Welcome to Week 138.
This week continues the expansion of the Icarus weapon tree. To make pistols more useful, and avoid only adding onto the end of the tech tree, the current One Shot Pistol is moving to Tier 2, along with a new a cheaper ammo recipe. This makes space for the new Semi-Automatic Pistol on the Machining Bench at Tier 3.
The Free Prometheus Expansion is progressing well as we implement feedback from closed play testing. We explain more about how you’ll use Beacons to explore the ‘Null Sector’ dark zone below.
We’re adding a new Semi-Automatic Pistol this week at Tier 3.
This comes with a rebalance and restructure of the pistol tiers to clearly differentiate the different weapons.
Here are the core details about the new pistol:
- Crafted in Tier 3 at the Machining Bench
- Fires six rounds before reloading
- Takes any pistol ammo
The existing pistol, now named One Shot Pistol, never held its own against the other weapons craftable in Tier 3. As such, it now is accessible at Tier 2 via the Crafting Bench, and is accompanied by a new simpler ammo type, Crude Pistol Ammo.
This new ammo is cheaper but deals less damage, being crafted only from Iron Ingots and shaped as a small iron ball, similar to what you would see in flintlock pistols. This ammo can be used in any ranged weapons. It acts as a universal cheap ammo, but without the stopping power of the higher tier specialized ones.
The Orbital Workshop CHAC Pistol’s ammo capacity has also been increased to take the Semi-Automatic Pistol into account.
The Prometheus update will introduce the ‘Null Sector’ – an area to the south of the map that not shown on our satellite imagery and is blank on the map.
Instead you’ll have to map the sector yourself using two new items. With the Trail Beacon Tool (craftable at the Machining Bench) you can place Trail Beacons and link them to other Trail Beacons nearby. These act as ‘breadcrumbs’ for you to create a pathway across the map or to mark key features to return to later.
We planned on bringing out the free Prometheus Expansion next week, but we’re holding onto it for a bit longer as we found a few bugs and received good feedback from both internal and external sources for us to address.
Our focus is that this is a good and challenging experience, and a lot of our work is in finding this balance and making sure it is enjoyable for those who want to push themselves to their survival limits.
We are playtesting this internally at the moment and are doing some closed external testing in our Discord community.
Next week, we’ll be introducing a new creature to Open World that was recently first discovered in a quest on Styx.
The Dribbo can be found around water in desert locations and spawn in groups. There are three variations to this creature each with its own quirks, which you can find out about next week.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/40692/Icarus_Pets_Bundle/
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/
New Content[expand type=details expanded=false]
- Fixed pistol to have the player use the clip reload animation in the ranged weapon data
- Adding New T3 Pistol Item Setup, Blueprint, Recipe
- Adding T3 pistol fire audio, mech and empty audio and event – data table setup
- Adding in grip socket for left hand to attach to while sprinting, adding in separate clip mesh
- Adding Crude Ammo for T2 Pistol
- Adding Crude Pistol Ammo Item, Recipes and BP at T2
- Adding T4 Pistol Item, Blueprint and Setup
- Shifting T3 Pistol to T2 and adding a new T3 Pistol with a clip
- Adjusted Crafting costs of T2/3/4 Pistol and Crude Ammo
- Added text for crude ammo
- Added text for pistol changes
- Pistol balance revamp (factoring that current pistol is moved to T2) with the T3 and future T4 pistol having higher rounds and slower reload speed, increased CHAC pistol rounds to 6, lowered pistol Handcannon attachment damage increase
- Pistol durability rebalance, reduced T2 pistol durability slightly, increased T3 pistol durability significantly.
- Update Crude Ammo description to better clarify it can be used in any of the firearms
- Adding muzzle flash socket to fix firing effects
- Fixed Crude Ammo break stat spawning non-interactable ammo boxes
- Changing name of Pistol -> Semi-Automatic Pistol
Fixed[expand type=details expanded=false]
- BP Cleanup of Decorations Folder
- Fixed T2 Seed Pouch not accepting fertilizer
- Fixing issue with talent mananger that was never setting the initial specified zoom
- Fixed Excavator (workshop shovel) being unable to be repaired from the Repair Bench.
- Updated Farmer’s Satchel description to mention what is stored.
Future Content[expand type=details expanded=false]
- Setting up Ape Boss Blueprints
- Setting up Ape Boss Items, adding Ape Boss vestiage
- Adding mission boss biomass items (Golem, Ape, Hornet, Plant, Scyther, Cat, Lava Hunter)
- Setting up Rock Golem Blueprints
- Setting up Rock Golem Boss Items, adding Rock Golem vestiage
- Split up RockGolem behaviour into various sub-trees. Added new RockGolem burrow/earthquake behaviour
- Setting up Ice Mammoth Boss Blueprints
- Setting up Ice Mammoth Boss Items, adding Ice Mammoth Boss vestiage
- Added slug boss trophy destructible meshs
- Switched hammerhead to behaviour trees instead of goap. Added the respawn mechanic on death
- Fixed Ashlands and Icesheet story mission progress unlock
- Removed final step from Ashlands story mission, fixed timings
- Setting up Hornet Boss Blueprints
- Setting up Hornet Items, adding Hornet vestiage
- Fixed Ashlands story mission progress percentage not being updated after initial quest start
- Setting up Scyther Boss Blueprints
- Setting up Scyther Items, adding Scyther vestiage
- Added 4 slug boss trophy art assets and created blueprints
- Re-Feature Locked Biolab button
- Add additional drop option for Prometheus part 2 missions, updated some of the new missions to this drop location
- Added GUN_Pistol_T4
- Setting up Plant & Cat Boss Blueprints
- Setting up Plant & Cat Boss Items, adding Plant & Cat vestiages
- Added new RockGolem behaviour that has them move to nearest cluster of relevant minerals and eat to regain armour.
- Fleshed out later RockGolem combat phases with simple combat loop.
- Added MoveToVectorAdvanced BT to allow custom acceptance radius when moving towards vector targets.
- Added collision to temporary RockGolem wall blocker mesh
- Basic blockout of mammoth arena showing scale and rough layout of waterfall spawn points and bird nest locations
- Adjustments to deploy audio for scorpion boss trophy
- CARAVAN: Fixed a quest step to only trigger once player enters Ashlands, and each trigger extends the timer before next trigger
- Adding correct audio for black wolf shield. Also adding shield block audio to animation
- Changed hammerhead slugs splitting to be server only
- Update Ashlands and Ice Sheet story missions to only spawn structures on first play
- Adding hammerhead slug explode audio
- Adding correct hammerhead slug attack montage into behavior BP. needs additional work to swap behaviors per sized variation
- Added Hammerhead Slug Axe art assets to the project
- Added_ITM_Black_Wolf_Tooth
- Stripping out all the body armor from the base rock golem body and bringing them all in individually
- Added simple concept of armour health for RockGolem.
- Added new Boss health bar that stays at fixed position on screen.
- Added function AIcarusNPCCharacter::NPCResistDamage to allow NPC BPs to control how much damage is resisted
- Added Ice Breaker Bones Meshes & Materials to the project
- Reduced the speed of all hammerhead slugs
- Added text for Null Sector Audiologs
- Adding slug axe whoosh, impact flesh and equip audio, data table setups. Also added spider ballistic setup to data table
- Hammerhead slugs no longer get slowed by other slug trails
- Adding Slug Axe & Slug Skin Meshes and Icons
- Setting up Slug Slime, Lava Hunter Horn & Golem Core Meshes and Icons
- Fixing Black Wolf Wall trophy from being incorrectly setup as the sandworm head trophy
- Adding spider ballistic travel and iompact audio. Currently they only seem to fire at you at very close range though
- Hammer Slug now checks if current target is dead and if so then tries to switch target and if not then goes back to being passive
- Adding pickup slime and pickup horn audio and data table entry
- ICESHEET Story: Fixed beacon placement step not updating
- ICESHEET Story: Tweaked timing and completion requirements for final quest step
- Adding pickup sound for slug skin and for rock golem core
map setup and first pass on IceMammoth arena - DROVER: Guide player where to craft the Monitoring Pylon
- Setting up Ape Boss Grenade, Rock Boss Sledgehammer, Scyther Boss Pickaxe & Cat Boss Tonic
- IceMammoth Arena – Refined layout of cliffs/macros, landscape sculpting, building out frozen waterfall
- Fixed terrain seams, Outpost 009
- Added New Outpost Map (009) and completed inital map setup
- Added destructible mesh for the Lava Hunter Mine
- Added Lava Hunter Mine art assets to the project
- Resaved datatable to fix build issue
- Removed description off of Trail Beacon blueprint unlock (as these aren’t shown)
- Setup Trail Beacon recipes and blueprint
- Adjusted Bone Placement & Updated Collision on Ice Breaker Bones in Ice Sheets, on Yellow Quad
- Adding T4 Pistol shot body and tail layers, event and data table entries
- Cleaned up how the slugs weren’t being affected by the slime. Added tags on all variants of the hammerhead slug so they don’t get affected
- Placed Ice Breaker Bone in Ice Sheets, on Yellow Quad
- Adding Great Hunt Talent / Controller / View / Model Setup
- Adding a world talent manager and world talent storage option for the cases where talents that related to the world can be access / stored / modified
- Adding Great Hunt Interface Device
- Adding 2 example great hunts
SE MERE