Exterior Decorating – Update 8.1.5

Salutations, Wayfarers!

Buckle up! The next update is a BIG one. We’ve been building to this moment for quite some time, and we’re going to need your help to kick the thrusters to make sure she’s spaceworthy! We’re publishing this update next week!

We have a large number of updates to share with you, covering the brand new character customization system, a major evolution of our user interface, new fauna types, changes to our creature spawners (you can see them now!), a number of control and movement improvements, and a ton more!

With next week’s update, we’re also hitting the reset button. That’s right, the Great Wipe is happening. This is your final warning to grab screenshots and video of your best creations. After the update, we’re all starting from zero, beginning with giving your toon a brand new look.

To set expectations, this is an intermediate step toward our vision for a number of these new features, even if this is an enormous update. You’ll be helping us test the foundations of these systems as we continue to refine and improve them.

As always, we are beyond grateful for your support and your assistance. We couldn’t do it without you!

Now… onto the good stuff!

Stability and Performance

We put in place some crash fixes for the servers. We know there are more issues to address still, however.

Character Customization

With this update you will see a new character customization system in place when you create new characters. This steps away from the template characters you have seen in the past and instead allows you to customize your character with several features such as Species, Body Type, Facial Features, Body Attachments, and General Appearance.

We made the decision to release the new avatar system in an early state so that we could start testing, because it is a BIG system. It is light on clothing content, attachable options, and it has a lot of graphical glitches still. Our target was “one of each thing,” in order to make sure the pipelines are working. But we figured, it is better to get it into testing than to hold it back and not get adequate testing on it. Rest assured, it is not planned to stay this way, and things like color options, full texturing, and more variety are all on the way.

Customization features

This system is designed to support a wide variety of looks from grounded & realistic to expressive & stylized. With this system every player can stand out in a shared world.

• Body Shape: Adjust your physique with sliders for musculature, weight and height
• Facial Features: Fine tune the appearance of every aspect of your face and head, including;
  • Head size and proportions
  • Eyes (shape, spacing, tilt and depth)
  • Nose (bridge, tip, nostrils, and more)
  • Mouth and Lips ( size, shape, and position)
  • Additional customization for Jawline, chin, ears, eyebrows, cheekbones, and forehead
• Attachments for several of the species
  • Hairstyles, Tails, and Horns.
• Appearance & Materials
  • Skin Tone and Patterns (Only initial variants in current build)
  • Color for Eyes, Hair and Clothing (Only initial variants in current build)
  • Clothing Variations (Only initial variants in current build)

Known issues with the new avatars

• Spacesuits will not be working just yet. Your character won’t visually change while in space until we get these in.
• We do not yet have color and materials set up on all the clothing and body parts.
• Not all options are available yet for customization, such as height
• The organization of the groups of settings you can modify is not final yet, it’s just in an internal order
• There will be issues with interpenetration of the meshes, where odd patches may appear. We’re working on these!
• Character Name Selection will only accept Letters at this time.
• First person may show your equipped tool or weapon as wiggling around wildly rather than held steady.

User Interface Updates

The HUD is getting a significant overhaul.

• First, a new visual style. The toolbelt is now located in the bottom right instead of along the right edge.
  • No, we do not support dragging things around to wherever you like at the moment.
• The buttons for the toolbelt and the consumable slot are now clickable with the mouse cursor, so you can click to select tools, holster/unholster them, or to use your last consumable (same as pressing F).
• Cooldown timers will appear on the icons for the special abilities.
• Battery is now indicated in the background of the selected tool.
• There will now be a “frame” on the HUD. You can toggle it on and off in options, but it serves to indicate the width that the HUD will use for displaying UI.
  • You can set the frame to be smaller than your monitor width in the options, so that UI elements don’t end up far away on ultrawide monitors.
• The hud will have a slider for opacity in the options as well.
• There will also be two sliders for scale. One will adjust the scale of the health bars, the other the scale of the rest of the HUD, so that you can adjust the HUD size to taste for readability.
• There is also an option to toggle the names of what’s on the slots on and off, if you prefer a more streamlined look.

