Update 10: Uncharted Lands Patch Notes

[Portable Grump]

Hello Survivors!

Update 10: Uncharted Lands is now live! This update brings improvements to the new early game experience, a revamped Energy production and distribution system, graphical improvements and much more!

With this update, your version should be 1.10.0.7173 on PC and 1.10.0.99 on Xbox.

Changelog:

General

• Due to various changes in several core systems of the game, any saves made with older versions of the game cannot be continued after updating your game to this version.
• Unity version updated to 2019.4
• The game is now compiled with IL2CPP technology, which will significantly improve loading times and performance on PC, especially on lower end devices. The technology was already in use on Xbox.
• Memory usage reduced with multiple different improvements, should remove most of the crashes on Xbox and on low end PCs.
• Colony Exploration:
  • Game now starts with most of the colony map covered in fog and only a limited area for building.
  • By commanding your specialists to explore the area surrounding your colony you will be able to remove the fog and expand the area where you can place buildings and also discover deposits and wild animals.
  • To help with exploration of the colony a new Specialist Selection Menu has been added to the top of the screen:
    • You can now see all your specialists in a list and select them from this menu.
    • Specialists in another view will be shown as grey (Colony / World Map).
    • If a specialist has low health, it will be clearly indicated with a red glow on their portrait.
    • This menu can be accessed by pressing Y on the controller.
    • Selecting a specialist from the colony or world map will highlight the corresponding specialist from the menu.
    • If you select a Specialist from the menu that is currently in another view, you will be swapped over to that view.
  • Two events have been added to the beginning that advise how to move forward in the game.
• Energy system update:
  • The energy system has received an update so that it now works similarly to the water system.
    • You will now need to have a Transformer building close to any energy consuming buildings in order for them to work.
    • Transformer buildings will have a work area around them and they will provide energy to all the buildings inside this area.
    • Unlike the Water system, you will also need to have either an energy producing building or an energy storage inside the effective area of the transformer for it to function.
      • You can also power this transformer by placing it so that its work area overlaps with another transformer’s work area that has an energy providing building.
      • Transformers with overlapping work areas will create an energy grid that will power all energy consuming buildings within the work areas of these transformers.
    • Energy producing buildings will produce energy for the colony regardless of their location. If the building is not close to a transformer, any energy it produces will be stored in energy storing buildings.
    • All energy storing buildings must be within a work area of a transformer in order for them to work. Any energy storing building outside these work areas will not store or provide any energy to the colony.

