[Game Update] - Public Testing 565965

[JarrettM]

Hi everyone!

It's time to start public testing for our Song of the Moo update!

Both the base game and Spaced Out! DLC are getting big improvements to the Gassy Moo's utility for this update, as well as new elements, buildings, cosmetic skins and food recipes.

The Gassy Moo now has the ability to summon new Gassy Moos to the asteroid, once they've consumed enough Gas Grass. They also produce a new liquid element called Brackene, which can be extracted at the new Milking Station building. Colonies that don't have Gassy Moos can produce Brackene using the new Plant Pulverizer.

Duplicants can drink Brackene at the Water Cooler, while critters get it from the new Critter Fountain. In both cases, it's a mood booster.

Brackene can be converted into Brackwax (solid) at the new Brackwax Gleaner and applied to Transit Tubes—or to Dupes themselves—to speed up tube travel. Brackwax can also be used to make Plastium (solid), a new plastic-like material with much higher heat resistance. 

We've also added a new Bleach Stone Hopper that converts Salt and Gold into Bleach Stone, reworked all of the Critter Traps, made Raw Egg edible, added two new egg-based recipes, added subcategories to the Supply Closet, and more.

Thank you for helping us with the testing process! Please share your feedback here and report bugs here. We read it all! 

 

Here’s what you’ll find in the update so far: 

Features

• All versions
  • Gassy Moos can now call friends from space when well fed.
  • Added new elements Brackene, Frozen Brackene, Brackwax, Plastium.
  • Added Milking Station building.
  • Added Brackwax Gleaner building
  • Added Bleach Stone Hopper building
  • Added Plant Pulverizer building
  • Added Critter Fountain building
  • Added recipe for Soufflé Pancakes to Electric Grill.
  • Added recipe for Mushroom Quiche to Gas Range.
  • Added recipe for Plastium to the Molecular Forge.

Changes and Improvements

• All versions
  • Traps
    • Newly constructed Critter Traps, Fish Traps, and Airborne Critter Traps are now rearmable and have new artwork.
    • Existing traps in saves have been deprecated but still function.
    • Critter Trap can now also catch Pacus flopping on the ground.
    • Critter Trap is now 2 tiles tall.
    • Traps are now built from raw metal instead of plastic.
  • Gas Grass 
    • No longer requires an atmosphere to grow.
    • Now requires 10,000 lux to grow, instead of 20,000 lux. 
    • Gas Grass now wilts instead of sleeps when its illumination requirement isn’t met.
    • Gas Grass now requires 25 kg dirt per cycle in addition to its liquid chlorine requirement.
  • Gassy Moos
    • Will call a new Gassy Moo to join them on the asteroid when they reach 100% “Accu-moo-lation.”
    • Produce Brackene when fed.
  • Improved the responsiveness of critters being called for grooming. 
  • Improved the responsiveness of critters to all tasks by increasing the frequency of brain updates.
  • Flying critters now avoid idling on space exposed locations that are significantly elevated above the asteroid’s surface.
  • Raw Egg is now edible.
  • Egg Cracker building now has an input logic port to disable the building
  • The overcrowded effect on critter happiness now scales with the number of excess critters in the space.
  • Water Coolers can be configured to dispense Brackene instead of plain water, providing an additional +2 Morale boost and -15%/cycle stress reduction effect.
  • Transit Tube Access can now be configured to use Brackwax to boost Duplicant travel speed in tubes.
  • Puftlet Prince now affects egg chances of other critters in the same room in the same way the adult Puft Prince already did.
  • Increased the length of the Ate From Feeder effect to 2 cycles to improve the rate at which Pacu are tamed when fed seeds. 
  • Logic Bridges and Logic Gates can overlap where there are no overlapping ports.
  • The lesser morale "Park" effect no longer stomps the "Nature Reserve" effect when a Duplicant passes through a Park.
  • Meteors
    • Added Meteor Shower diagnostic for active bombardment.
    • Meteors are now spawned higher above the buildable area, which allows meteor blasters to target them earlier. 
    • It is now possible to configure the types of meteors that the Meteor Blaster targets.
    • Improved meteor shower sound mixing.
    • Meteors destroyed by Blast Shots now return 25% of the resources they would have dropped on collision with a tile.
  • Supply Closet
    • Default clothing and atmosuit outfit items now have icons representing what they will look like.
    • Default outfits for Duplicants should now show a mannequin wearing that outfit in the Wardrobe screen.
    • Adjusted Supply Closet item categorization for better organization.
    • Improved UI feedback in the item drop screen when the app is having difficulty communicating with the item server.
• Base game only
  • Added turning sounds to the Telescope animation.
  • Organic Mass space destination now yields more Gas Grass and Gassy Moos.
• Spaced Out! only
  • Added Mellow Mallow and Bliss Burst to care packages.
  • Adjusted Telescope animation.
  • Added turning sounds to both Telescopes.
  • Added Grubfruit Plant Seed care package.
  • Care packages for seeds, food, critters, and eggs which require you to first discover them are now available after cycle 500.

