Week 256 Update | Quality of Life

Welcome to Week 256.

This week focuses on a range of quality-of-life improvements, including search functionality in the Tech Tree, quick-access buttons in the Field Guide, and an important creature spawning fix.

We've also made adjustments to the Bestiary, reducing the number of kills required for some bosses, and cleaned up structures spawned as part of SMPL3 missions.

Finally, we'll take a quick look at next week's planned update: the Spelunking Mission.

Notable Improvements:

• Railings can now snap to all full sized Ramps, not just Stairs
• Elysium Terrain has had a pass to prevent spawning of creatures on rocks outside the map
• Structure for the Elysium quest Lost will now cleanup if the server setting is enabled
• The durability of the Alteration benches have been increased to fully reflect their tier
• Fixed non-varying damage amounts displaying as a range when it isn't
• The Lava Hunter and Sandwyrm Queen bestiary points have been reduced to bring them in line with the other bosses

This Week: Searching Quality of Life

A long time ago, back in the Week 65 update, we added the "Search" bar functionality for several UI elements, including the Tech Tree. This feature highlighted unlocks that matched your search and while that was initially very helpful, the continued expansion of the tech trees in Icarus have led us to improving this functionality further. Now, when you search in the tech tree, it will pan the tree to the first found match which makes it much easier to locate what you might be looking for.

As a reminder, the search is also checking item description text so that may either be helpful or a hinderance, depending on what you're searching for, so it may pay to be either less or more verbose in what you're searching for if you're having trouble finding something.

This Week: Field Guide Shortcut

To accompany the above search improvement for the Tech Tree, we're also adding in another method to find what you're looking for. Now, when you visit the Field Guide page for an item there's a new button in the top right corner which will take you directly to the Tech Tree unlock for that item (if applicable). This makes for a quick and easy method to browse through the Field Guide, find an item you want, and be taken directly to the unlock for it, ready to go.

This Week: Creature Spawning Fixes

One of the bigger fixes this week addresses creature spawn starvation.

In Icarus, we have two main systems for spawning creatures: Natural Spawns and Autonomous Spawners.

Natural Spawns are responsible for populating the world with creatures appropriate to each biome, such as polar bears in the Arctic or wolves in forests. As players move through the map, they are selected as tether targets for AI spawning. The system uses the player's location to determine which creatures should spawn nearby, while also enforcing limits on how many creatures can exist within the surrounding area at any one time.

Autonomous Spawners work alongside this system to spawn specific creatures and nests, such as kea, kiwi, beehives, and Great Hunt encounters. These spawners also select a player as a target and handle spawning and terrain placement checks.

Creatures spawned through Autonomous Spawners aren't always supposed to count towards the Natural Spawn limits. However, a bug introduced some time ago meant that some of these creatures were incorrectly being counted, reducing the number of creatures that could spawn naturally in the surrounding area.

The most noticeable impact was in geothermal and volcanic areas. When playing in these regions, Autonomous Spawners would often spawn large numbers of Gaseous Floaters. Because these creatures were incorrectly consuming the Natural Spawn budget, there was little or no room left for other creatures to spawn. This left these areas feeling unusually empty, particularly in multiplayer games.

We've suspected something was wrong with spawning in these areas for a long time, but tracking down the root cause took some investigation. We eventually identified incorrect tagging in the Autonomous Spawning code, which has now been corrected. This should make geothermal and volcanic areas feel much more alive, with a greater variety of creatures spawning naturally.

This won't resolve every creature spawning issue, but it addresses a significant problem that has affected the game for months.

As part of the fix, we've reviewed the creatures and dens spawned through Autonomous Spawners and explicitly determined whether they should consume Natural Spawn limits. Gaseous Floaters, Kea, Kiwi, Bees, and Dreadwings won't consume these limits, while creatures spawned through Great Hunt spawners will continue to count towards them. Great Hunt creatures are generally tougher and have specific limits on how many can spawn, so this behaviour is intentional.

Next Week: Spelunking Mission

Next week we're delving back into our Olympus Operations Update with significant changes to a very early Olympus operation: Spelunking. It's been revamped to have exciting twists, streamlined to feel less onerous, and updated to fix some edge cases that previously blocked players from completing it smoothly.

Your support makes these updates possible.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1648533/Icarus_Dangerous_Horizons_Expansion/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set

Changelog v3.0.34.159385-rel-DangerousHorizons

New Content

• Added border grow and fade animation to searched highlight button in tech tree.
• Re-enabled Field Guide/Tech Tree search highlight and focus always functionality.
• Re-enabled the Field Guide's missing show in tech tree button.
• Fixed not being able to use the Field Guide's show in tech tree button whilst in space
• Added turrets keyword so that it can be used to find them in the Field Guide
• Stair Railing deployables can now snap to all full sized Ramps, not just Stairs

Fixed

• Adding unique fish tag to fish 20 (blinky) so it can be used as an ingrediant in the Fish Feast Recipe
• Description fix for Iron Cupboard stating its number of storage slots
• Updated flavor text for Interior Wood Cupboard, Small Wood Cupboard and Small Interior Wood Cupboard to show correct slot count. Updated icons for all cupboards and added icon scenes
• Adding GameplayTagsToApply from D_AutonomousSpawns to NPCs spawned by AISpawnBehaviour and to creatures spawned by autonomous nests and spawners through SpawnNewAI, so each autonomous spawn row decides whether its spawns count towards biome spawn density
• Fixing issue where autonomous spawns where preventing teather targets (players) from being selected when attempting natural ai spawning - in general Creatures that spawn from Dens will count toward biodiversity, but birds / floaters / bees etc will not, can now all be defined in datatable
• Removed logic and widget hierarchy in ItemPopup UMG that used to ensure DLC icons and title text didn't overlap, after the DLC icon content was moved elsewhere in the widget and resulted in long titles to be left-aligned unncessarily
• Crafting Sulfur Worm and Vesper Trophies now grants bestiary experience as intended. Same fix for future radiation flyers
• Adding extra validation to fix assert for when fire particles were already set to turn off
• Styx Quest Extermination: Chemical Enhancement now appropriately requires a medicine bench instead of kitchen and herbalism benches
• Fixed a number of typos and text errors across items, dialogue, and quest text
• Adding help tips and some clarification to Icestorm quest so it is more distinguished from Field Test, and some general description cleanup when directing players to the crafting menu
• Removing defunct interact option from the layered plating in Quest Research: Metal Plating
• Structure for the Elysium quest Lost will now cleanup if the server setting is enabled
• Fixed non-varying damage amounts displaying as a range when its not
• Sandwyrm Queen Bestiary points required from 1500 >>> 400. Exotic reward increased from 35-50 >>> 50-75. Biomass Reward Increased from 10-10 >>> 15-25
• Fixed subcategory index/detail view widgets being ignored.
• Standardizing world bosses to require the same amount of bestiary points. This means a reduction in number of kills required to max for the LavaHunter, Alpha Wolf Boss, and Landshark
• Increased Advanced Alteration Bench (T4) durability from 500 to 1500 and removed flammability trait. Increased Alteration Bench (T3) from 500 to 750 to better suit the tiers
• Bestiary progress for Landshark and Black Wolf Boss reverted to live values as they're encountered with higher frequency than other world bosses
• ELY - Masked out AI spawn map in E10, H10 and H11 Tundra lakes in order to prevent creatures spawning on tiny rocks and becoming stuck

