Improvements on Save Game Files

Save Game Atomization

When I wrote the save game system, I was actually pretty new to game dev and whatever I came up with was pretty rudimentary. It worked, but not in a resilient way. It's time to pay back the technical debts :)

The game allows player to save up to 10 "sleep slots". Each of these saves are contained in the OldSaves.json as a monolithic save file. It's not resilient to crashes and file corruption. For example, if the game crashes while saving to this file, the entire 10 past saves become unusable. It also makes game saving slow due to having to write 10 saves to disk every time.

In this update, it automatically breaks up the OldSaves.json into 10 individual saves under /OldSaves/ folder. This way, each time you save by sleeping, the game only needs to create the latest save game file and delete the oldest one. It also makes loading a bit faster by not having to load all 10 of them at once. This is particularly apparent when you have progressed further and your saves become larger.

In the upcoming updates I'll also attempt to reduce the size of each save game json file, but I have to make sure the atomization step works well first.

Other Improvements in 1.88-2

• More fixes for German translation (courtesy of sharzul!)

• Grigori in lake Cheko will list the three ammo types that he can convert, to avoid confusion

• Fixed a bug with throwing rocks/grenades/especially the landmine. When you use Hybrid control scheme and try to aim at a place behind you, the explosive will land a bit closer than you want it to be due to the misposition of "origin" the item flies out of your hand.

• There's a rock near the trailer house that allows NPCs to walk through. I moved it to somewhere else.

• You can now buy the radio for "Sound of Music" DLC in Slaughterhouse, if you wanna listen to your own blood-pumping battle music while slaughtering

Free New Weapon! And Save Game Size Reduction

Hello Ghoul Hunters!

Thank you all for your continued support! As a token of my gratitude, I added a new weapon to the game:

It's a Tier 3 weapon, which means you can find it on enemies at Lake Cheko and beyond, and also at times sold by Grigori in Lake Cheko.

In addition, to make pistols more useful, I have made the Wooden Shield available to use along side a pistol, just like the Iron Mike from Nightmare mode. So you can equip it on your primary/secondary slot while having a pistol on the other. However, the wooden shield has less bullet blocking capability than the Iron Mike. You can see that it now shows an Armor rating of 17. It can block most shotgun pellets and pistol bullets, but rifle bullets will go right through, although the damage to player will be reduced.

If you haven't used the Iron Mike before, the shield can only block bullets if you hold a pistol with it while aiming down sight and facing the attacker. However, you don't have to aim down sight to reduce damage from an explosive in front of the player.

Also, in this build I improved the json serialization which will reduce save game file sizes by over 60%!

Other fixes in 1.88-3:

• Fixed a bug introduced in 1.88-2 where the game will break when spawning baba yagas in NG+

• Fixed a bug where a newly spawned character will show its highlight through walls even when player doesn't have visibility to this character

• Fixed a bug where high quality fish and caviar will show double quality prefix

• Quality prefixes will now show up on the name tag of items on the ground

Quick Story Scripting Update

Made a few small changes to the scripting of Lake Cheko quests so that it makes more sense to the players when they first arrive at Lake Cheko.

5.609 Evil Armories
(Released September 7th, 2024)

① Bugfixes
• Shots do no longer multiply their Damage by the amount granted by the Hacking Damage Multiplier alongside the Weapon itself. This fixes a hidden quadratic damage scaling issue and thus the fact that shots on a hacked Officer would do much more than the listed damage.
• This has nothing to do with the multiplicative nature of Officer hacks themselves.

② Scourge Infused Empire
• The Scourge Infused Empire's Armories now tell you what mark level they need to hit for various upgrades
• Upgrading the Scourge's structures via hacks is now paid for with Metal
• The AI will periodically spawn a powerful anti-scourge ship. When you defeat it, you can claim it as a flagship for yourself

③ All The Text Styles
• A simple utility mod for storing Text Styles that could have the same name across multiple mods, thus preventing errors.

④ League of Evil
• Fix to ships regenerating a portion of Hull and Shield after reloading.

⑤ Azaran Empire
• Fix to tooltip error upon mousing on the Command Center.

⑥ Fantasy War
• Stop attempting to make defenses on the Heavenly Host's planet when the Heavenly Host doesn't exist.

Update 1.88-4 Patch Notes

• During character creation, added the prompt "Enter a first/last name" so that player doesn't forget to do that.