Fixes

• All versions
  • Improved Conduction Panel heat transfer algorithm for stronger and more consistent conductivity
  • When a Space Scanner detects an object or meteor shower in advance, it will stay green until the object has arrived or the meteor shower ends.
  • Fixed issue causing Space Scanners to briefly output the wrong automation signal when a save is loaded.
  • Critter animations no longer freeze after eating or pooping.
  • Plant illumination requirement no longer fails if it's an exact lux match.
  • Added option to forbid mutant seeds on the Spice Grinder.
  • Fixed a bug where the Pitcher Pump straw visual was left behind in place when moving the cursor while trying to place it.
  • Fixed diagnostics tooltips sometimes missing information.
  • Fixed Super Focused icon layering issue.
  • Fixed outfit item tooltips sometimes incorrectly saying "My colony doesn't have any of these yet."
  • Fixed door on the Telescope shifting over in the rotation animation.
  • Fixed missing Duplicant mouths in ladder and Firepole sleeping animations.
  • Fixed missing Duplicant mouth in Atmosuit Dock’s equip suit animation.
  • Skill Scrubber animation handles Duplicants wearing suits better, so they don’t stick out when being scrubbed.
  • Fixed missing hair when a Duplicant is triggering a Banshee Wail stress response.
  • Fixed a hair issue when a Duplicant wearing a hat wakes up while sleeping on the floor.
  • Fixed an issue where food could briefly appear on a Duplicant's back after they finished eating.
  • Fixed issues with the Ancient Specimen story trait popups.
  • Fixed issue where Duplicants working the Fossil Quarry were missing some parts of the chisel.
  • Added art for 2 hats that had missing upward angled hat view.
  • A Duplicant using the Virtual Planetarium now displays their name label in the correct location.
  • Fixed a crash on startup that can happen if a custom outfit is made with the same name as a predefined outfit.
• Base game only
  • Critters now stay wrangled when leaving the Biological Cargo Bay.
• Spaced Out! only
  • Fixed issue causing radiation intensity to increase after being blocked by radiation shielding materials
  • Fixed crash that could occur when a Rover attempted to rescue incapacitated Duplicants or Sweepys.
  • Fixed planter sidescreen button sometimes being grayed out erroneously .
  • Fixed an issue where a Duplicant’s eyes disappeared while using the Telescope.
  • Buckets of Conveyor Rails are no longer sometimes visible in the red zone above the buildable area.
  • Supply Teleporter Input can no longer be damaged by meteors like the other teleporters.
  • Fixed issue causing Duplicant name labels to occasionally appear across the boundaries of an asteroid or rocket interior.
  • Fixed rare crash when an interplanetary payload gets into a bad state when saving the game.
     

What is public testing?

"Public testing" means players get to test-drive new content early and give us feedback and suggestions before it goes live. Because this is an unfinished and in active development version of the game, it's pretty likely you'll encounter bugs, crashes or balance issues while playing these builds. We'll try to fix any problems that crop up as quickly as we can, but it's possible you'll lose progress in your games while playing on the Testing branch.

Regarding performance, the Testing branch has additional debugging tools enabled to help us track down crashes. This makes the game run more slowly than the live version of the game.

Please also be aware that once a save is loaded in the Testing branch, it cannot be reopened again in the previous Live branch or previous builds.

What do I do if I find a crash or a bug?

Post it up on the Bug Tracker and we'll fix it as soon as we can. If you can attach a copy of your save file to your report, that helps us even more as we can pinpoint the source of problem more quickly.

Do I have to play the public testing build?

Nope! If you'd prefer to only play a stable build, you can continue to play in the current Default branch until the game launches in full. Playing the Open Testing build isn't necessary, but it helps us a lot to receive your feedback and reports - if you're interested, try it out!

How do I become a public tester?

There's no sign up or registration for becoming an open tester. If you own Oxygen Not Included and want to join the Testing Branch, all you have to do is play the Open Testing build on Steam.

How do I play the public testing build?

