Icarus Week 126 Update | A ton of Laika improvements and brand new content

Welcome to Week 126.

This week comes off the back of an excellent reception to our Free Laika update and we will continue to work on the new features over the next couple of weeks. You’ll find new content this week such as a dirt building tier, the new Arctic Moa, new building pieces, medicinal items and more.

We’ve also embarked on a project clinic that started last week, with this steering a lot of the changes you’re seeing, and future content that we’re planning. For more on what a project clinic is, read below, and then jump in and check out this weeks changes.

A project clinic involves making our team experience the frustrations you do, and then turning that frustration into direct action and outcome – making a better game

In simple terms it is a short and sharp period of time where we make rapid changes to the game, based on an intense period of play by the developers. When issues are found triage is done on the spot and they are either fixed immediately, or recorded for future work. An “issue” is extended beyond a bug, to include missing functionality or design and balance problems.

Under normal circumstances there would often be lengthy processes to add something to the game. A project clinic is a great way of “giving the project it’s medicine” and treating the issues on the spot. Sometimes the project needs a little jolt, to shake free the things holding it back. These are only possible when a really intense amount of play is done at senior levels and below, so that it becomes very clear what is missing and what the problems are.

The downsides are extensive, they can be disorienting for the project and also tend to disrupt usual processes for things. However we have found that done occasionally, this kind of disruption proves healthy. It helps shed light on unnecessary processes. It also forces many in the project to reassess entrenched positions that are not compatible with how the game really is.

It fits in very well with our “games are played not made” ethos, which is central to the studios “brutalist” approach to making video games.

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Clinics help provide a shot of adrenaline into the project and allow everyone from juniors through to our executive team to provide their own experience and feedback that will steer the project direction, meaning a wide range of representative voices are heard.

We have done this a few times in Icarus’ lifetime – most noticeably during the beta weekends and before the ‘New Frontiers’ launch.

Clinics differ from our regular week to week as in general, we plan well in advance what we are working on for any given week and the subsequent systems and art that needs to be created and adjusted. This is so we can establish timelines for departments and make sure to balance what’s in each patch, giving the necessary timeframes to achieve what we set out to, be it big or small for that update.

This week is a result of the first week of our Project Clinic, and not only includes fixes for our Laika update but also lots of small fixes and content additions to other areas of the game that make up a fairly hefty patch.

Last week’s Free Laika Update was a smash hit, and we’ve loved all the feedback, images and clips we’ve been sent of you with all your new furry, wooly and feathery pals. Do note, what we list below is only a brief summary of the major changes. We have made extensive changes and fixes across broad areas of the entire game. These include performance, AI, mission, and rebalancing.

We have a ton of fixes and tweaks coming this week, off the back of the great feedback we’ve received from you all:

• Snow wolves now spawn correctly in snare traps in arctic biomes
• Fixed a bug where the Mount/NPC movement was stuttering for clients when accelerating
• When leading an animal with a rope they will now follow at a much closer distance than before
• You no longer can instantly shear sheep for the unlimited XP exploit
• Fixed issues displaying players’ available talent points and their level in the menu
• Cats on the planet now keep their original colour when respawned or brought down from space (were sometimes turning grey unexpectedly)
• Fixed an issue where mounts that come down from the space station could get stuck and be unable to move
• Change the UX of the Mount Behaviour selection screen, removing toggle buttons in favor of radio buttons and checkboxes
• Mounts will no longer teleport to their owner if they are being ridden at that time
• Tames now clear their combat target if they are teleported mid-fight
• Fixed an issue where tames would not attack neutral creatures such as Komodos
• Fixed an issue with mount modifiers not displaying correctly when ridden
• Fixed an issue with dog/wolf combat where they would sometimes freeze if you killed their target before they could
• Updated mount interaction UI so it’s easier to read and see the creature’s current state
• Lowered Bestiary point requirement on creatures exclusively ordered from orbit

We have done a pass on the player lights when socketed in the light slots, these had some very odd behaviors such as offsetting the players light when equipping an item and with some light sources almost being unusable. We have done a pass on the 3rd and 1st person to make this feel a lot better. We have more improvements in store especially when it comes to this interaction when riding mounts.

We have added a new Arctic version of the Moa which is all white, it spawns on all maps in arctic zones and comes with its own Juvenile. When this juvenile is ‘saved’ and grows up it becomes a white arctic moa which comes with its very own skill tree. The rational here is to use our existing systems and content to provide more depth to the experience. We will begin to use the talent tree system for animals more and more, to allow you to desire specialist animals and incentives to actually visit and traverse different biomes for different reasons. We have plans for many new animals, both tamable as well as monsters. Some of which you will face in caves, or in missions.