• Fixed a bug with respawned trees have 0 health and cannot be harvested

• Fixed a bug with 556 ammo not producing casings

Blackwell Deception - Minor Patch

• Fixed an issue with Rosa and her walking to a door using her phone.
• Fixed an issue with a line not being voiced [tiffany]
• Fixed an issue with subtitles not matching the text [reception]

With Patch 1.7.8 one longer simply walks into the Empire

The patch is modest, but it is an important first step in an effort to give more definition to the threat the Empire poses, which will be our focus for the next couple of weeks.

New features

• Changes the way in which the Empire spreads its influence over the land.
• The imperials protect their borders more closely. You’ll frequently find the paths into their territory blocked.

The appearance of paths into the Empire are fairly random for now. We plan to make their appearance more predictable, and provide you with tools to forge a path when you really have to.

PATCH NOTES (2.069)

• Restored the player's ability to make peace.

August 2024 Build Challenge Results

Here are the winning entries:

These workshop items are now included as default blueprints in the game

Snowflake Summit Sleds

A bobsled run down a snowy mountain, made for the August 2024 challenge.

Excitement: 59.1 (High)
Intensity: 17.6 (Low)
Nausea: 7.6 (Very low)

Approximate Cost: ~$7,987.92
Approximate Cost (without decoration): ~$4,352.00

+++

Timber Twist

Excitement: 72,3 (Very high)
Intensity: 17,8 (Low)
Nausea: 11,9 (Very low)

Approximate Cost: ~$7,999.00
Approximate Cost (without decoration): ~$5,293.00

+++

Pixie Town

Excitement: 72.6 (Very high)
Intensity: 22.3 (Low)
Nausea: 10.6 (Very low)

Approximate Cost: ~$7,999.12
Approximate Cost (without decoration): ~$4,496.00

+++

Isicle Bob

Excitement: 56.4 (High)
Intensity: 23.2 (Low)
Nausea: 10.6 (Very low)

Approximate Cost: ~$7,744.71
Approximate Cost (without decoration): ~$4,545.00

+++

Deep Space 99

Ready for a crazy adventure in the misterious planet Tramezzino?
Deep Space 99 is an incredible trip through lava fountains and beautiful extraterrestrial landscapes!

Excitement: 59,0 (High)
Intensity: 31,3 (Medium)
Nausea: 13,2 (Very low)

Approximate Cost: ~$8,001.33
Approximate Cost (without decoration): ~$4,432.00

Aquarius Patch 5.11

September 6, 2024.

Hello Everyone,

Thank you to everyone playing No Man’s Sky Aquarius, especially those taking the time to report any issues they encounter via Zendesk or console crash reporting.

We are listening closely to your feedback, and have identified and resolved a number of issues. These fixes are included in patch 5.11, which is now live on Steam and will be coming to other platforms as soon as possible.

Bug Fixes

• Players are now alerted to new record catches.
• Players who are actively fishing are now marked as Busy for the purposes of group invites.
• Fixed an issue that prevented quick access to items stored within the Nutrient Processor’s inventory while cooking.
• Fixed an issue that allowed fish to occasionally swim above the surface of the water.
• Fixed an issue that could make it difficult to target interactable objects while holding a fishing rod.
• The effects when releasing fish back into the water have been improved.
• Fixed an issue that made it difficult to summon the Exo-Skiff in VR.
• Improved the accuracy of the fishing float in rough seas.
• Specialist bait can now be placed in the Exo-Skiff’s cold storage inventory.
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause a previous popup to appear over the top of your most recently caught fish.
• Fixed an issue that caused a grey or black dot to be drawn in the starship crosshair after boarding with a fishing rod equipped.
• Improved the visibility of the fishing line in some lighting conditions.
• Fixed a number of minor audio issues when fishing.
• Fixed an issue that prevented wave audio from playing while far from the shoreline.
• Fixed an issue that caused the wave audio to be out of sync with the visuals while standing near or in shallow water.
• Improved the objective clarity of a number of expedition mission steps.
• Adjusted the catch rates for certain mission-specific fishing items.
• Fixed a rare bug that could reset player freighters when warping.
• Fixed an issue that could cause resources to disappear from Freighter Refiner Rooms when warping in a capital ship.
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from leaving Title selection and returning to banner customisation when choosing a title and banner.
• Fixed some incorrect labels in the freighter customisation UI.
• Fixed an issue that caused the page dots to spill out of the UI for players with many unlocked titles.
• Fixed a minor text formatting issue in procedural artefact descriptions.
• Fixed a number of minor visual issues with Hauler-class starship wings.
• Fixed a visual corruption issue with water rendering.
• Introduced a minor memory optimisation.
• Fixed a rare crash related to AI starship behaviours.
• Fixed a rare crash related to starship handling.
• Fixed a rare memory issue related to icon rendering.
• Fixed a rare crash related to creature navigation.
• Fixed a rare issue related to teleporting to water planets.
• Fixed a rare issue that caused some large saves to crash after loading.

