Dev Log #50: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.2.2

[Styg]

Hi guys, soon we'll be ready to release a new update for the game. For those who wish to help us test it, we've set up "Experimental" branches on Steam and GOG Galaxy.



To play experimental branch on Steam, you right click the game in your library and go to "Betas" tab. To do so on GOG, you select the game and choose More->Settings. Make sure you don't override all your live version saves just in case something goes horribly wrong.

Here are the patch notes:

Feats

• AP reduction from Gunslinger feat will now properly affect only firearms
• Added feats: Bowyer (crossbow crafting)
• Ripper feat will now properly work with serrated knives

Visuals

• Added a new visual model for siphoner, ancient rathound, and super steel armor
• Telekinetic proxies and electrokinetic imprints will now be visible behind walls

Interface

• Added tooltips for empty gear slots
• Forcing the vent with crowbar will now be done through Quick Invoker (once the crowbar is equipped, you'll get the ability there)
• Changed the "Focused" tooltip to be gender neutral (tested for all 99 genders)

Mechanics

• Cats nerfed
• Dreadnoughts buffed
• When a character that has nightvision turned on gets flashbanged, they will also be dazed for 5 turns
• Some of the merchants now have additional mercantile checks which (if passed) will expand that merchant's store inventory

Items

• Borer Gizzard renamed to Metaworm Gizzard and is now also dropped by Latchers
• Most special bullets now also require TNT to craft
• Added blueprints for standard, W2C and JHP bullets
• Mechanical bolt blueprint renamed to Serrated bolt blueprint
• EMP mine case now counts as electronic component
• Added a couple more instances of Black Eye, Loaded Dice, Train Driver Manual and Train Log oddities
• Increased the drop chance of Quad Damage Module oddity
• Changed the Electronic Idol oddity to provide 3 xp for a max of 1 study as it should have been

Bug fixes

• Generated metal armors enhancements will have quality other than 1 now
• Quick load will now work during enemy's turn
• Closing interface help window by right clicking will no longer disable keyboard commands
• Fixed the dialog window option highlighting when there's 10 or more dialog options
• Fixed the cut-off tooltips on smaller resolutions with small font size (on most tooltips; there still might be some that just have too many lines)
• Fixed the bug that caused caltrops to drain action points immediately instead of movement points first
• Fixed the minor glitches with trap detection calculations
• Crawlers and Faceless Gaunts will no longer land on occupied tiles when escaping from sight
• Telekinetic Proxy now properly removes Premeditation when it makes use of it
• Fixed the bug that caused Dreadnought to keep moving if you attempted to dismount during movement
• Fixed the bug that caused the player to receive experience when an NPC was killed by a doppelganger that someone else created
• Expose Weakness will now properly count as a melee attack (it will be affected by Uncanny dodge for example)
• Pyrokinetic Stream and Pyrokinesis should now always properly invoke "heating effect"
• Heating effects should now properly remove Cryo-shield
• Cooling effects should now properly remove Exothermic aura

