I have finally moved to the full licensed engine source code, moving away from UDK. This is a big step, which I have been planning/preparing for a long time. This means I can modify/compile the core engine code and unlocks huge potential and freedom for continued development.
Already this change has allowed me to extend the material pipeline to allow for the new base painting system (passing params to the material system for individual instanced static meshes, previously not possible in UDK), borderless fullscreen, improved performance and much more. Many other planned features are now unblocked by this move.
Your existing profile saves will auto-migrate, so you should not lose any progress.
Players are now able to paint almost all structural wooden and metal buildables in their base.
Painting requires the paintbrush, which can be crafted in the furniture workbench.
While equipped, hold down the right mouse button (Left Trigger for players using a controller) to bring up the color wheel. Here you can select a color and an optional pattern. There are currently 31 colors and 7 patterns.
It is also possible to completely remove a color by selecting the icon with the red cross and using the brush on the surface.
Most paintable items will have two sides that can be painted individually. This means players can pick different color schemes for the interior and exterior of their bases.
Once an item has been painted, it will not cost any additional paint to apply another color or switch patterns. So players are free to try out different color schemes without wasting additional paint. Unless the paint is removed, then it will cost more paint to reapply.
Paint is also crafted at the furniture workbench.
Paint uses coal tar, which is obtained by harvesting coal nodes in the caves and then refining the coal in the refinery. Different amounts of paint is used depending on the size of the surface that the player is painting.
Below are the various patterns that players can choose when painting.
I may change the various colors and patterns in the future based on feedback from the community.
Wheat plants can now be randomly found growing in the world. Currently it can be found year round, although will not start spawning until day 12 of a profile (it will spawn in existing profiles that are past day 12).
Picking a wheat plant in the wild will either produce wheat, or wheat seeds (seeds can also be extracted from wheat).
The intention is not to yield large quantities from wild foraging, but rather to provide small quantities that can be planted and grown, and then multiplied into high production.
Worth noting that if you do not wish to mill the wheat into flour, the raw wheat makes effective feed for animals in the animal housing.
Hunting boar will now also, in addition to pork chops, yield bacon.
Bacon can be cooked by itself on any open fire, but is better used in more complex recipes in the oven.
I have also increased the amount of fat when butchering a boar, so they are now much more rewarding to hunt.
There is a new "prep" section in the oven. This is used to prepare various food items that do not require cooking.
Based on player feedback, I have added many more cooking recipe options. This should also help balance out the many food items that were previously underused (or not included) in advanced cooking options.
Crafted in the prep section of the oven. I may add a specific milling item in the future, but this should suffice for now.
Used to bake bread, and also prepared in the prep section of the oven.
Baked in the oven and requires a baking pan.
Right click on a loaf of bread to slice into 8 bread slices.
Used for baking recipes. Crafted in the prep section of the oven.
Crafted in the oven by rendering down fat. Requires a boiling pan to craft.
Another benefit of having engine source code access; on first run, the engine will now detect the display resolution and refresh rate of the primary monitor and adjust the game settings accordingly. Previously, these settings were hardcoded to 1080p at 60Hz. This results in a smoother, more visually accurate first-time experience, especially for players using higher-resolution or high-refresh-rate displays.
Having access to the engine source code, I was finally able to add proper display modes for the game. Previously when running in fullscreen, alt-tabbing or using multiple monitors was painful and would cause a full display refresh when switching between other applications or jumping to desktop.
The new borderless fullscreen mode resolves this, making alt-tabbing and multi-monitor setups smooth and seamless.
When rendering large bases with many building pieces, to keep the game performant I use instanced static meshes for each buildable, allowing the CPU to render many identical buildables with a single draw call.
Previously this caused a problem when rendering damage on buildables, as the engine could not pass additional data to the materials for instanced meshes. So as buildables took damage, I would swap them out for individual separate meshes, increasing draw calls and negatively impacting performance on high build-count profiles.
Engine-level changes to the material pipeline now allow per-instance damage data to be passed directly to instanced meshes, preserving instancing and significantly improving performance when rendering large structures.
Several exploits that allowed unintended access to hunter bases have been fixed. Previously, players could use objects such as railings to jump into bases, or access storage chests through gaps in floorboards.
These exploits undermined raid balance and were especially disruptive on PVP servers. They should now be resolved. If you encounter any similar exploits, please let me know so they can be addressed.
Using the elevator will now flash the power cost on screen for each use.
Increased the range of the hammer.
Fish pie now uses raw salmon filets rather than cooked.
Increased time it takes for mushrooms to perish.
Fixed rare bug that could allow profiles to intermittently crash when loading (was caused by early initialization of ATV physics).
Fixed graphics resolutions showing in an incorrect order in the graphics menu.
The game will now launch with the Subsistence.exe rather than UDK.exe. For servers, I still ship a UDK.exe, but this is just to prevent admins having to reconfigure their launch scripts, and is just a mirror of the new .exe.
Thanks for your patience with this one. The engine work took a lot of the development time, but has put the game in a much better position moving forward. I'm very grateful to all the players that continue to support the game. 🙏 I hope to put more control into the hands of players with work I have planned.
Cheers,
CG
Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs
X/Twitter: @playSubsistence
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playsubsistence/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkQZ7vkTiqetTC0_8umY2Pg
Steam Forums: https://steamcommunity.com/app/418030/discussions/
If you would like to host your own dedicated server, I would recommend Nitrado (as I work closely with their team to support the game). You are also free to host on your own hardware, and the server files are freely available on SteamCMD.
You can view a detailed guide to hosting here:
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