Hey everyone,
Stephen here. We're happy to release our second "improvement update" to Atrio! As compared to the last update, we took on some of the more complex/harder to implement, but we're happy to see it completed and ready for all of you.
Original Promise -> First update -> Second Update -> Third Update (upcoming)
Status report
We want to stay accountable for the features we promise to fix, so here's a status report of where we stand:
Gameplay improvements (100% complete)
- FIXED - The pickerpal RNG & the Fuel depot
- FIXED - Pushback splitters should be more useful
- FIXED - Tornatoads should wait if line is full (same with saptaps)
- FIXED - Key Rebinding (in settings)
- FIXED - Fast travel kind of sucks
- FIXED - pushbacks should be more readily available
Bug fixes (80% complete)
- FIXED - Plunger quest dialogue says you have purple batteries, but you don't actually have them
- FIXED - Electric flowers west of the station don't regenerate
- FIXED - Factories stop auto pulling items late into the game
- FIXED - Building an item (or leaving the backpack) under the Iris-Station deletes the Station 4 chip
- FIXED - Placing factories on top of core items breaks stuff
- FIXED - Players can die during the punk monk sequence, stopping them from unlocking the blue bar
- FIXED - Players dying on odd spots and their bodies aren't accessible
- FIXED - Deer factories are "vanishing"
- TODO - Bees not working as expected? (need investigating)
- TODO - Items are sometimes stuck in the fuel depot
Gameplay Improvements
1. Basic Key Rebinding
- Players can now remap keyboard/mouse
- Players can now remap their controller.
The key rebinding menu serves two purposes - It lets players change the controls, but also surfaces some of the controls that weren't previously apparent. You'll also notice that some of the controls are locked - these controls are woven into the game in such a way that they're very hard to untangle. We wanted to get a basic version out the door, so the controls are currently locked, but we hope to allow additional mappings in the future.
2. Fixing Fast Travel
Many players had valid criticisms of the Fast-Travel system, and I read all of them with hopes that I could come up with the best solution. Some people had amazing ideas, but would require HUGE reworks of our systems.
I ultimately found a solution that was relatively risk-free to implement (leveraging existing systems that work well) and faster to implement. Here's what I did to improve fast travel:
- Iron Chests & Iron Dispense Chests are now craftable,
For those that are transporting items across rivers, being able to dump 100 items into a dispense chest seemed non-negotiable.
You can unlock and craft them after you find Station 5.
(Anyone who has a save file beyond Station 5 will automatically be able to craft them) - The Entangled Chest.
The Entangled Chest is a shared chest that points to the same inventory, no matter where you go.
Like the Iron Chest, you first can find them while you progress in the story, and then later on in the game, they become craftable.
Why not teleport with your items?
Unfortunately, a big part of the story relies on this idea, so I couldn't get rid of that. However, we've found that later in the game, this is more convenient. You can have a shared inventory in multiple places anywhere in the world (place as many as your heart desires).
This lets you fast travel, and have extra storage no matter where you go. There is a catch
You can only hand place items in and out. Being able to pipe items in and out not only was immensely complicated, but could potentially break all of our game design of having to design systems to cross rivers. This felt like a good compromise.
3. Pushback Spawning
We've added more pushback spawners into the world (specifically in the "plains/ downtown" section). This way, if you want to max out your pushback splitters, head over to the downtown and capture to your hearts content.
4. Mini Deer Pooping
We had an original feature where mini deer would walk around and eat items off of your assembly line (thinking people might want to gate deer in, and springboard items in so they would become factories without capturing them), but no one did.
The mechanic was ultimately frustrating and served no purpose, so we've removed it.
5. Corrupt Saves
A small number of our users reporting save files going corrupt.
- Atrio cycles through three autosaves to increase the chances of you recovering your saves
- We've implemented a corruption detection system. When you save a game, we analyze your save data to make sure there are no "oddities" in the data. If they are, we prompt you and let you know.
There's a million reasons why a save file could be corrupt (some are out of our control, such as your disk being full, or the o/s having issues). But we've done our best to reduce the risk of losing a save file.
Bug Fixes
- Players dying on odd spots and their bodies aren't accessible
- Deer factories are "vanishing"
- Widescreen support - Although widescreen support is planned for next month, I managed to sneak in some fixes for the worst-offender issues when in widescreen mode (most of the menus).
- Fixed a minor typo in the story
- Reduced number of stun turrets needed to upgrade heartbox in Freeplay
- Fixed a bug where the lightbulbs weren't connecting properly
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Featured fan art: Forgotten_dev
If you'd like to draw something and be featured, make sure to join our discord
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What's next?
We still have two more big bugs to fix (see above), but this certainly isn't the end of our quality of life updates.
Upcoming fixes:
1. Change the Beeboxes to support mushroom selection
2. A way to delete stray/ unwanted items.
3. Take out the dodge in tutorial
4. Deer take too long to walk up to the trap
5. Some Electric petals aren't respawning properly in freeplay
Thank you to everyone playing and reporting bugs around Atrio,
-Stephen & The Isto Team.