Quests/Maps

• Fixed a certain zoner appearing later in the game in some cases even if Rista's quest concerning him hasn't been completed
• Fixed positioning problems during the cutscene in which you lead Edgar to RK's lair that might occur when the player has increased his movement speed beyond a certain point
• Fixed the missing train quest bandits not becoming hostile if the player fails a certain skill check
• Fixed killing the old man in GMS crashing the game after the situation has been dealt with
• Fixed a bug which caused a transition error when entering the zone where Duff is supposed to spawn
• Fixed being able to give a certain man a certain helmet more than once and receive more than one reward
• Fixed a few unreachable dialog branches (Old Jonas, Leo and one notable heavily armored commander)
• Fixed some late game Tchortists not recognizing that you are wearing a certain type of robe
• Fixed a dialog bug which prevented the players from telling the Rejects how to escape
• Fixed some items disappearing from Fraser's store inventory after certain events take place
• Fixed a few bugs with the end game slides
• Fixed issues with one of the tunnelers in DC after it has been despawned
• Fixed being able to kill the Gauntlet runners before the event without anyone caring
• It is no longer possible to pay 1 charon to Silas for Grover's debt instead of 100 charons
• Arke cameras and turrets will now properly go offline after being shut down at the main console
• Edgar's quests will now properly fail if you kill him
• The player will no longer be able to start a civil war in Core City by fighting with the burglar in the house opposite to the Praetorian Security headquarters
• Added another option to acquire ICPD from Duff, plus some more flavor if you handle the situation in a certain way
• Added another way to capture hoppers for Bret
• Added another way to obtain Elwood's keycard
• Did some tweaks to the main quest in Foundry, added more dialog options and removed some of the backtracking; also, the miners will now return to the mine at the end of the quest
• Gaining access to Foundry prison security room will also remove protection from the security console there; added another hacking option as well
• Changed so that failing to intimidate Rubin will no longer make him not want to speak to you anymore
• Hathorians will occupy the area north of the camp after it has been cleared
• SGS soldiers and workers will now occupy the outposts after the player has cleared them
• A certain faction in DC will now be handing out better ammo than previously
• Fixed a faulty transition in one of the zones beneath the Mushroom Forest
• Fixed GMS jammed ventilation shaft being incorrectly positioned; also made some minor changes to the vent layout to accommodate this
• The usual minor stuff (map/dialog/quest tweaks and fixes)

Report any bugs you find on the forums and make sure you specify which version you're playing.

Enjoy and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone!

 

[Infinitron]

Styg, can you make it so it's possible to click the title of a post on your devlog to access a page that contains only that post? The way most blogs work.

For example, the link to the current post is this: http://www.underrail.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=165:experimental-branch-with-version-1022&catid=43:dev-log&Itemid=61

But there's no way that I can see to reach that except from the RSS feed.

 

[Styg]

Styg, can you make it so it's possible to click the title of a post on your devlog to access a page that contains only that post? The way most blogs work.

For example, the link to the current post is this: http://www.underrail.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=165:experimental-branch-with-version-1022&catid=43:dev-log&Itemid=61

But there's no way that I can see to reach that except from the RSS feed.

Done.

 

[Infinitron]

Cool. Keep the bold font though IMO, it looks better that way.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

Wonderful Christmas present. Thank you!

 

[Black Angel]

Niceu, niceu!

But

Interface

• Changed the "Focused" tooltip to be gender neutral (tested for all 99 genders)

Mechanics

• Cats nerfed
• Dreadnoughts buffed

Wait wat

 

[Anthedon]

Very good.

How is Expedition coming along?

 

[Mac_Orion]

How is Expedition coming along?

good good, more info will come out later, we took some days off to refresh. We have some nice stuff for you guys and gals ready and are eager to share the info with you

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Ljubi majka

 

[HoboForEternity]

How is Expedition coming along?

good good, more info will come out later, we took some days off to refresh. We have some nice stuff for you guys and gals ready and are eager to share the info with you

 

[D!!]

Still no news on Linux support and moving on from XNA to another framework or at least FNA? Maybe with upcoming expansion? Game runs great with Wine 2.0-rc3 for now, but official support would be nice. I will buy another copy or two without a doubt, if it will happen. Hope next projects from studio will be cross-platform from the beginning.

 

[Twiglard]

Works fine. I liked the old non-antialiased font for dialogues. The new one looks like shit in small size. Why replace it at all to begin with?

D!! you suck. Underrail works perfectly fine with Wine.

 

[D!!]

Works fine. I liked the old non-antialiased font for dialogues. The new one looks like shit in small size. Why replace it at all to begin with?

D!! you suck. Underrail works perfectly fine with Wine.

And what if it will break with add-on? Official support is official support. Also I have Steam Controller and Steam Link and it's just too inconvenient to play games with Wine on my TV. Certainly possible, but is not out-of-the-box experience.

 

[Twiglard]

There's a bug in the options menu. Adjust dialog background alpha on the interface tab. It's gonna be set to that value, but opening the options screen again has the dialog background at the default value.