We will continue to release patches as issues are identified and resolved. If you experience any issues, let us know by submitting a bug report.

Thank you,
Hello Games

Patch Notes v1.4.11

• PUP was supposed to have been rechargeable while inside their cage all this time, pretty sure it was working at one point, Well now it's certainly working.

Patch Size: 7 MB

3.13.0 Patch

① Improvements
• Update to Thrall Worlds, adding two new slave-focused districts, Battle Thrall Jobs, and improvements to tooltips and theme
• Update to Prison Worlds - adding two new penal-focused districts, five new jobs, and improvements to tooltips and theme
• Xenophobe ethics now swaps to providing pop assembly when appropriate
• The location of empire-scope special projects will move to the new capital if the empire’s capital changes
• Gestalt Empires are now allowed to decide on their land appropriation policy, and are no longer forced to populate every planet
• Corvee System now gives -15% resettlement cost for Individualist Machines
• Standardized volume of all advisor VO lines
• War allies will be able to use wormholes, hyper relays, and gateways in each other's territory even if their borders are closed
• Removed the galaxy-wide Space Storm introduced in 2.7 “Wells”

② UI
• Updated the megastructure selection UI
---• Improved tooltips in the megastructure selection UI
---• When selecting a location for Arc Furnace stage 1, the tooltip shows the number of deposit sites in the system
---• When selecting a location for a Habitat Central Complex, the tooltip shows orbital capacities in the system
---• Fixed tooltip not showing when selecting a location to build a megastructure
• Map icons in galaxy and system view no longer truncate the resource amount when between 0 and 1
• The tooltip that mentions if a civic is locked is now red instead of orange
• Enabled mouse scrolling in the research completed window
• Extended the minimum width of the "Veteran Level Reached!" window in case too few options are available to choose from
• Fixed some overlapping UI in the Empire Creation screens
• Fixed position of "Cross-platform play" checkbox on MS Store
• Updated the Map Modes UI
---• The Players map mode is no longer available when observing in singleplayer
---• The Players and Trade Routes map mode buttons are now disabled instead of hidden when they're unavailable
---• Fixed Players mapmode not graying out AI empires in some cases
---• The Unions map mode is now a regular map mode instead of a toggle

③ Bugfix
• Fixed the placeholder icon for the diplomatic message to request to join the galactic imperium
• Made AI capable of building planetary shields
• The Chthonian Planet, Extensive Moon System and Carbon World modifiers will now only add their mineral deposits to the planet the first time they are surveyed instead of every time they are surveyed
• Corrected tooltip and loyalty effects for the Ministry of Acquisition
• Individualistic Machine empires should no longer get an event intended for Organics
• Fixed the Nanite Intercessor being present in ship previews in the empire creator
• Fixed cyberpunk advisor lines for council agenda ready and council agenda available notifications
• Fixed fleets' cloaking strength sometimes not updating when ships' cloaking strength changes due to modifiers
• Fixed juggernauts not showing the fleet bombardment button
• Election auto pausing and unpausing now functions like other event pop ups
• Removed the double modifiers for Defense platforms from Ancient Shield Overcharger
• Removed serviles from the can_think trigger due to unintended knock on effects
• If an arc furnace is built around a potential Contingency Hub, when the planet becomes their hub, the arc furnace is correctly destroyed
• Fixed uncovered deposits not being removed when an arc furnace is destroyed
• Colossus special project will reward the original country that started the project instead of the current planet owner
• Leaders who are researching an anomaly or project or on cooldown can be assigned to the council
• Roccan Resistance and Free Peoples of the Fall genders changed from indeterminate to default
• The species of planetary defense armies will get updated after species modification
• AI empires will select ethics required by their origin
• All starbase types now explode when destroyed instead of blinking out of existence
• Fixed numerous instances, such as when establishing an embassy, where the game would load the countries home planet instead of their capital
• Game should no longer crash when an empire you had a trade deal with is destroyed during a war
• Various Out Of Sync fixes
• War allies will be able to use each wormholes in each other's territory even if their borders are closed