You can switch your branch on Steam using the instructions below:

Spoiler

How to change branches in Oxygen Not Included (Steam)

• In Steam, click on Library > Games.
• Scroll down to Oxygen Not Included.
• Right-click and select Properties.
• Go to the BETAS tab.
• In the dropdown, select the name of the branch you want to play. In this case, the branch name is "public_testing"
  • This branch does not require a password.
• In that same Properties window, go to the Local Files tab and press "Verify Integrity Of Game Cache."
• Your game will be updated to the the previous branch.
• Launch and play Oxygen Not Included

View full update

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

Oh my, you guys took my egg recipes suggestion and put it immediately into the next update? Klei devs are champs!

Will the Gasy Moo summoning also work for existing colonies?

[Maxposting]

Wooo!!!

[Knurek]

33 minutes ago, JarrettM said:

Added Mellow Mallow and Bliss Burst to care packages.

Lovely, thank you! 

No fix to invisible stickers yet?

Edited July 20, 2023 by Knurek

[JRup]

If only autosweepers could target those hard to reach places...

[goboking]

1 hour ago, JarrettM said:

• Egg Cracker building now has an input logic port to disable the building

Now seems an appropriate time to again request a Tame Only checkbox for egg crackers and incubators

[pether]

1 hour ago, JarrettM said:

Added Milking Station building.

YES! You did it!! Thanks!

1 hour ago, JarrettM said:

Added Critter Fountain building

Cool idea, I hope for more critter life enrichement buildings!

 

1 hour ago, JarrettM said:

• Added recipe for Soufflé Pancakes to Electric Grill.
• Added recipe for Mushroom Quiche to Gas Range.

Great, raw eggs really needed those.

Since we are improving food options, could you please revisit Curry Beans? This food looks really poor when compared with other options, and is terrible, just TERRIBLE to get... Some morale and quality boost to +6 would make it much better!

1 hour ago, JarrettM said:

Newly constructed Critter Traps, Fish Traps, and Airborne Critter Traps are now rearmable and have new artwork.

Nice QoL. Also - I love how airborne critter traps make for great lamps when they capture Shine Bugs:

Edited July 20, 2023 by pether

[Tzunki]

1 hour ago, JarrettM said:

 

• • Added new elements Brackene, Frozen Brackene, Brackwax, Plastium.

 

Oh no. Just started a new colony. I guess I need to start a new one to test all the new elements or am I wrong there?

[pether]

2 minutes ago, Tzunki said:

I guess I need to start a new one to test all the new elements or am I wrong there?

You should be fine in your old save. If it was supposed to spawn during worldgen you wouldn't get it there, but since you can generate those elements there should be no issue

[TrillionDeTurtl]

This update is the kind of stuff this game needs at the moment, new interesting concepts and development on existing, half-baked features. Maybe we need an update on the somnium synthesizer, it's a bit broken atm needing a restart before turning on when it runs out of oxygen.

What I want to see added to this update:

    -Gas grass should definitely be used in the plant pulverizer in order to make Brackene, it's current use is unknown and would possibly encourage the farming of it        purely to create this new liquid. While it may reduce the need for gassy moos to produce the substance, it fits with the current theme of allowing plants to be converted and as they use liquid chlorine as fertilizer, and are then eaten by gassy moos, it stands to reason that they must contain something Bracken... ish.

[Zarquan]

I barely ever used gassy moos before, perhaps I should try them again with the patch.  I'm glad you are reworking them!

Since you are doing things with critters, would it be possible we get some critter AI simplification on critter dumps?  I like having all my excess slicksters hang out on a one tile "ranch," but the lag becomes brutal when there are hundreds or over a thousand slicksters.  I'm thinking a building critters can jump in to that make their AI vanish, but have all the same average resource conversion effects.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Zarquan

[goboking]

1 hour ago, pether said:

Since we are improving food options, could you please revisit Curry Beans? This food looks really poor when compared with other options, and is terrible, just TERRIBLE to get... Some morale and quality boost to +6 would make it much better!

 

I intend to roll with a different end-game food for each of my colonies for the experience of farming and ranching everything the game has to offer, with curried beans being the sole exception.  Delecta voles look like a logistical nightmare to ranch at any scale.

[Primalflower]

THE GASSY MOO UPDATE

[imazined]

1 hour ago, goboking said:

Now seems an appropriate time to again request a Tame Only checkbox for egg crackers and incubators

And critter drop offs. Also "wild" as option would be nice too.

[pether]

22 minutes ago, goboking said:

I intend to roll with a different end-game food for each of my colonies for the experience of farming and ranching everything the game has to offer, with curried beans being the sole exception.  Delecta voles look like a logistical nightmare to ranch at any scale.