 

[Twiglard]

And what if it will break with add-on? Official support is official support.

If it breaks -- which is extremely unlikely given code paths exercised, we'll just hack Wine till it works again. You'll run a patched Wine build for a week or two. I had the opportunity to work on a Wine subsystem. This is a mature, maintainable codebase.

Underrail doesn't seem to use many win32 APIs. After all XNA takes care of a lot of work. Also with native binary dotnet 3.5 mono isn't a problem.

--

Of course no one can "officially" support an arbitrary Linux desktop OS. GPU drivers are the obvious thing. Then you have a large range of library versions depending upon one another. Some of them have drop-in replacements. Then you have DRI2, DRI3, and various ways the kernel interface evolved over the years when libGL interfaces to it. I don't doubt Mesa has its own share of regressions when it comes to DRI API. And I forgot fucking window compositing.

TL;DR someone will man the fuck up and fix it in days.

--

My open-source project works on Linux. And Linux desktop weenies are the worst pieces of work that ever send messages on the project. There's no Ubuntu binary package cause no one made it. Fuck off and die.

Also I have Steam Controller and Steam Link and it's just too inconvenient to play games with Wine on my TV. Certainly possible, but is not out-of-the-box experience.

Ouch. Multi-display support. Xinerama used to be a major bitch. Is it near as bad lately?

 

[D!!]

Ouch. Multi-display support. Xinerama used to be a major bitch. Is it near as bad lately?

What are you talking about? Steam Link just streams my desktop with Steam in Big Picture mode to my TV. Xinerama allows you to use multiple physical displays as one virtual display. It is completely another thing.
My problem is that I need some additional manipulations to get Underrail working with that thing when the main point of Steam Link is console-like experience — plug and play. With Steam Controller games like Underrail are perfectly playable, because touchpads can emulate mouse and combat is turn-based.
http://www.steamcontrollerdb.com/config/underrail/ixaxsyss-underrail-bindings/4730

 

[Twiglard]

Another few bugs:

- during my first visit to the gun store in Junkyard of all places, I got this awesome armor. Look at the damage threshold. Because of that I haven't even needed to use metal or put points in tailoring.

- I can't find goggle frames or other goggle equipment as of Rail Crossing. I've been to Core City a time or two. Buster's shop also. I found exactly one goggle frame.

- Turning off vsync doesn't increase the framerate past 60, but having it on with right-click-scrolling makes it behave weird.

- To drag an item from inventory, the initial movement after holding it with LMB must be very slow. If it's any faster, the item won't be dragged at all.

What are you talking about? Steam Link just streams my desktop with Steam in Big Picture mode to my TV. Xinerama allows you to use multiple physical displays as one virtual display. It is completely another thing.
My problem is that I need some additional manipulations to get Underrail working with that thing when the main point of Steam Link is console-like experience — plug and play. With Steam Controller games like Underrail are perfectly playable, because touchpads can emulate mouse and combat is turn-based.
http://www.steamcontrollerdb.com/config/underrail/ixaxsyss-underrail-bindings/4730

But this is precisely the community spirit that guides Linux and BSD systems! Suddenly a random unknown developer decides to fix a gripe with incompatible software. That you need to take additional steps is obvious basing on that. See how extensive modifications needed to be made to Linux version of Alpha Centauri in order to get it running at all. Or Starcraft 1 battle.net screens. Or how the open-source GPU drivers are in the process of fixing themselves for the Deus Ex MD Linux version. Or how Direct3D 9 is mostly correctly supported already natively, without any translations to OpenGL.

If you think that Unix is set in stone and will Just Work, you're wrong from the start. I can run Windows Server 2003 on a VM after all these years. Linux never had that kind of patch triaging policy. It took several months for MSFT to fix a simple compiler bug. Twice. With Unix software you'd get a patch into git within few days tops. That was my actual experience.

