[Game Update] - 658361

Update Information:

Hi everyone, 

It's time to start public testing for our March 2025 Quality of Life update!

This free minor update contains a variety of bug fixes and quality of life improvements for all versions of the game, including some DLC-specific additions and improvements. 

Highlights: 
We've improved searchability in the build menu and Research screen, as part of our ongoing effort to make it easier to find the buildings and technologies you're looking for. 

Liquids in the world now provide more visual feedback for temperature changes. A baseline level of mild "underwater"-type distortion becomes increasingly conspicuous as the liquid's temperature rises, eventually leading to bubbles that intensify as the boiling point approaches. We've also changed the way that liquids get displaced in the sim, to fix some liquid duplication bugs. If you spot any issues related to this, let us know.

Some of the fixes in this update include: Flydo bugs in The Bionic Booster Pack (including one where Flydo was displaying erratic autopilot behavior upon depleting its power bank supply) and several systems in the game now use fewer memory allocations per frame. 

The Bionic Booster Pack: the Skill screen for Bionic Duplicants now contains an overview of boosters that are available in the world, as well as the ability to assign and unassign them directly from that screen. Bionic Duplicants are now susceptible to diseases. 

If you discover bugs or have any feedback for us, ping us here!

Thank you so much for helping us test these changes! 

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

Changes and Improvements

• All versions
  • Smarter search text matching in the Research screen and build menu. Search inputs including a building’s category, recipes, common name synonyms, and small typos now return more useful results.
  • Updated liquid visual effects including special visuals when approaching boiling points.
  • Updated Solid Crude Oil tile and ore art.
  • Building requirement text and status items now better indicate the skill or booster required to operate them.
  • Database
    • Duplicant and Bionic Duplicant database entries now contain more information about their survival and advancement needs, and links to relevant systems. These are works in progress.
    • The Health entry in Systems now includes information about Sleep requirements. 
    • The Printing Pod database entry now shows the art for the building. 
    • Added building icons to building category database entries.
• Spaced Out! only
  • Worldgen: Minor changes to mining room POI on Superconductive Asteroid. Removed oxygen and changed the material of the doors.
• The Frosty Planet Pack
  • Fixed an issue that was causing Bammoth animations to clash with walls.
• The Bionic Booster Pack
  • Updated bionic boosters Skill screen UI to allow for booster management. 
  • Bionic Duplicants now have the capacity to actually get sick from germ exposure. 
  • Fixed a bug where Bionic Duplicants consuming disease-tainted oxygen canisters were not transferring the disease to their internal oxygen tanks. 
  • The Gunk Extractor now applies germs to Bionic Duplicants after use.
  • The room bonus from the Gunk Extractor now lasts 3 cycles.
  • Added a Diagnostic that signals when an Atomic Power Bank is nearing the end of its lifetime. (Spaced Out!)
  • Building requirement text and status items indicate the bionic booster required to operate them in lieu of skill assignment.

