Weekly Update: February 2, 2024

As promised last week, the first Jupiter build has been uploaded to an unstable beta branch.

It's been quite a while since the last named update, partly due to spending more time doing post-launch Icarus patches, but mostly due to my goal of introducing an ending to the game's story. Late in the process I found myself caught in the trap of "the players have waited so long for this build, they won't be happy unless I do X". But this eventually becomes a self-perpetuating cycle as X inevitably takes longer than I originally thought, and I feel compelled to add Y and Z. I finally reached a point of deciding that it's better to get some feedback on the new stuff and defer some known items.

Consider this a warning that this build might be a rougher build than previous opt-ins. There aren't any known game breaking bugs, but some content isn't quite as done as I would like, there have been untested balance changes, and some of the late areas may have performance issues. Some players have already started playing since I posted about it on Tuesday, but as most of the changes are in the late game, no player has made it that far and I still don't have a sense as to whether there are any serious bugs.

So very brave commanders who want to venture forth into the Jupiter build, have at it. Once I get feedback from players who make it all the way through, I'll give some guidance in the weekly update on how rough it actually is. (Opt-in instructions here).

Non-spoiler list of changes:

• Prologue transition

• End game credit screen

• New mid-game story, faction

• Two new void mini-quests, encounters

• New late game story, mission

• New end game story, missions

• Two late game "easter eggs"

• Fix for missing void encounters

• New weapon variants

• Refactor fixed weapons, control schemes

• Anomaly soundscapes

• 18 new anomalies

• Numerous new actor dialogues

• New modules

• New techs

• New enemies, abilities

• Damage type logic, refactor resistance

• Refactored Station operations logic

• New techs highlighted

• Additional analytics

• Hints/fixes for several stuck scenarios

• Engine turbo sound fades out

• Numerous balance changes

• Numerous new VFX

• Minor changes to dialogue behavior

• Improved mission authoring tool

• Improved testing tools

• Changed autosave timing

• Fix for vsync not being saved

• Fix for secondary weapon not being saved

• Several performance optimizations

• Various QoL changes

• Numerous bug fixes

Build 16006 patch:

• Fix for new analytics telemetry potentially logging player name, which would make the analytics non-anonymous

• Added canvas scaler for prologue text

• Fix beams not targeting fighter drones after object re-pooling

Until next week!

• Kevin