Some of these changes might be a bit spicy for some users. However the game is a survival game, our intention is to give you the sense of challenge and accomplishment that comes from preparing for a journey as well as adapting to issues that come along the way. Through our development we have inadvertently made a variety of our debuffs not matter at all. Many of them were so short that rather than crafting what was needed, you simply had to wait out the issue.

Many of our medical debuffs have had their duration increased. Broken legs for example have become a debuff that requires healing – you can no longer wait it out. To balance this change, splints have become easier to craft and the level requirements removed from all early-game medicines. Some of these debuffs have also been nerfed in their impact on the player to compensate for the increased duration.

In addition we have added a new T3 Medicine Bench that serves as an intermediary between the Herbalism and Chemistry Benches. This bench fits aesthetically with the existing benches. It can snap to the rest of the kitchen benches and all medicines that where present on the kitchen bench have been shifted over.

We have also added brand new healing items the Health Recovery Concoction at T1 and the Health Recovery Elixir at T3, these go along with the T2 Health Recovery Tonic which has been given a buff. These 3 items all focus on providing you with a quick decent amount of health recovery.

There was also some small but much needed changes to the way you heal your mounts and pets, that is putting a medical item in your hand and holding right click. This now will cancel and not consume items if you lose sight or your pet or move to far away during the action.

In addition we have added a new bandage animation so you can see yourself and others applying medicine to themselves.

In this update we added the ability to use a shovel and dig up dirt and sand, when digging on various areas in the terrain. Dirt can be used to craft 2 new building pieces, a dirt foundation and a dirt ramp, both craftable on the player at T1. These new buildables can only be placed in the terrain or they will instantly break, serving as a good foundation for buildings.

Sand is also another resource that is available to be collected with a shovel. Sand can be used as an alternate to silica when crafting glass in a furnace.

Don’t worry you can still dig dig mounds in the ground using right click, but also now you can craft and place the dirt mounds as well allowing you to place them in other locations.

This updated we added stone cairns that can be placed in world where you can customize the text and description so other prospectors can see on their travels in your world. You can use these as waystones to mark a path across the landscape or even mark area’s of significance.

With this we have also added a single inventory slot to cairns so if players choose to they can store the corpse of a dead pet, marking their grave and providing them with a small memorial.

Credit to LeonVirin on our discord, as this was a direct result of their suggestion.

As has likely been apparent to players of ICARUS for a long time now – we were missing kitchen corners. The advantage of a Project Clinic is the ability to push through fast solutions to clear problems – cutting through the bureaucracy that typically exists in a project. So now we finally have a simple brand new deployable for both the kitchen and marble benches that allow for you to make corners, curves and u-shapes with your kitchen set. These benches include the kitchen bench, biofuel stove, medicine bench, kitchen storage, sinks and more.

The existing pot belly stove is not a good “travel” heat source, as it only provides heat as you move. Some rebalancing of weights and bulk have occurred with deployables like the stone fireplace. Now we have a new small wood stove that is designed to be more mobile – something you might take with you to build a small hut when heading into the arctic biome. It bridges the gap between campfire and the stone fireplace.

There are lots more things added this patch from small balance changes around soups, spoil times being displayed in hours/minutes, creating separate items for steel roofs, 4 new electric lights and lots more including a host of fixes. Check out the patch notes below for the full list. It really cannot be emphasized enough that there is a host of new content, that has come directly from us experience the game as you do.

Next week we will continue making Laika improvements along with other general adjustments from the second week of our project clinic. Alongside our own internal notes, we’ll keep listening and taking on board feedback that is shared through feature upvote, so make sure to keep putting your suggestions in here for us to go through.

In Open world games over time voxel loading can cause hitching as you move around the map. This can happen regardless of what settings you have, if the voxels are not being completely cleaned up. It is impossible to clean up some voxels completely. Additionally, burn down trees and loss of vegetation is not only sometimes a performance issue – it is also unsightly.

We have identified direct solutions to the late game hitching that we are going to add as options for players. These will involve cleaning up data in your save, and in return the world will run much faster. This can include, for example, reloading trees that are burnt down as alive again. Or if a stone voxel is more than 50% mined, not loading it in. These changes are extensive, so they did not make it in time for this update. However we do have a build that is in closed testing already with some of these changes, and are optimistic we might be able to have this included in the next update. If so, this would be a profound fix for what is an intensely frustrating problem for late-game open world prospects.