Gameplay

• Colonist aging.
  • Colonists will continue aging even after reaching adulthood and they will become elders after a certain amount of time.
  • Age of colonists is shown in the colonist info panel (child/adult/elder).
  • Colonists can now die naturally after reaching old age (becoming elders).
    • When this happens a notification will appear that states “Died of old age”.
  • Elders are included in survivor groups as well.
  • Birth rate has been slightly increased to ensure the colony can keep expanding even with colonists dying of old age.
  • Added notifications for when a colonist is born and when they become elders.
• Contaminated Food.
  • Food has a new parameter that describes their contamination level.
  • Each food type is more or less contaminated, meaning that eating them gives a small dose of pollution to colonists.
    • Only canned and preserved food from the times before the end are pollution free, but they can be only acquired from the world map or through trading.
  • Colonists won’t prioritize clean over polluted food. They must eat what is on hand. Instead they focus on nutrition values to avoid malnutrition.
  • Some food types are much less contaminated and safer to eat. Although producing these food types usually requires more effort. For instance, venison that you can get from wild animals is much more polluted than meat you get from ranch animals.
  • Avoiding pollution is more difficult, so this puts more stress on healthcare as well. Be prepared.
• Colonists should now run away from combat when their health is low.
• Specialist info panel should now show the correct activity of the chosen specialist.
• Pollution will no longer be stored in the Campsite.
• When the Statistics menu is navigated with a controller, the different categories will no longer need to be selected in order to see their contents.
• You can now view the details of different techs from the tech tree simply by hovering over the tech with your mouse or navigating to it with a controller instead of having to select it.
  • The panel showing the information of the tech has also been updated.
  • You can now hover over the effect it causes to see the details or activate the panel with RT or A on the controller.
• Added missing localizations for Milk, Eggs and Pigs.
• Colonists should now be having fun only if they have nothing else to do.
• Fixed issue with events blocking saving and moving forward in the Spanish version of the game.
• Changes to the functions of some of the buttons on the controller:
  • The LB button is now used to access the notifications in the top left corner.
  • The RB button is now used to open the feedback window in the top right corner (the blue cockroach).
  • Y is now used to access the Specialist Selection Menu.
  • The controller layout shown in the Pause Menu and Controls tab of Settings has now been updated to reflect these changes.
• When you hover over a bandit inside your colony, they now show a tooltip as well.
• Adjustments and additions to the tutorials:
  • A new tutorial called Colonist Gathering was added. The information found in this tutorial was previously found in the Adjust Work Area tutorial which was also updated slightly.
  • A tutorial for the new energy system was also added to the game.
• If you move a work area on top of hostile animals you will now see a warning in the work area tooltip in the bottom of the screen.
• Garage now has the option to select which vehicle you want your Specialists to be working on:
  • You can choose any vehicle you have brought into your colony from this selection.
  • The garage will give back fuel not used to be put in storage.
  • If the vehicle is already being repaired, you cannot change it to another vehicle until it has been completely repaired.
• You should no longer receive a Water Shortage notification after inviting the colonists unless you are actually experiencing one.
• Fixed an issue where water balance was showing incorrect values if consumption was higher than production.
  • Issue previously led to situations where buildings would be without water even though the balance on the top bar showed a positive amount of water.
• Saving while your Specialist is performing an action on the World Map is no longer possible.
• The Ranch can now become polluted and pollution affects the animals:
  • Breeding will be slowed down by pollution.
  • If the Ranch becomes too polluted, animals will die from the pollution after some time.
• Fixed an issue where the Ranch worker would stop butchering the animals even after the Ranch was completely full.
• The Ranch UI has also been updated.
  • You can still open the animal selection panel to see the details of each animal however you still cannot change the type of animal in the Ranch until it is completely empty.
  • Emptying the entire Ranch either by butchering or by splitting them will change the selection automatically to None. This should make it easier to ensure you can change the type of animal in the Ranch.
• If a large amount of resources is left on the ground the colonists will no longer carry the entire pile at once but instead carry only as much as they can.
  • This change fixes an issue where a pile of resources could be left on the ground as there were too many units in it to fit into any available storage buildings.
• Malnourished condition is now shown in the colonist Basic Info as well.
• The colonists working at the forester should no longer plant trees inside buildings.
• Dirty condition is now shown in both the colonist’s Basic and Detailed Info.
• Increased the size of the cursor icons on Xbox.
• 10 new events have been added to the game.

Graphics

• Big updates to the visual look of both the colony and the World Map.
  • New terrain rendering system that improves performance and allows dynamic effects to terrain such as pollution.
  • New trees and grass models in the colony
  • Improved performance of water rendering.
  • New fog system in the colony.
  • World map terrain textures, particle effects, lighting, trees and props were remade.
• The option to change the Rendering Resolution Scale has been added to the Graphics tab of the Settings.
  • This can help increase the performance on low end machines.
• Visual look of the Tech Tree has also been updated, more improvements are coming in future updates.

Balance adjustments

• We’ve changed the speed of both hostile animals and bandits.
• Distances between guarding and hitting enemies have also been adjusted.
• Adjustments to water buildings’ requirements:
  • The Water Collector is now cheaper to build and produces more water.
  • The Bore Well costs slightly more to build.
  • The Water Pump produces more water and is cheaper to build.
• Pollution should now spread to buildings at a slightly slower pace.
• Preserved foods now have better nutritional values.

 

[Ps2nic]

Nice job, guys! Keep it up!

 

[matti_ifs]

Sorry about the save incompatibility everyone, but it had to be done in order to put in some of these changes, additions and whatnot.

 

[Burner247]

Once again Iceflake studio comes out with an amazing update. Looking forward to trying out all these new changes.

 

[Balhalla]

Trying the new update, noticed my specialists may not return to the colony. ..

 

[insanebunny]

Events aren't appearing on screen >< unable to complete them

 

[Balhalla]

Sorry about the save incompatibility everyone, but it had to be done in order to put in some of these changes, additions and whatnot.

There is a critical problem with returning the specialists to the colony. The colony does not show up as a place that they can go. You press "return to colony" and the specialist simply cannot. It is a critical function to the game, so I won't play until it is fixed.

 

[jmc003]

A few thoughts from playing the new Update:

* Overall, tasking and road building seems to have improved dramatically. Roads are getting built when they weren't in Update 9, and my Cook House seems to be actually making enough food to begin stockpiling for once. However, upgrading roads to pavement still destroys the original road immediately, which is frustrating.

* The "fog" makes the early specialist era more interesting. It would be nice to have a button to have specialists explore randomly rather than have to be babysat, though, especially once the colony is up and running.

* The new graphics are nice, but they're really really muddy in color and it's hard to tell what's going on. I play on barren lands difficulty, and I have to wait until the sun is up before I can tell what land is arable and what isn't - in the dark, it's impossible to tell the difference between "brown arid", "green-brown not good farmland", "greenish decent farmland" and "dark green good farmland". Likewise, it's very hard to tell what areas are explored and what aren't - the color difference between the two isn't distinct enough.

* The new graphics are nice on the research screen, but the re-write of descriptions now completely hides vital information. If I was a new player I would be incredibly frustrated that, say, the tech advance "Interior Walls" doesn't say anything at all within the text about how the happiness bonus only applies to Tenements - I literally have to click on the happiness bonus in the tech screen to have the "Tenements +20" note appear to get that information, and there's nothing intuitive about that at all.

* The transformer system is neat, but it's completely unclear in the game how it works.
- When you say "overlapping areas", do you mean that I can transfer power from A to B if transformer A has transformer B in its radius, or if transformer A has transformer B's radius in its radius? Clicking on a transformer shows which buildings it is powering, but doesn't show which transformers it is connected to, and there's no "energy overlay" or other map feature to show which buildings are powered and which aren't.

- Transformers barely have the radius to touch a building, let alone go past it. If I do need transformer B in transformer A's radius, you're asking that I string ten to fifteen of them along in order to get power from one side of my colony to another. Given that transformers are 3x3 buildings, that's a lot of space!

- Likewise, placing a new transformer shows which buildings it will power, but only if those buildings have finished construction - if I'm building a new hospital, I can't tell whether the transformer will power it until the hospital is built, which makes building things incredibly inconvenient, because I have to build the building first, and let it sit unpowered and unused until I can figure out where the transformer should go.


I know the above are all complaints, so I want to end this by saying that I do generally like Update 10 and appreciate the direction things are going.

 

[AndrewT]

There is a critical problem with returning the specialists to the colony. The colony does not show up as a place that they can go. You press "return to colony" and the specialist simply cannot. It is a critical function to the game, so I won't play until it is fixed.

Works fine for me. You are playing a new colony? If so might be time for a clean reinstall ...

 

[Balhalla]

New colony. Only bought the game a month ago. Find it hard to believe that I need to uninstall and reinstall to fix that given the game is fresh, but thank you for the suggestion - I will try it. I tried verifying the install, that did not work.

 

[Balhalla]

Uninstall, reinstall. Same problem. So maybe it is another parameter, like a particular map that has the problem. I will try to start a new game, with a new map and see if that fixes it.

 

[Wakamanx]

I played a little bit of the new update. I like the changes.
I am color blind and the main issue for me is that in the area with a lot of tree it is very difficult for me to see the which parts of the maps have fog (unexplored) and which do not. I am just sending my specialists over the same area over and over to make sure I have uncovered everything.
Also, after killing animals it is very difficult for me to see the dead animal amongst the trees.
I there a way we can hold down shift to highlight animals and dead animals? A lot of CRPGs allow you to hold down shift to see selectable objects.

The new world map looks great. I really wish there was a "Walking Dead" like system with raiders. That is raiders having a gang like structure with a gang boss for each gang. Killing weak raiders and scavenging in their territory provokes attacks from that gang. So ultimately it is good to attack raiders but short term you need to be prepared to defend your colony. Once you have weakened that gang a lot then attacks on the gang boss are then possible.

 

[Ironzy]

I dont see anything in the notes about fixing catastrophe crashes but I havent experienced any yet, did they get fixed or not? Good job on the new update its all running smooth with no issues yet, Im on xbox by the way.

 

[Ps2nic]

I played a little bit of the new update. I like the changes.
I am color blind and the main issue for me is that in the area with a lot of tree it is very difficult for me to see the which parts of the maps have fog (unexplored) and which do not. I am just sending my specialists over the same area over and over to make sure I have uncovered everything.
Also, after killing animals it is very difficult for me to see the dead animal amongst the trees.
I there a way we can hold down shift to highlight animals and dead animals? A lot of CRPGs allow you to hold down shift to see selectable objects.

The new world map looks great. I really wish there was a "Walking Dead" like system with raiders. That is raiders having a gang like structure with a gang boss for each gang. Killing weak raiders and scavenging in their territory provokes attacks from that gang. So ultimately it is good to attack raiders but short term you need to be prepared to defend your colony. Once you have weakened that gang a lot then attacks on the gang boss are then possible.

Sort of. Animals that move around, unless its a sandworm, should be alive. Sandworms, of course, pop out of the ground. The dead ones are more or less splayed out on the ground. Also, on PC pressing the L key highlights anything alive except sandworms - but, assuming your colorblindness is total, it has no use for you other than counting animals at deposits. If it is not, that's my mistake, and someone should give the option to change the colors of parts of the UI interface. I think Red Dead Redemption 2 does that.

Personally, I would like the option to move some of the UI elements around, it is a bit cluttered right now.

 

[matti_ifs]

We're tweaking both the fog color and density to make it a bit clearer in various circumstances. And as Ps2nic suggested, L highlights all living entities on the map. You can also move the Work Area of a Food Storage around to find those corpses behind trees etc.

And to Ironzy, our programmers have done a lot of work to find and squash those Xbox crash bugs, but we didn't want to put a definitive "yep, all gone" into patch notes just yet. Glad to hear the game's running more smoothly for you!

 

[Ps2nic]

We're tweaking both the fog color and density to make it a bit clearer in various circumstances. And as Ps2nic suggested, L highlights all living entities on the map. You can also move the Work Area of a Food Storage around to find those corpses behind trees etc.

And to Ironzy, our programmers have done a lot of work to find and squash those Xbox crash bugs, but we didn't want to put a definitive "yep, all gone" into patch notes just yet. Glad to hear the game's running more smoothly for you!

Do you plan to also add an FPS counter? Might help players track dropped frames.

 

[Joanna_ifs]

* The transformer system is neat, but it's completely unclear in the game how it works.
- When you say "overlapping areas", do you mean that I can transfer power from A to B if transformer A has transformer B in its radius, or if transformer A has transformer B's radius in its radius? Clicking on a transformer shows which buildings it is powering, but doesn't show which transformers it is connected to, and there's no "energy overlay" or other map feature to show which buildings are powered and which aren't.

- Transformers barely have the radius to touch a building, let alone go past it. If I do need transformer B in transformer A's radius, you're asking that I string ten to fifteen of them along in order to get power from one side of my colony to another. Given that transformers are 3x3 buildings, that's a lot of space!

- Likewise, placing a new transformer shows which buildings it will power, but only if those buildings have finished construction - if I'm building a new hospital, I can't tell whether the transformer will power it until the hospital is built, which makes building things incredibly inconvenient, because I have to build the building first, and let it sit unpowered and unused until I can figure out where the transformer should go.

