved to Unity 4 to take advantage of some of its new features, and we’re doing it again with the switch to Unity 5.

So how will the game benefit from the upgrade? If you are a developer, or just really interested in the nitty-gritty details, you can check out the full Unity change list here. Many of the updates made to the engine we will benefit from passively without any additional work on our part. These include things like multi-threading performance improvements, loading improvements, physics calculation improvements, a 64 bit editor (finally!), and much much more. We are already impressed with how well the game is running in Unity 5 and how quick it was to upgrade.

Making progress on our material previewer with Unity 5's new physically-based rendering

However, the most exciting change for us will be switching to Unity’s new physically based rendering model. Since the beginning of Lacuna Passage we have been utilizing our own shaders which were designed with Shader Forge. Now, with the introduction of the new Standard Shader in Unity 5 we will be able to simplify our art pipeline while also drastically improving the rendering quality of the final game. Before, where we were using custom shaders, it was very difficult to get our texture previews in our art applications to match the way that the textures would be displayed in-engine after being imported. This meant hours of tweaking, re-importing, and fiddling with settings until we were satisfied with the result. We were trying to manually approximate real-world materials like aluminum, steel, and plastic. But with the new physically based rendering system we can simply select real-world material presets as a starting point and see exactly how the textures will be rendered before we even import them into the game. It will take some time to adjust to the new art workflow using the new versions of industry standard applications like Quixel’s DDO, but we are confident that it will have a huge affect on our development efficiency and quality over the long haul.

That being said, the move to Unity 5 is not the only big development change that we are currently undergoing. Since our Kickstarter campaign we have kept a close eye on Steam’s new “Early Access” sales model. This option allows developers to sell access to games that are still in active development. We never really considered that Lacuna Passage would be a good fit for this option, since our plan for the game was heavily driven by a narrative experience. It’s difficult to sell people early access to a game with a story if the story isn’t fully implemented yet. We didn’t want people to run into half completed story lines, or story lines that might change completely before the game was finished. Over the last few months we have been watching other Early Access games like The Long Dark very closely, and we think we may be able to adopt their approach.

Taking inspiration from other sandbox survival games like The Long Dark

Now, before I explain further, I want to make it clear that this should not be cause for alarm. We would never consider Early Access purely as a way to squeeze money out of the game before it is finished. We simply feel that we have failed our backers in the sense that we have already far overshot our original release estimate, so we wanted to investigate any option we could that would allow people to play the game sooner rather than later. Our consideration of Early Access is a compromise. A way to let people see some parts of the game sooner while we finish all the features we originally promised.

So, what would an Early Access version of Lacuna Passage look like? The example I gave earlier of a game called The Long Dark is something we are looking to model after. The Long Dark is a post-apocalyptic survival game which will eventually have a story mode. In Early Access they are focused almost entirely on the root survival mechanics of the game and art development. We think that this could work well for Lacuna Passage. Our thought right now is that we will put all story development on hold in an attempt to put out a sandbox survival mode on Steam Early Access. We don’t have a date for when that will be, but the important thing is that you will get to play Lacuna Passage sooner and be part of an active community contributing to the development of the final game.

Players of The Long Dark will find familiar systems in a future Early Access version of Lacuna Passage

We may have originally underestimated the power of a purely survival-driven game mode. After playing games like The Long Dark we feel that a survival sandbox could stand on its own and enable us to make better design decisions for the final game based on the feedback that our backers and Early Access players will provide. Obviously there are still a lot of things we will need to work out before this happens, but we want to be completely transparent with all aspects of development. In the coming months we will outline our plans for what you can expect to see in an Early Access release. We want to hear your thoughts and suggestions as well. If this is something that our backers overwhelmingly disagree with then we will seriously reconsider, but we think it will be a win-win for everyone. Thanks for reading, and we will have more details soon.