Reticle Update

• As part of the general overhaul to UI, we are redesigning the way the reticle works.
  • The reticle will now show the battery on one side.
  • The other side will show a general-purpose meter, used for charge shots, arc distance, or hoppers, depending on the tool.
  • In the center, a ring will indicate target validity.
  • And two dots will serve as a visual indicator of the cooldown status for your two ability slots (Q and E).
  • In addition, the circle will rotate when you are over a grapple target.
• This will all work regardless of whether you are in fixed or free reticle.
• It’ll also be smart enough to switch to a cursor when relevant, such as when you are over UI or temporarily releasing the cursor.
• We will have options, too!
  • an option for “show bars only when tool is out” (defaulted to on)
  • a separate option for “show circle only when tool is out” (defaulted off) — so the effect will be that you have only crosshairs when tools are holstered, and the bars and circle appear when you unholster.
  • a slider for reticle size in general
• an option to hide reticle altogether except when using the mouse cursor for UI, and now the existing hotkey is mapped to this option

We have replaced the old modal context menu with a right-click popup menu

• When you hover over an interactable object, the hint text will now also say “RMB More…” if the object has multiple verbs.
• You can right-click to open a context menu now to access the other verbs, instead of a modal pop-up. This will work in the inventory screen as well.
• If you have your tool holstered, left-click will do the same thing as the G to interact key!
• You can close the menu by just clicking in the world.
• Loadout using right click
  • Right now, you have to go to a Loadout Kiosk in order to change the abilities on your tools. This was an okay interim solution, but not the best UX.
  • Now, with the new right-click context menu, you will instead just right-click on a tool in your inventory and you will get the menu for swapping out abilities.
  • If you are not in a safe area the option will not appear.
  • The kiosks still work.

Misc fixes

• We’ve consolidated all the various player menu shortcut keys and made sure that they apply on all the various player menus and when in the HUD.
• We changed the hotkey used to confirm/close a hint UI elements from ESC to G
  • We used to have confirm on UI as the ESC key, which led to a lot of confusion, accidentally closed windows, etc.
  • This change makes G be the key pressed to confirm or advance a conversation. It can also be mapped separately as it sends the Confirm command, so you could put it on a different key if you wanted.
  • We also did some cleanup on order of windows closing when you are hitting ESC, so that hints always close before terminal windows do.
• Everywhere in the HUD and Galactopedia, we now show the current keymapping you have chosen, rather than a hardcoded keyhint.
• We’re slowly replacing the old fonts everywhere with the new default font, so don’t be surprised if some screens look a bit different.
• Alerts should be both less spammy, and also not flicker in and out crazy fast.

Stat Allocation: Basic Mode

• We noticed that new players were often a bit thrown off by the complexity of the stats allocation screen, when they don’t yet know how the game works. So we’ve added a Basic Mode, which lets you drag around only the top three buckets, and offers just a few presets.

• Don’t worry, if you are someone who knows the game well, there’s an Advanced button to get back to the screen you already know.

Hint Popup Updates

These are the first-time hints that appear on the left side of the screen as you first encounter elements of the game.

• First Death & ReLife
  • There’s a lot to teach about death in Stars Reach: safe areas, ReLife checkpointing, gravemarkers, world stations and player reviving. So we’re adding a special, more in-depth screen when you die for the first time, that is more in-context with the game lore.
• Rough Terrain Hint
  • We noticed that some players were caught unawares by the fact that movement speeds in Stars Reach vary based on terrain, so:
  • There will now be a hint the first time you find your movement slowed by rough terrain, explaining that
    • slopes affect it
    • you can slide down off slopes
    • some terrains are slippery
    • tall grass slows you down
    • different terrains like mud will also affect your movement speed
  • There will also be a new Galactopedia entry that covers similar (ahem) terrain.
• And more!
• The first time you fill your hopper, you will get a hint about how it works.
• The first time you open the skills window you will get a hint to teach you about skill kiosks.
• Engram pickup also has a first time hint.
• The first time you entering camps and homesteads and how safe areas work
• The first time you get an item damaged
• And the first time one breaks
• The first time you use a local bank
• The first time you suffer fall damage
• When you first open inventory, you will be taught how to use inventory items
• The first time you add something to a collection
• Your first non-indigenous discovery attempt will also get a hint
• And hints on construction-permission denials
• These will also all come with Galactopedia entries

Controls and Movement

• You may have noticed that often tools and the beams don’t seem to quite all line up when you aim them. We have a fix for that which greatly improves the aim controller and should both improve performance and the visuals.
• We’ve added some new projectile VFX.
• We have matched up the jumping and running movement rates, so bunny hopping is no longer the optimal way to get around.
• We have a fix for slowdowns when climbing stairs and ramps.