 

[MediantSamuel]

I think the armour is just a lucky break, Twiglard. I don't think that counts as a bug. Likewise with the goggle frames. Vendors just have different stock and quite often, one can be very unlucky.

 

[toro]

Another few bugs:

- during my first visit to the gun store in Junkyard of all places, I got this awesome armor. Look at the damage threshold. Because of that I haven't even needed to use metal or put points in tailoring.

Depending on your build that armor can be completely useless.

Armor penalty
Armor penalty is an important property of all armors. It reduces your Dodge, Evasion, Stealth skills and Movement Points by a percentage. The heavier the armor is, the more armor penalty it has. Total armor penalty is capped at 95%. Armor penalty does not reduce movement points provided by temporary bonuses, such as Sprint.

 

[Sykar]

Another few bugs:

- during my first visit to the gun store in Junkyard of all places, I got this awesome armor. Look at the damage threshold. Because of that I haven't even needed to use metal or put points in tailoring.

- I can't find goggle frames or other goggle equipment as of Rail Crossing. I've been to Core City a time or two. Buster's shop also. I found exactly one goggle frame.

- Turning off vsync doesn't increase the framerate past 60, but having it on with right-click-scrolling makes it behave weird.

- To drag an item from inventory, the initial movement after holding it with LMB must be very slow. If it's any faster, the item won't be dragged at all.

What are you talking about? Steam Link just streams my desktop with Steam in Big Picture mode to my TV. Xinerama allows you to use multiple physical displays as one virtual display. It is completely another thing.
My problem is that I need some additional manipulations to get Underrail working with that thing when the main point of Steam Link is console-like experience — plug and play. With Steam Controller games like Underrail are perfectly playable, because touchpads can emulate mouse and combat is turn-based.
http://www.steamcontrollerdb.com/config/underrail/ixaxsyss-underrail-bindings/4730

But this is precisely the community spirit that guides Linux and BSD systems! Suddenly a random unknown developer decides to fix a gripe with incompatible software. That you need to take additional steps is obvious basing on that. See how extensive modifications needed to be made to Linux version of Alpha Centauri in order to get it running at all. Or Starcraft 1 battle.net screens. Or how the open-source GPU drivers are in the process of fixing themselves for the Deus Ex MD Linux version. Or how Direct3D 9 is mostly correctly supported already natively, without any translations to OpenGL.

If you think that Unix is set in stone and will Just Work, you're wrong from the start. I can run Windows Server 2003 on a VM after all these years. Linux never had that kind of patch triaging policy. It took several months for MSFT to fix a simple compiler bug. Twice. With Unix software you'd get a patch into git within few days tops. That was my actual experience.

That armor is crap for any stealth build and builds with high Dodge/evasion. For most melee characters you would still get more damage reduction out of metal armors.

 

[D!!]

Hope this update will not break my first ongoing playthrough. I'm done with Rail Crossing and Hathor Camp and on my way to Foundry and Core City. This game is just phenomenal.

 

[Twiglard]

Something happened and the dialog font got better at small size. If only it was more wide like Verdana, not Helvetica or Tahoma. It's good regardless.

Strange though, resolution list has wrong aspect ratios listed. Maybe its confusion prevents drawing the fucked-up font.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

ETA on the update?

 

[Styg]

Hope this update will not break my first ongoing playthrough. I'm done with Rail Crossing and Hathor Camp and on my way to Foundry and Core City. This game is just phenomenal.

It won't, but wait for it to go live just in case.

ETA on the update?

We've fixed some minor bugs with the experimental version and will be updating it soon. If we don't find anything else, we'll push it to the live branch soon after.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Hope this update will not break my first ongoing playthrough. I'm done with Rail Crossing and Hathor Camp and on my way to Foundry and Core City. This game is just phenomenal.

It won't, but wait for it to go live just in case.

ETA on the update?

We've fixed some minor bugs with the experimental version and will be updating it soon. If we don't find anything else, we'll push it to the live branch soon after.

Nice, thanks.

I started a brand new playthrough, didnt get very far with it, so think i will wait for this update and just restart.