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• Added Arctic Moa spawns.
• Adding New data table enteries for Dirt Foundations and Ramps
• Added new Dirt BLD pieces
• Adding New Images for new Dirt, Sand, Recovery Items
• You can now dig in Dirt / Mud to Get Dirt with a shovel
• You can dig in sand to get Sand with a shovel
• Adding Alternate glass recipe which uses sand
• Adding new T1 Health Recovery Item & T3 Health Recovery Item
• Rebalancing T2 Health Recovery Tonic and Slight Rename, (Recovery is T1: 100, T2: 250, T3: 450)
• Added stone and oxite ore deposits
• Increased deep ore drill speeds for most ore types
• Rescaled meat rewards from many creatures to better represent their physical size
• Corn and Mushroom soup now require 3 of Corn and Mushroom respectively
• Renamed Pneumonia to Cave Sickness
• Mounts and Tames will now follow at a closer distance when led using a Hitching Rope
• Added Styx Open World drop option for Great River South
• Split out steel roofing from concrete roofing setup
• Deep Mining Drills now have increased drilling speed (up to 20%) based on area level
• Setting up Wood Burner
• Adding Stats to Wood burner since it is now basically a T2 Campfire, provides more confort and crafting speed
• Added Exposed & Single Ceiling & Wall Light
• Adding Kitchen & Advanced Kitchen Corner
• Adding Medicine Bench
• Adding Talents for Wood Burner, Lights and Dirt Ramps / Dirt Foundations
• Dramatically increased Mammoth Tusk crushed bone yield, increased the rewards from Mammoths to 2 but they no longer scale with skinning rewards
• Mammoth Tusks are now a bulky item, lowered their in-world scale to fit better on prospectors back
• Mammoth Bestiary unlock now grants increased bone rewards instead of increased Tusk rewards
• Removed level restrictions on Antibiotic, Antiposion, Antibacterial, Blood thinning, Bandages, splits and suture kits
• Adding Alternate Splint Recipe to directly use fiber
• Splints now stack
• Concussion & Contusion now last 1800 second
• Festering Wound now lasts 1800 seconds
• Infected Wound now lasts 1800 seconds
• Dyssentry now lasts 600 seconds
• Broken legs now have no duration, and can be fully healed by a splint
• Sprained Ankles now last 120 seconds
• Adding Stats for CreatureBoneDamage & ChanceToInstantlyGatherBones
• Adding Stats for Biome Specific Temperature Resistance
• Added stat to control the speed of the buffalo when the cart is active
• Mount Movement/Combat behaviour settings are now a list instead of buttons
• Adding in Arctic Moa creature and mount assets and base hookup, missing Icon and specific Bestiary information
• Added Arctic Moa talents
• Added new deep ore types to workshop scanner
• Added stick equip first person and third person animation and montages, added stick equip flip grab audio and grab flip audio for 1st and 3rd perspectives
• Added T3 herbalism bench ast assets to the project
• Added Arctic Moa talent icon
• Updated medicine bench BP and data table entry with the new art assets
• Added Juvenile Arctic Moa datatable setups
• Hooked up new bandaging animations
• Changed decay times to display minutes and hours rather than just seconds
• Added additional talents to hunting and repairing tree for bones damage and instant gather
• Adding Electric Oxite Dissolver
• Adding UI prompts for the shovel
• Dirt Ramps and Foundations will now only have stability when supported by the terrain
• Elixir is now craftable at the chemistry bench and not on the player
• Reducing base experiance loss on infected wound to match festering wound at -5%
• Lowered Severity of Broken leg carry weight from -50 -> -25 to account for broken legs no longer healing naturally
• Adding Dirt Ramp & Frame Images when trying to select variations
• Added speed increase to drills that are outside spawn zones (notably in caves/out of bounds)
• Aluminium building pieces now have recipes that use Aluminium in addition to those that use Aluminium Ore
• Brown Bear armor now only provides heat resistance in the Forest
• Added Health Restoration Concoction to medicine bench line
• Adding dirt building pieces deploy, tick damage, loop damage, repair, stress audio and events, Physical Material and data table setups
• Adding Stone Cairn Item buildable at T1 with stone, can be used to mark locations around the map or scope out a path, you can also place in animal corpses to remember dead friends
• Adding Stone Cairn Recipe, Blueprint, Icon, Text etc
• Adding ability to Set text and a title on Stone Cairns so when viewed in world you can leave text for other prospectors if they stumble across it
• Added upgrade options for steel
• Fixed building concrete stair pieces missing from steel roofing split
• Setting up Wood Burner, removing proxies & lights from BP as they don’t work with the current mesh, adding item icon
• Adding Exposed Wall Light Meshes, Item Icons and Basic Lighting Setup
• Feature locked out other lights as the meshes are not ready
• Adding correct PM to dirt ramp blueprint so the footsteps play dirt not stone
• Adding back in steel roof variations to concrete ramps variations for now until this can be done in a non-destructive way
• Adding correct PM to dirt ramp blueprint so the footsteps play dirt not stone