Creature Ecology

Makers are our current system of creature spawning. They were left behind as genetic “seeds” by the Servitors and the Old Ones to keep planet creature populations healthy. We’ve done a pass on how they work, with more changes still forthcoming.

Maker Visibility

• Smaller, low difficulty Makers will appear not as Makers but as Creature Dens, and will only turn into Makers after growing to a certain point.
• There’s more visibility on Dens as they grow and spread. Those Dens will initially be visible, and will grow into the previous “Cloaked, findable via scan” versions.
• We’ve also slightly slowed the rate at which Makers grow and spread so that they don’t reach all of their caps within the first day of a new world being discovered.

Maker Distribution

• Makers are far less likely to clump up in tight groups, they’ll spread across the world better and combined with the increased visibility players will be able to see when they’re starting to encroach on player settlements. If you don’t push creatures back now and again, the world you’re trying to settle may start to get overrun!
• They can now appear underground, so watch out for creatures in caves!

New Creatures + Difficulty Ramp

New creatures in the game

• We have more than doubled the number of creatures in the game, so you’re going to start seeing a lot of new creatures on our worlds!
  • We’re not going to list them all, to give you the chance to discover them.
  • They will NOT yet all be in appropriate habitats.
• These creatures also have a lot more dynamic scaling in the way they grow alongside their Makers.
  • Previously the difficulty scale jumped drastically from “Easy -> Fair Fight -> Get Stomped -> Get Stomped as a Group” and now that ramp is a lot smoother.
  • We may not unleash the biggest and baddest of these creatures on your worlds just yet, we want to see how players fare against this first cut first.
  • There’s more to do in how we message where on that new difficulty curve a creature is, but for now the bigger it is, the more you should be wary!

We’ve also changed a lot of how Creature Groupings and Creature Attacks are generated and presented.

• Creatures now come in more varied groups; you’re more likely to find a group of creatures that have both Dire/Elder and Weak/Juvenile members.
  • But even those low-difficulty juvenile creatures have more variety in their attacks; almost every creature now has a ‘basic’ attack and an ‘advanced’ attack.
• And they will better telegraph when they’re about to swing big!
• There’s also a little more variety in creature attacks, like more multi-shots and more chained combos.
• There’s more reason to try to learn a creature’s attack patterns as you fight them.
• There’s also more consistency between how creatures of the same species on the same world choose their attacks. Akacala Ballhogs might be very different from Baracatis Ballhogs, but all Akacala Ballhogs will have some similarities to each other regardless of where they are on the difficulty curve.

Known Issues

In addition to the known issues around the new avatars, we also have these:

• Some temporary regressions to Creature Attacks and Behaviors
  • Melee + AoE Creature Attacks aren’t firing correctly
  • Creatures with short range attacks (like orbiting projectiles) may not close in as intended
  • Creature Dens in space use assets clearly meant to be on planets
  • All Creature Species use the same Den asset
  • Jackalopes no longer have a chance to turn into Velocirabbits… don’t worry, for those who are fans of big teeth they still appear this way on their own. We’ll see about bringing back the conversion though.
• Most Tool audio is missing at the moment. We are transitioning to a pathway that’ll make it play more nicely with client prediction but that work is still in progress.
• Trading money is currently broken. We have a fix, but it did not make it through testing in time.
• If you press the X button on the loading screen it shows the Confirm Exit Game UI, the mouse cursor doesn’t show so it is very hard to press the Yes or No.
• Certain HUD elements (missions, hints, the stuff like kill streams and what you picked up, public events) may not scale properly with the rest of the HUD frame.