Future Content

• Spelunking reversion to Live
• Spelunking rework: new quest steps, nodes for mining, prebuilt hut, quest markers
• Spelunking rework - Fix up some quest descriptions and DNT help tips that were missed
• Spelunking - Adding recently created audio events, retiming weather events
• Spelunking fixing weather event that was doing high amounts of wind damage to the hut, making weather transitions start later in the quest flow and toning them down
• Spelunking re-creation of cavebottom quest marker as it wasn't saving. New landing dialogue to better fit quest
• Spelunking removed undescribed quest step and now tell player to return to hut
• Spelunking storm events modified. No longer calls thunderstorm on leaving cave. Thunderclouds gathering lasts longer, has a bit of visual rain and wind added to it and otherwise feels more foreboding
• Spelunking - tone way down fog treatment in thunderclouds gathering, clean up script for find hut subquest
• Spelunking addition of initial crafting step at quest outset for pickaxe, torch, weapon. Moved pod location slightly away from hut. Moved cave bottom quest marker. Fixed consistency of naming of quest steps and erroneously punctuated DNT tags
• Spelunking - splitting up mining steps so quest list isn't as ginormous at a single point. Cleaning up descriptions, new string for repair failure state
• Spelunking - Fixed location of spawnblocker and made weather event trigger more organically
• Spelunking collect ore quest now appropriately scales with difficulty and amounts match later subquest
• Spelunking thunder subtitle now from unknown source instead of Sol
• Spelunking help tips pass and re-ordering of some quest steps
• Adding storm warning audio and dialogue to match for new mission
• Adding lightning in cave audio, event and quest setup
• Adjustments to timing and volume of lightning and lightning reacts etc for missio
• Further fine tune to timing of surprised dialogue line. More small tweaks to come
• Further refinements to react dialogue timing
• Updates to spelunking dialogue, sharpening up all lines making them feel less laggy and a touch more urgent
• Further refinements to spelunking mission dialogue and text timing
• Face Customization - Data driving face presets D_FacePresets.
• Clamped face preset values to be 0-2. Need to still validate if enums are in valid positions.
• Mouse Shape widget changes to match face preset.
• Added forward declaration to livingitemshotitemdata to fix error.
• Combined 4 semi duplicated functions for each direction into 1 function.
• Face Customization - Fixed helmet not being properly attached to the head
• Updated tattoo material function for character customization
• Face Customization - Added new hair/beard models
• Swapped Customization columns so Head customization is on left, moved headpiece visualization to middle top, and customization no longer needs scrolling.
• Face Customization - Fixed disjointed face and helmet animations
• Made both customize box options the same length on character creation menu, added background to visualize box.
• replaced hair shader parent material from MA_HairSheet to MA_CHA_Hair_Customization for color customization to work
• Face Customization - Added v2 variants to a few helmets that were too tight.
• Face Customization - Corpses now have correct hair when dying e.g. 'helmet on' short hair version. Corpses now stop playing face animations when dead. Added a new column in D_Armour for helmets when the rebreather is on (if applicable).
• Face Customization - Normalized hair names. Shifted positions of bars around in order of importance.
• Face Customization - Fixed visualization checkboxes not reseting on body type change
• Face Customization - Adjusted envirosuit section layout to be less cramped
• Face Customization - Rebreather checkbox - Moved logic to check whether the checkbox should be checked or not from construct to when the visibility becomes true. hopefully fixing cases where the data isnt valid yet and defaulting to unchecked even when player has rebreather on.
• Added Beard Style #09 helmet version so beard doesnt poke through helmet.
• Radboss Bestiary population. Added strengths/weaknesses and stat unlocks (radiation and explosive resistance). Fixed typo in Bestiary Traits for laser weakness
• Irradiated Trophies feature level fixed from none >>> core. Mistake from removing their feature level from GH Ely in previous check-in
• Fixing Rad Flyer's loot so it no longer scales its reward with bone harvesting stats
• Added third person aim animation for the legendary launcher
• Added bone to the flamethrower skeleton for the loader on the legendary launcher. Added rotate anim for the launcher loader bone.
• Launcher - Added new 3rd person ADS animation
• Launcher - Split loader (1 rotate, 1 static) added to living item upgrades and spin anim plays on reload.
• Launcher - Reload animation. Fixed animation end point being reset.
• Launcher - Reload Animation. Fixed idle length being reset on editor reload due to end point being longer than the animation. now uses scale to stretch duration out.
• Updated the legendary launcher upgrade pieces so more of the loaders will be static, reducing obvious anim snapping. Updated the loader spin anim to rotate further
• Fixed texture settings on Radboss bestiary image
• Launcher - Added barrel rotation when shooting.
• Launcher - Fixed shoot anim blending out too slow making transition visible
• Implement workshop data for Larkwell Frag Grenade. Increase stack size to 10. Switch to 'impact' ballistic setup. Unhook Workshop Dropship Beacon from Workshop Repair kits as they have no logical connection to each other and the gadgets category is largely singular unlocks now
• Fixed missing Item.Meta tag on Workshop grenade
• Added SM_DEP_Settlement_Radio_Tower
• Added ITM_Microchip
• Adjusted chimney meshes in the Quarters BP to be the correct configuration, as well as pointed the BP to to correct SM instead of the test mesh. I also updated the Kit textures/materials.
• Added first pass of the Settlement Watch Tower
• Hooking up Microchip Item to Meshable
• Adding Radio Tower Mesh and Setting up Radio Tower Blueproint for Settlements
• Settlement - Fixing NPC Spawn Location for visitors to the settlement and adjusting interaction projection location
• Settlement - Updating Settlement UI so that the settlement widget has and overview, ledger, talents and inventory
• Settlement - Settlement Only items now have a unique item slot colour
• Added item text for microchip currency
• Settlement Buildings can now be upgraded, during this process the old building is deconstructed in place and a new one is contructed over top
• Settlements - Fixing issue where clients could not unlock talents on the server as they where only unlocked client side
• Settlements - Fixing issue where clients could not interact with NPCs
• Settlements - Fixing issue where clients could not building anything other than stockpiles
• Settlements - Fixing issue where clients could not see NPC's in the drop down menus
• Added initial setup for the settler armour materials and textures.
• Added settlement item icons.
• Added the Settlement T1 Kitchen mesh, with all textures and materials, as well as added it to the Settlement Building DT. I also pointed teh Quarters DT entry to the correct mesh, as well as added the watch tower to the DT.
• Adding additional plant elite movement loop events to walk
• Adding turtle attack audio, event and data table setup. ALso adding sol react line to dialogue
• Tropical Bird - Fixed BPs pointing to wrong table rows, added caracass recipe.
• Adding turtle roar audio, event and notify. Duplicating animation to add unique one for turtle BP. Also adding plant emerge additional audio
• Jungle Hunter: Fixed texture groups on assets and deleted SM version of creature. Updated prediction box bounds
• Adding updated turtle roar audio WIP
• Fixed incorrect collision bones on Elite Plant Creature
• Arctic Kangaroo - Initial datatable/blueprint setup.
• Adding turtle aggro event and data table setup
• Fixed Jungle Hunter collision bones and increased health a lot
• Jungle Hunter bones increased to Large to suit its size. Moved Alert component up higher and adjusted prediction box further
• Increased large dino mass and wander min/max distance so that it walks further before pausing. Moved anim assets out of Raptor folder. Added new simplified idle montage without the arm pit sniff
• Adding giant turtle death audio event and data table setup. Setting up new aggro event to fix weird problem where it didnt create properly
• Jungle Monkey - Fixed/tidied up datatable/blueprint setup.
• Plant Creature Ranged (Vinequill) - Added plant creature gameplay tag.
• Plant Creature Spore (Vinespore) - Added plant creature gameplay tag.
• Plant Creature Melee (Vinewhip) - Added plant creature gameplay tag.
• Plant Creature Elite - Added plant creature gameplay tag.
• JungleMonkey: Updated mesh. Fixed FurSplines file name. Added missing EyeSocket to skeleton. Improve SK LODs. Updated Gfur component
• Fixed Storca variant asset folders and filename schemes. Fixed texture group settings
• ARK - Decreased storca jungle spawn weighting, population cap to 2 (6 total with 2 followers each), and increased overall jungle density to 15
• Plant Creature Melee - Fixed scale, added missing sockets and setup animation blueprint
• Plant Creature Spore - Fixed scale, added missing sockets and setup animation blueprint
• Plant Creature Ranged - Fixed scale, added missing sockets and setup animation blueprint
• Adding beetle idle audio, event and aggro event and data table setup
• Adding bettle attack audio, event and data table setup
• Giant Turtle - Fixed Physics Asset being too large and folding in on itself.
• Giant Turtle - Added corpse/bones meshes. Added beginnings of bespoke turtle IK control rig
• Adding beetle death audio, event and data table setup
• Updated the flying tank skeleton with the new bones for the artillary creature
• Removig refereces to tank from beetle
• Adding a touch more weight and dynamic variance to some ground dragon vocal layers
• Giant_Beetle (Ironwing) bestiary setup (grants fall resist and chitin harvest bonus), rewards tuned, trophy created
• Giant Beetle (Ironwing) now aggressive as intended. Fixed an issue with his animations not matching flying state
• Adding jungle hunter attack vocalisation first pass audio, event and DT setup
• Adding jungle hunter roar, footsteps notifys etc
• Giant Turtle - Fixed phsyics asset breaking due to soft constraints.
• Jungle Monkey - Initial anim blueprint setup.
• Ground Dragon: Fixed base stats, increased base speed slightly. Refined physics asset. Created new Turn BS and assigned in AnimBP as existing was using Wyrm with anim references containing screenshake. Disable unused bones and updated transform of EyeSocket at mesh level. Updated preview mesh in related anims to be Ground Dragon mesh. Reset character BP back to base class defaults as there was lots of boss related overrides
• Adding unique events with pitched audio for the axolot more accurate to the size
• Alloy mesh, textures and materials setup
• updated textures for alloy aluminium bronze and ferro titanium
• Added Lead Ingot item icon.
• Blocking Coast Area, Updated Biome Map and Blockout Some foliage on Green Quad
• Blocking Coast Area, Green Quad
• Created dedicated AISpawnMap assets for T022. Updated satellite image in PSD and fixed layer organization
• Inversed lava and volcanic colors on AISpawnMap asset
• doing feedback for cliffs on Ark in blue qaud
• Removed FLODFism component from NOFLOD banyan FTs
• seagull niagara FX for coastal