Fixes

• All versions
  • Changed the way liquids are displaced in the sim, preventing liquid duplication in certain situations.
  • Fixed a bug where liquids on special tiles such as airflow tiles were being displayed as if they were floating above them instead of sticking to said tiles.
  • Fixed Biobot, Rovers (Spaced Out!), and Flydos (The Bionic Booster Pack) choosing to idle over lower priority chores.
  • Fixed bug causing the element of worn out Atmo Suits to change to Dirt after being repaired.
  • Performance improvement: Reduced number of memory allocations per frame in various systems of the game.
  • The Power Control Station building no longer describes itself as being a necessary part of a power plant. 
  • Fixed a bug where Duplicants could slip when walking over a mesh tile that had a slippery liquid inside.
  • Fixed Bottle Emptier not emptying milligrams.
  • Fixed an issue with the UI scale on 16:10 monitors causing the UI to appear small even at 200%.
  • Fixed an issue that could happen when launching the game on Macs, when installed on a non-native file system such as FAT32/exFAT.
  • Fixed an issue where an Incubator whose egg had recently been removed would request the egg when loading the save again.
  • When the power circuits are rebuilt (e.g. network is disconnected or reconnected either via construction, destruction or circuit breaker):
    • The current load on all circuits is now set to an invalid value (-1)
    • the wire sidescreen will display this state as "?"
    • the wattage sensor will now not change its automation state until it receives a valid value from the wire it is monitoring.
  • Power icons on the Power overlay for under construction and placement preview are now consistent.
  • Fixed an issue causing critters to recalculate their food target more often than necessary.
  • Fixed the top of the Fish Feeder not visually updating correctly.
  • Fixed Pacu not eating seeds from a newly built Fish Feeder.
  • Fixed Sweepy sometimes not picking up an item when moving.
  • Fixed inconsistent text alignment on suit dock sidescreen buttons
  • Database
    • Fixed missing link on "Buildings->Category".
    • The database entry shortcut icon in the Microchip and Data Bank UIs now correctly links to their respective database entries. 
• Spaced Out! only
  • Fixed potentially spawning partial unit mass when transfer pickupables to debris.
  • Fixed space exposure surrounding a rocket interior not working correctly until save/load.
  • Added Data Analysis Research to the list of research types in Systems/Research, and corrected a typo where Interstellar Research pointed to the Orbital Research Center instead of the Virtual Planetarium. 
  • Fixed an issue causing Duplicants with deadly levels of radiation sickness to repeatedly fall out of their hospital beds.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when trying to deploy a dead Duplicant in a Trailblazer Module.
• The Frosty Planet Pack
  • Fixed Bammoth navigation to prevent them from running into walls.
  • Fixed an issue where Ice Meteor Showers didn't contain meteors if The Frosty Planet Pack was not installed.
• The Bionic Booster Pack
  • Fixed Flydos moving erratically when their power bank was depleted.
  • Fixed Flydos sometimes not being eligible for errands.
  • Fixed a crash related to power banks depleting in a Flydo.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Bionic Duplicants to not use assigned Gunk Extractors if a hospital room existed in the base.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur  when a Bionic Duplicant leaves a rocket interior to land in a Trailblazer Lander.

Supply Closet

• Frosty Planet Pack
  • Added The Frosty Planet Pack-themed cosmetic blueprints for monument parts.

Modding

• A significant refactor of the DLC system was made. Attempts were made to prevent mods from breaking, but some will need to be updated by their creators.
• Deprecated supportedContent in mod_info.yaml, instead use requiredDlcIds and forbiddenDlcIds.
• A large number of methods were marked [Obsolete] with descriptions of what to switch to. Please check your warnings and turn on warnings as errors.
• Added IHasDlcRestriction interface. The intention is for this to be implemented anywhere requiredDlcIds/forbiddenDlcIds are used.
• Specifying DLC requirements for IEntityConfig has changed.
  • Deprecated IEntityConfig.GetDlcIds().
  • DLC restrictions are now optionally specified by implementing IHasDlcRestrictions.
  • Mods implementing GetDlcIds are detected and assumed to be in the old AVAILABLE_<something> format, and loaded correctly.
• IEquipmentConfig implements IHasDlcRestrictions with similar considerations as IEntityConfig.
• IBuildingConfig implements IHasDlcRestrictions.
• ComplexRecipe now supports forbiddenDlcIds too.
• Added IHasDlcRestrictions to a number of other classes.
• Deprecated all SaveLoader DLC methods. Added static methods to Game for checking DLC state of the current save; use this instead.
• Removed support for pre-Spaced Out! mods missing mod_info.yaml. The mod_info.yaml file has been required in order to upload a mod since 2021 and the majority of affected mods no longer work.
• Mod screen:
  • Added tooltip explaining why a mod can't be loaded to the mods screen.
  • Added tooltip to mods on the mods screen to display their description defined in mod.yaml.
• Changed codex yaml DLC checks to requiredDlcIds and forbiddenDlcIds (previously it was dlcIds and forbiddenDLCIds).
• FileSystem ignores filenames starting with "._" (AppleDouble format)
   

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: