Update 1.184.0 Major - Half Armor Blocks, UI & MP Improvements

Hello, Engineers! This week’s major update brings a huge amount of improvements to the game as well as a couple of new armor blocks. The first thing you will notice when starting up the game is the changes to the main menu user interface. A lot of improvements were made as we focused on enhancing readability and usability of our interface, while removing several inconsistencies and making the screens more visually appealing. We have also added additional tooltips, reorganized the contents of several screens and added a screenshot preview to the “Load Game” menu, to help you find the right save more easily.

With this update, we are also adding 2 new armor block variations, the half block and the half sloped block. Because you wanted it! This will allow you to come up with new, interesting block combinations and give your creations some more style variety. It’s something that we know players have been wanting for some time.

Next up, antennas have been reworked in this release. The window for remotely connecting to grids has been reworked. It now shows all broadcasting grids in range and the icons showing problems work correctly. You can now connect to friendly grids if they are unowned and we fixed exploits which allowed connecting to enemy grids. In multiplayer, antenna range is no longer limited by replication range (which allows antenna signals over 3 km). This affects both the normal and laser antenna and allows remote control over greater distances while at the same time having massively improved performance.

For multiplayer, we have some more general improvements. The positions of characters are now sent relative to the nearest grid. This significantly improves walking around on a grid which is moving and rotating. We also improved what is called island replication which translates in game as there being no more infinite loading wheels and less strain on servers. Character and controlled grid movement is now stopped when the server doesn't hear from the client in some time which should prevent certain deaths caused by lag spikes. Other issues fixed include most inventory desync problems (but we are aware of more) and invisible trees for some clients on servers.

Additionally, we resolved many issues related to grass and the rendering of grass.

Features:

• Antennas refactor makes them functional again on DS
• UI Main Menu redesign
• Light and Heavy Half Armor Blocks / Light and Heavy Half Slope Armor Blocks added
• Grass and Tree changes that fix visual issues like grass rendering in tunnels and invisible trees

MP Improvements:

• Improvements to player positioning in-game being relative to the nearest grid making movement on moving ships
• Changes to the inventory code that mend to most cases where players would have desynchornized inventories (there are still some cases left)
• Character/Grid movement is stopped if the server and client disconnect/lag (in order to avoid deaths due to lag spikes)
• Further improved loading times and island replication which was causing infinite loading

Fixes:

• fixed issue for launching DS server on W10
• fixed rare crash with small grids colliding
• fixed trees not being rendered properly
• fixed invulnerable warheads when not armed
• fixed ownership issue on Lone Survivor starting grid
• fixed unusable control panel on a piston after merging it to a sub-grid
• fixed issue with connectors disabling ship steering while two players are inside the ship
• fixed issue when pasting large grid and sub grids not being pasted as a whole
• fixed rotors in blueprints not saving their displacements
• fixed issue with Enable Broadcast checkbox not being remember by turned off antennas when reloading
• fixed groups in the control panel disappearing after merging two grids
• fixed issue with GPS coordinates not following players backpack after death
• fixed skins de-selecting themselves when quickly swapping skins
• fixed skins for tools not refreshing properly for other players
• fixed issue where when refreshing the UI the search bar had to be updated to be taken into account
• fixed issue with HUD key being applied while typing into the chat
• fixed issue with emissivity when repairing the MedBay
• fixed rifle shooting effects not following the barrel
• fixed sensor missing rear texture
• fixed issue with block icons overlapping unto the toolbar
• fixed Refinery or Solar Panel glitch that would trigger under certain cases
• fixed issue LODs showing wrong emmissives for conveyor tubes

Hotfixes 1.184.005:

• fixed issue with half blocks and mirroring mode
• fixed issue for blacklist/whitelist not working
• fixed issue where Drain All option for Sorter was not working
• fixed emissivity issue for Sorter block
• fixed crash when loading a world with mods
• fixed FPS drop when pasting a blueprint
• fixed crash in MP when placing blocks next to each other inside of a voxel
• fixed missing checkboxes in Advanced settings
• fixed laser antenna permitting players to use remote control on grid despite being out of range

Hotfixes 1.184.006:

• fixed various crashes
• fixed issue when downloading mods

In other news, we will be kicking off a screenshot competition today with a number of different categories. The prizes include complete skin sets of the winner’s choice and there’s a chance that some could be added to the official loading screens. If you're interested, you can find more details about this competition in Mareks blog post.