Heya!
The transformers A and B just need to be close enough that the radiuses overlap, the transformer A does not need to be within the radius of transformer B. We are working on fixes to this system to make it more clear to use, so all feedback is appreciated and taken into consideration.

 

[Joanna_ifs]

New colony. Only bought the game a month ago. Find it hard to believe that I need to uninstall and reinstall to fix that given the game is fresh, but thank you for the suggestion - I will try it. I tried verifying the install, that did not work.

Hey @Balhalla! If you still have the save where this happened, could you please attach it here so that we can have a look? I have a hunch of what could be the cause but I would need to see the save to be sure.

 

[Jardavious]

I have gotten to about day 120 on one save so far just from playing and I have 3 main suggestions/bugs that have not been mentioned that could improve the game.

1. On the world map occasionally when you open it and click on a specialist, it will not give you the option to move them even with action points, goes for all characters. The only fix I found was to exit world map and interact with specialists in colony and then revert to world map where problem is fixed. I ran into a scary bug where I attacked a bandit camp with a specialist on the world map and proceeded to immediately go back to my colony. Where I then found the game to be not savable because "an action was still in progress". This message covered the save option so I had to revert to an autosave. where problem was fixed.

2. I have talked about the carrying system when it relates to fields (small, medium, etc) before. I want to point out that it is significantly better now with not leaving the produce sitting on the ground, but I have still noticed with a lower number of carriers you will see them despawn or get to really low HP before being picked up. I was thinking that maybe if it goes below a certain hp you could make it so the workers of the farm will transport it themselves to storage. And I think this would work well with all buildings actually. If the product does not get picked up by carriers by the time it reaches like 20% hp then a worker of said building or field will come transport it themselves.

3. So this one relates to the stockpiles and food buildings. I have yet to see anyone talk about this but after a period of time, not sure how long, it will change what it "says" the current area has in it. So like if you put your stockpile over 2 small wooden piles which total like 37 planks or something. If you check back on it later it will either say a lower number even though it has not been harvested at all, or it will say there is nothing in that zone, but when you click move the zone there are still 2 things that are green inside of said zone. The exact same thing happens with the food storage building.

Those are my takeaways. I had one really bad bug so far that does not relate to those.
All of my colonists just froze in place during a pandemic at one point and they just started dying because they could not physically walk to a medical center. My fix was to make a new save right there and load said save and all was fixed. It was a scary scene for a minute.

Other than those critiques, you guys did a wonderful job with the update. I second the fog color change of some sort as well, that is a good suggestion. Thank you guys for listening to your community to improve your game. This is more than any other dev group I have ever seen so props to all of the devs.

 

[Joanna_ifs]

Heya @Jardavious!

Thanks for this feedback!

I can already tell you that we have identified a partial fix for the issue with the WM in 1. The World Map should no longer become stuck even if you swap over quickly and even if it did, the game should now allow you to save if you are in the colony view. I'll look further into the game not allowing you to give actions to them however I believe the same cause might have been the culprit. The fix will be out in the next patch!

Regarding 2. - Really glad to hear you've noticed a difference. Having a low amount of carriers of course can cause situations where resources might be left on the ground for a long time, even to a point where they might decay however we are discussing multiple different options to fix this or at least ensure it wouldn't happen so often. I'll bring your suggestion up to the table as well, but rest assured, we do recognize that there is still an issue with the carrier tasks.

Number 3. is actually a known issue that we have not had the time to fix yet. The tooltip itself will in some cases show the details of a previously selected work area instead of the current one or show up as completely empty, especially if you hover over a building with a work area for a long time. So even while hovering over the Stockpile, it might suddenly start showing you the details of the Food Storage or another Stockpile, all depending on what was chosen previously. In any case, we are still working on this!

There are still some cases where the entire colony will become stuck however saving the game and relaunching it usually sorts it out. If you do experience it again, do me a favor and grab the log from %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Iceflake Studios\Surviving the Aftermath\ and add that and the save file here please (or make a new post, whichever works). The log can really help us identify where the issue occurred that caused them to become stuck.

Again, thanks for all the feedback and most importantly, thanks for playing!