• Fixed bug where mount/NPC movement was stuttering for clients when accelerating
• Adding version of standing breathing anim for cat that fixes the feet
• Adding correct punch animation to punch montage and adding unique punch whoosh audio
• Better spacializing and randomisation of dog footsteps. Can be heard slightly clearer over a longer distance. Added texture variant to dirt
• Reduce stability calculation frequency when walking through base or during snow storms
• Added translatable text to Beehive’s Honey Extractor upgrade
• RELOCATED: Tagged mission item so it will show in relevant crafting filter
• ABYSS: Allow monitoring station content to be translated
• FLATLINE: Added translatable text for mission device interaction
• Added missing translatable text to end of mission screen
• Added Horse bestiary bonuses
• Fixed pets having mount talent growth, granting additional talents over their max level of 25
• HOMESTEAD: Removed gold requirement, updated recommended tier to tier 2
• Increase durability on high tier troughs
• Fixed Striker/Stalker typo in Arid Striker bestiary
• Added reminder control for standing or dismounting
• Add translatable text for close button on mount
• Fixed fishing talent tree vertical position
• Moved Bovine Harness talent to the Ranching Station
• Fixed character level in top left of space menu showing the incorrect level
• Fixed new Deep Ore resources not being selected by roll
• Adding eating sounds to tame desert wolf, and added missing attack movement audio
• Potential fix for Mounts/Tames not being able to move after being taken down to prospect in an exotic pod
• Adjusting the desert hyena wolf to play correct hyena audio rather than standard wolf. Small balance tweaks to hyena audio to fine tune for close proximity idles
• Fix for transport pod effects not turning off on clients. Fixed some other replication issues on transport pod
• Fixed bug where mount tooltip wouldn’t clear it’s modifier list and would sometimes show modifiers from other mounts
• Fixed bug where you would continue to see modifier updates from mounts you’d previously ridden above the health bar of a different, currently ridden mount.
• Mounts and Tames will now stay wet for a period of time after leaving water (same as players)
• Fixed bug where you could keep shearing a sheep to gain XP even if it had no wool.
• Reduced angle of Sheep’s LookAt.
• Shearing a sheep will now grant the sheep XP.
• Fixed some replication-related issues where MovementState wasn’t being set on clients – was causing the sheep’s feet to slide a lot when walking around for clients
• Forest wolves and Boar can now only be trapped in forest/grasslands.
• Arctic wolves can only be trapped in Arctic. Hyenas can only be trapped in Desert/Volcanic
• Fixed issue with new mount behaviour buttons having separate interactable checkboxes that weren’t linked to button
• Fixed build validation error
• Adding missing swimming notify to desert wolf hyena thing
• Juvenile creatures are no longer recorded if they’re not currently being tamed; fixed accumulation of juvenile creatures across map over time
• Fixing Dirt frame & Ramp Images
• Fixing Elixir & Remedy Images
• Fixing crash when opening the crafting menu
• Fixed build breaking because early access of DT table
• Fixed seams on both Frame and Ramp, as well as fixed DM for Ramp
• Small balance pass of stick grab pickup, stick equip, stick equip 3rd person for better cohesion
• Chicken coops no longer snap to surface normal during placement. Slightly lowered chicken coops into ground during placement
• Fixed a bug where cats and dogs could get higher than lvl 25. Added a growth curve row to the mounts DT
• When shovelling sand, you get sand and no longer 5 shovels
• Fixed issue where new bandage animations weren’t being loaded from soft object references
• Modified the wood burner recipe to use steel instead of Iron
• Fixing issue where the shovel would both dig up resource and spawn a hole for planting on right or left click, left click now collects resources, right click digs a hole, both knock snow off your roof
• Fixed typos in new content
• Small adjustment to timing and audio placement of the bandage loop and consumed sound to match with new animations
• Fixing Dirt Ramp and Foundation Stability Numbers and Tier so they aren’t destroyed in Easy / Medium storms
• Updated Dirt Buildings Itemable to mention they need to be placed attached to the terrain
• Fixing Kitchen Bench not being able to be snapped to the a corner piece correctly
• Fixing issue where the medicine bench was not craftable, when attempting to craft would produce a kitchen bench
• Fixing Spoil Timers, they were not being formatted and presenting no numbers after the last commit
• Fixing Splint modifier text, implying broken legs where still healed over time, they do not unless a splint is applied now
• Fixed Horse walk speed being extremely low
• Future proofed movement speeds of mounts, to ensure stat changes affect the mount correctly
• Rescaled some mount speeds, other than horses walk speed and tusker sprint speed increases these are all close to normal, slight reduction on Moa sprint speed (but with talents these are still by far the fastest)
• Fixed XP display for mounts not disappearing
• Fixed agressive and passive creatures shown on open world drop selection being flipped
• Fixed chickens not burning food after having the -consumption talent. Made FoodConsumedPerMinute to PerHour. Also oxygen/water just because of shared function
• Adjustment and fine tune to bandage healing animation audio. Added spacializer since its now played in world. Added leather glove sounds for end of animation. Added first and third equip audio
• Added missing code change
• Fixed Mammoth Tusk recipe not granting 400 Crushed Bone
• Fixed Hyena sometimes getting stuck and not being able to attack.
• Hyena spawn count in first stage of GENESIS: Recovery should now capped and scaled based on difficulty and player count.
• Slightly increased health and regen of Dribbo
• Adding audio for electric oxidizer to play when tanks are beeing filled.
• Also added consume tonic loop to play for items crafted on the new medicine bench so it doesn’t sound like an instant press consume
• Adding medicine bench crafted audio and applied overrides for recipes with several operlapping recipe sets
• Reataking images for all kitchen benches
• Retaking images for Elixer & Concoction
• Added recording of FText through the save game flag on icarus actors, means we wont need as many unique recorder components in future
• Fixed compile errors
• Lowered Bestiary point requirement on creatures exclusively ordered from orbit
• Fixed typo in Dirt Foundation
• Fixed Advanced Kitchen Corner recipe granting Kitchen Corner
• Fixed Wood Burner being unable to be crafted at higher tier benches
• Fixed Antibiotic medicines mentioning pneumonia
• Fixed Health Recovery Elixer not being craftable at Medicine Bench
• Fixed typo in Dig Dirt Mound and Cairn UMG text
• Fixing Aluminium Wall using an Item Static instead of an Item Template causing issues when crafting (Copy Paste Issue)
• Fixed bug where mount/NPC movement was stuttering for clients when accelerating
• Made several changes to improve visibilty of flashlights in first peron, and all lights when mounted
• Fixing Aluminium Wall using an Item Static instead of an Item Template causing issues when crafting (Copy Paste Issue)
• Adding back in steel roof variations to concrete ramps variations for now until this can be done in a non-destructive way
• Adding correct PM to dirt ramp blueprint so the footsteps play dirt not stone
• Adding bandage tear end audio into loop event so if the player stops the healing process the audio also stops indicating that it hasn’t finished healing
• Updated DEP_Coal_Burner mesh and destructible
• Added DEP_Ceiling_Light, DEP_Ceiling_Light_Exposed, DEP_Single_Wall_Light, DEP_Single_Wall_Light_Exposed and setup in BP’s and D_DeployableSetup
• Adding Frosted Wall & Ceiling Lights
• Added destructable mesh and camera to stone cairn blueprint
• Adding audio for when an animal has been added to a Cairn

• Added BLD_Roof_Peak_Pyramid_Glass. Still need to add APEX DM
• Added DEP_Trap_Black_Wolf with animations
• Added BLD_Roof_Peak_Pyramid_Concrete. Still need to add APEX DM
• Added DEP_Trap_Ice_Mammoth and animations
• Update Field Guide procurement text
• Added updated BLD_Frame_Pillar_Wood
• Marked Storm Stalker talent as development again, as it is not implemented
• Added mini hippo bestiary image to the project
• Added mini hippo trophy to the project
• Adjustments and balance tweaks to ghost croc. Adjsuted spacial and volumes etc
• Added updated BLD_Frame_Pillar_Brick
• Adding ghost croc, bee, and mini hippo bestiary events and data table entries
• Add -ForceTreeRegrowth command argument as a test (internal dev)
• Added Dribbo bestiary traits
• Added Kit version of BLD_Frame_Pillar_Wood_INT, including DM
• Added DM for BLD_Thatch_Pillar as well as modified collision
• Added BLD_Frame_Pillar_Iron with DM and also added to BP

SE MERE