④ Modding
• Implemented "on_storm_encountered" on_action when a country is affected for the first time by a new storm
• Added on_storm_entered_system on-action
• Added on_storm_left_system on-action, for when a cosmic storm has left a solar system
• Added support for generate_random_name = yes to the spawn_planet effect
• Refactored Arcology industrial districts into Inline Scripts
• Replaced all "has_authority" checks with scripted triggers making it easier to add new authorities
• Added the awakening_not_allowed country flag that blocks fallen empires from awakening
• Added the keep_deposit_on_terraform deposit flag to make sure deposits don't go missing when you terraform
• Added "visible" trigger to map modes
• Added "tutorial" member to map modes
• Added is_infertile trigger
• Added support for displaying comma and period as hotkeys in button tooltips
• Added planet_crime_floor_add modifier that sets a minimum level of crime on a planet
• Added fail trigger for special projects + documentation
• Added 'mod_name_affix' to create_species effect
• Added num_asteroid_belts trigger to check the number of asteroids in a system
• Added game rules for founder_species_uses_growth_speed, founder_species_uses_organic_assembly and founder_species_uses_assembly
• Added game rule to force visibility on fleets for a specific system

1.55.5 - Ring Echoes

Ring Formations a Hoax
Breaking reports reveal that the supposed "banding artefacts" in Saturn’s rings were nothing more than a sensor malfunction. Initially believed to be a new type of asteroid formation, the strange patterns were later traced to a compression artefact in the video streaming and denoising algorithms used by ship sensors. The artefacts appeared as the system struggled to handle the vast amounts of data generated by the dense debris fields. Experts now believe that small errors in signal transmission created what seemed like repeating patterns, fooling even experienced miners and researchers. After further investigation, the illusion was debunked, and sensor software updates are already in development to prevent future occurrences.

Crystals Discovered in Moonlet XT-HZA-3
A stunning new documentary has aired, showcasing rare and beautiful formations inside moonlet XT-HZA-3, recently discovered in Saturn’s rings. The film highlights dazzling torbenite crystals, glowing faintly with radioactive light, alongside smooth cave walls and unique geological structures. Advanced drones captured high-resolution footage, revealing details previously hidden due to technical limitations. The documentary is receiving widespread praise for its breathtaking visuals and insights into the mysterious moonlet, which is now drawing attention from both scientists and mining corporations alike.

New Racing Season Begins
The Enceladus Racing Federation has kicked off its latest season, welcoming both seasoned pilots and new contenders. This season features a more open and forgiving system, allowing even those who left previous races unfinished to rejoin the action. Enceladus Corp officially does not endorse these races, but as the rings fall under international jurisdiction, it is impossible to stop the competitions entirely. Racing fans are buzzing with excitement, anticipating thrilling rematches and fresh faces on the track, as pilots prepare for the most intense season yet.

Maintenance Logs
* Updated the graphics of Uranium Caves, removing rendering artefacts outside the moonlet and aligning the cave interior border with other caves.
* Motors on Eagle Prospector series grinders can now be disabled.
* A brand new soundtrack has been added.
* The "boss battle" soundtrack now plays more often during challenging encounters.
* Fixed asteroid banding artefacts caused by interactions between the limited simulation space and asteroids' density map when the ship moved slowly.
* The EIAA-1337 autopilot no longer attempts to use MLF Haul drones on targets they can’t interact with.
* Resolved the issue where large moonlets could appear in multiple locations or far from their intended spot due to failures in the spotfinding algorithm. The algorithm now ensures the moonlet finds a proper location quickly.
* Moonlets and other anomalies no longer drag along with the ship when astrogating away from dense regions of the rings.
* Delivering large amounts of molten iron via an industrial-grade mass driver directly to a ship or station hull now counts as a hostile act.
* Dismissing a crewmember from an active crew now clears associated story flags correctly.
* Cargo containers from Ganymedeans no longer send ore automatically, even with good standing.
* The B8 claim can now be aborted immediately when deploying the beacon by accident.
* The tutorial tooltip now correctly indicates that 'X' is a key to press, not a button to click.
* Fixed the black shadow that sometimes appeared around moonlets when raising gamma settings.
* Adjusted line-of-sight rendering settings to resolve graphical quirks when flying close to certain entities, like moonlets.
* Lines-of-sight now display correctly on ultrawide monitors or dual-monitor setups with a 4:1 aspect ratio or greater.
* Adjusted collider and occluder shapes for moonlets to better match visual representation, reducing confusion.
* Fixed lighting glitches caused by ore venting particle systems when the ship moves at high speeds.
* Disabled the OLED-saving option for the EIME HUD display, resolving the misalignment of the augmented reality display of the cargo bay.
* The Space Bar crew now keeps asteroids further away from the establishment, preventing rocks from spawning on top of the bar and causing chaos.
* Abandoning a race without further interaction no longer causes the racing team to refuse communication. They now forgive upon meeting again, and this works with older saves.
* The racing team now acknowledges rematches correctly when asked shortly after a race.
* Updated translations and translation credits.