Yeah, they are... I tried it once, never again without buffs... I had to make steel infrastructure on entire surface to feed one vole and get one Curry Bean every 4 cycles... Also, keeping food and voles in perfect temperature was so tedious...

Somebody suggested wild ranching might be more efficient, I might have get up to one Curry Bean every cycle or so, but it's still not worth the trouble

[JRup]

1 hour ago, Tzunki said:

Oh no. Just started a new colony. I guess I need to start a new one to test all the new elements or am I wrong there?

If you hop on to the testing branch then you get all the new goodies a.s.a.p. You'll otherwise have to wait until it's officially out and about like with any other test.

[Duck986]

[blakemw]

That's a lot to process.

I find the critter happiness things particularly intriguing. Brackene on a critter gives +5 Happiness 'hydrated' bonus, just like bring groomed, overcrowded penalty is now 4 + number of excess critters, so it starts at -5 just like before if there is 1 excess critter.

Basically Brackene can be a substitute for grooming in a normal sized, normal populated breeder ranch. It also allows packing in 5 extra critters into any size of ranch, so like a ranch that would only house 1 Puft, can instead house 6 Pufts if they are groomed+hydrated. I'm not sure how useful that would be relative to ungroomed ranches but there are probably some micro-bases or something where it could be useful.

I hope to see some more changes to the critter system, like I'd love to see Drecko coat growth influenced by more factors rather than just tame or not and atmosphere.

 

[thomas-sch]

Which room would the Milking Station building be related to? Or could we have a specific room for Gassy Moo, because of the size?

[blakemw]

Further investigations into mechanisms of Brackene.

 

The Plant Pulverizer has three recipes, for convenience I include how much time it takes to grow the ingredients.

2 Nosh Beans + 18 kg water  (3.5 cycles of growth = 70 kg of ethanol)

10 Sleet Wheat + 15 kg of water (10 cycles of growth = 200 kg of water)

3 kg Pincha Peppernuts + 17 kg of water (6 cycles of growth = 210 kg of pwater)

All three recipes produce 20 kg of Brackene

 

On a production per plant basis, Nosh Beans are by far the best, followed by Peppernuts, followed by Sleet Wheat. On a resource basis, Nosh beans are by far cheapest (ethanol can be reckoned as half as costly in terms of water, though you do need 1 arbor tree per 8 Nosh Sprouts  to do the conversion), followed by Sleet Wheat, closely followed by Peppernuts.

Anyway, clearly the idea seems to be making it something Nosh is best for if you want to go nuts with Brackene, but you can also dump surplus sleet wheat or peppernuts into it.

Next: how much do critters consume? Well at the moment the fountain seems to be glitched and no Brackene is actually consumed from its stores. But presumably this will be quickly fixed.

What critters consume Brackene? So far all groomable critters except Pokeshells and their morphs.

It would be interesting to balance, as to a large extent it is substituting ranching actions, for growing food and operating the plant pulverizer actions.

[pether]

Since this update touches food a little, can we request QoL feature to grill more types of food using surrounding heat? At this moment we can only do omlets from eggs, but I can see this mechanics being applied to more of them: BBQ, Cooked Seafood, Fried Mushroom, Gristle Berry, Mush Fry, Roasted Grub Fruit - they look perfect to make in the heat of the environment and ONI always rewarded players to do things using game phisics rather than in the building.

On another note - can we have Dev Light Source? Something like Dev Power Generator or Dev Radiation source, but for light. It would make testing Grass in sandbox much easier

Btw - lore question? What is this pattern on milk item? Some Moo Morph teaser?

Spoiler

Edited July 21, 2023 by pether

[Sasza22]

Wow.

That`s a lot of suggestions from the forums getting in. I like it.

[Nova Starlight]

On 7/21/2023 at 2:13 AM, JarrettM said:

Improved Conduction Panel heat transfer algorithm for stronger and more consistent conductivity

Wow. Klei team really does read the forums. I literally just finished designing my exploit-based sour gas boiler. Oh well, I didn't build it in survival.

Since this is 'the' criiter update, may I request:

- An Eject port on the Incubator.

- Autosweeper picking up critter.

EDIT: Formula for new conduction panel appears to be: TempDelta*ThermalConductivityArithmeticAverage*50 for a packet of liquid.

EDIT 2: Confirmation bias got me. The formula actually makes no sense and delete/create heat.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Nova Starlight

[Charletrom]

This is so awesome. Thank you Klei!!

[melquiades]

21 hours ago, JarrettM said:

 

I laughed so hard at this.

Thank you.