Update Details (7th September 2018) - Female Playable Character, Multi-Language Support, Wind Power and More!

Hi everyone! This new update has been focused on addressing some long-standing, big-ticket items that have been on my list for a long time.

Female Playable Character:

This is a feature that has been consistently requested since launch so I’m really happy to have it in place. I feel this will add greater diversity to the visuals during gameplay (especially for co-op) and finally give players the choice to play as their desired gender.

I attempted to repurpose the male skeleton for the female model but wasn’t happy with the results, so I rigged her model to a new skeleton. This meant I needed to redo/update all the existing animations for the new skeleton. Technically she's certainly not perfect, but I’ll be continuing to make improvements over time.

Clothing:

All of the existing clothing items in the game will fit on the female character, and each has been remodeled for her physique.

Hair Physics:

I initially implemented a static model for the female hair but the appearance was just too stiff. So I experimented with the Apex cloth physics engine, and managed to achieve a fairly convincing effect. The hair will sway with the motions and actions of the character. I was careful to ensure this is performant and should have a very low impact on system performance.

Custom Damage Skins:

There are all-new damage skins for the new character. I’m also now using normal maps to give injuries more depth to the geometry. It can look pretty gnarly if the character takes heavy damage during battles and attacks.

Gender Toggle Menu:

Players can select their desired gender from the new Character screen in the main menu. This can be done at any time and will take effect on all existing profiles (no restart needed). You can even update your gender during multiplayer games.

Character Customization?

Currently the only option is simply a gender-select. However, there is room for expansion here, such as skin-tones, face-types, hair-styles, etc., but I’ll wait to hear back from players to see how much interest there is in these types of customization before starting work on anything.

Multi-Language Support:

Finally Subsistence now supports several languages (10 now in total including English). This was where most of the effort this sprint was spent (and why the update is later than usual). I had to pay the price for years of rapid prototyping and neglect for a proper localization system.

Here are the newly supported languages (with more currently in the works):

• German
• Spanish
• Italian
• Portuguese (Portugal)
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• French
• Norwegian
• Hungarian
• Czech

You can switch to your desired language at top-left of the main menu:

International players from many nations came together to help make this happen. I’m deeply grateful to all those who participated and for putting in the time and care. I was truly touched to see the response when I reached out about translation support. It was a true pleasure to work with you all! I will credit below the individuals who helped make this a reality.

This is just an initial launch, so I’m sure there may be issues with context etc in certain parts of the game. If you’d like to contribute with corrections, edits or to help support additional languages, please reach out to me at [email protected].

Wind Turbines:

Since the dynamic weather system was added, I’ve wanted to incorporate weather into base operations and to give an upside to stormy days.

Wind Turbines are now craftable within the BCU. They provide an alternative means of supplemental power (in addition to solar panels). While solar panels only generate power during daylight hours, wind turbines generate power during windy/stormy days, regardless of the time of day.

I think they add a cool aesthetic to base designs, and also give an visual indication of incoming storms by the increasing speed of the blades.

Extra Shift-Click Abilities:

I’ve added several new quality-of-life changes to shift clicking. Player can now shift-click:

• Meats and canteens into the woodburner and campfire.
• Water and fertilizer into plantbeds.
• Seeds into plantbed grow-slots.
• Fuel into the power generator.
• Fat into the fat-renderer in the woodburner.
• Animals into the animal housing.
• Food and water into the animal housing.

This should remove some of the tedium in tending to regular chores around the base.

Menu Pause Screen (single-player):

Heavily requested by players; gameplay will now freeze when the player brings up the main menu during single-player. Sorry this wasn’t added sooner.

Character Camera View:

Pressing the “cycle-camera” key will now toggle a moveable camera view of your character. Player movement is limited during this view. The intention is so players can get a better view of their character while gearing-up. It should also give some flexibility when setting scenes for screenshots. I may add expanded tooling for content creators at a later date.

Expanded Hunter Build Zones:

You may have noticed hunters never set up base on the far western side of the map, on the shores and forest areas. This was due to some technical complications on their base-locating logic that I couldn’t address in time for the last map expansion. They can now utilize all of the new area (this includes rogue camps).

Loot Spawn Optimizations:

Previously I was spawning all loot items in crates around the map the moment the crate spawned. This led to needlessly increased item (actor) counts in the game at any time, resulting in memory overhead. I now only spawn the loot once the crate is opened. This means there is a lighter memory footprint.

Batch-extract for Seeds:

Prompted by a player suggestion, you can now extract multiple seeds when working with a stack of vegetables. Small change, but should save a lot of right-clicking while farming.

Other Notable Changes:

• Optimized save-game logic to require less data be written to disk during saves.
• Fixed progress bar not showing while upgrading weapons in the workbench.
• Many minor tweaks to existing male character animations (this is ongoing).
• Halved the craft time for bandages.
  
• Death message now shows actual mapped keybindings.
• New sound for accessing the refinery.

Summary:

I understand that some players (those that only play solo, English-speaking and as the male character) may feel disappointed by the main features on this release. I hope you will appreciate that these are necessary steps to move the project forward and fulfill promises made to players since launch. I’m excited that there is now a female character and I’m excited that players from other nations can now join our community while playing in their native language.

Thanks for everyone’s patience while I worked on this one, and another huge thanks to everyone who contributed to the translations. If you haven’t already, come and join the community on the official Discord (invite below) and steam forum. You can also follow the official Twitter @playSubsistence and Facebook page.

Hope you have a great Friday,
CG

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs

Translation Support Credits (in no particular order):

Spanish:
• José Gabriel Rodríguez González
• Toni Racing
  Hungarian:
• Erb Ármin(Reaper)
• Bodó Ádám (Dyxon)
  Portuguese (Brazil):
• Marcos Lacerda
• Thiago Schumacke
• Robson Prioli
• Luiza Gimenez
• Rafael Ahab Squarça
• Lucas Lima
  German:
• Sebastian Künzel
  Portuguese (Portugal):
• Sandrine Magalhaes
• Claudia Rocha (Xena)
  Italian:
• Federico D. Ravagli
  French:
• Anthony Charrault
  Norwegian:
• Sven Geissler
• Svein Tore Stegemoen
  Czech:
• Petr - Dílna U mnicha

(really sorry if I missed anyone)