Icarus Week 253 Update | Radiation Effects

Welcome to Week 253.

This week, we’re updating the radiation effects found in radioactive zones on Elysium, as well as those caused by radioactive items placed in chests or dropped on the ground, to provide a clearer and more consistent experience. These places will now look as fearsome as they actually are.

We’ll also take a look at what’s coming next week, including updates to the Fishing Capture UI and a new way to increase your comfort level by capturing and displaying higher-quality fish.

Notable Improvements:

• Fixing issue where kiwi's would try to eat nearby unreachable fruit and vegetable plants when snared by a snare trap to reduce their hunger
• Fixing issue where item rewards would duplicated if the previous item reward in the entry was invalid, the system now handles items being stripped out such as when feature levels are used
• RIFT - Fixing issue where the defeat sandworm objectives would appear completed when they where not and issues where the sandworms would not spawn as intended
• Lowered the Sand-scuttles loot to be more representative of its role
• Fix to Creature Deterrent & Food Trough not allowing spoiled plants in its inventory preventing the deployables from being used correctly

This Week: Updated Radiation Effects

This week, we’ve revisited the visual effects that support the various radiation mechanics in Icarus. We weren’t overly happy with the “dome” effect we were using to represent radioactive areas in the world, so we’ve taken a completely new approach.

We’ve moved to a more spatial, volumetric cloud approach, using some tricky combinations of Niagara effects and code to ensure we can maintain good performance when multiple radioactive areas overlap. These new effects will represent radiation in-world, both in the large radioactive areas and from the smaller, localized radiation effects generated by items in the world.

Alongside the world effects, we’ve also done a pass on the UI effects that represent the level of radiation affecting the player. Since these effects can linger for some time, we wanted to make sure they don’t obscure the player’s vision too much, while still clearly communicating that their health is in danger and that the radiation needs to be dealt with quickly.

To achieve this, we’ve opted for a scaling vignette effect around the corners of the screen. It’s a fairly tried-and-true approach for communicating this kind of danger, while allowing the player to maintain a clear view of the world around them.

Next Week: Fish QoL

Next week, we’ll be providing a much-needed update to the Fishing Capture UI, along with new comfort bonuses for aquariums and fishing mounts based on the characteristics of the fish placed inside them.

We’re also introducing new ways to use fish beyond cooking recipes, opening up another avenue for creating important items.

Full details to follow next week.

Your support makes these updates possible.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1648533/Icarus_Dangerous_Horizons_Expansion/
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set

Changelog v3.0.31.158478-rel-DangerousHorizons

New Content

• Radiation area effect culling and updated VFX
• wip polish pass on radiation floor fog material
• polish pass on radiation area FX
• Radiation Area Effects - Fixed incorrect collision settings on SphereComponent preventing vis traces with the spline tool/s and swapped HISM component out for ISM as the original BP had.
• fixed double spawn particles on Radiation Area FX vertical rads
• Radiation Area Effects - Fixed inability to pickup items that were dropped within a radiation sphere's radius.
• Fixing issue where the radiaiton zone would not scale correctly when stacks of uranium where placed in chests, we where trying to lerp between 2 minium values, not a minium and maximum

Fixed

• Localisation - tamed creatures bloodline stat bonuses 'every x level' is can now be properly translated
• Localization fix for 'LVL' in character screen
• Localization fix for 'Any Of The Following' for recipe tagged items
• ELY - fixed macros intersecting with cave in arctic, green quad
• ELY - various cliff fixes in arctic, green quad
• ELY - fixed lake plane in swamp, orange quad
• ELY - cliff fix in desert, yellow quad
• RIFT - Fixing issue where the defeat sandworm objectives would appear completed when they where not
• RIFT - Fixing issue where sometimes the sandworm wouldn't spawn - adding fallback case so if finding a spawn location fails we revert to using the quest marker
• Fix to Creature Deterrent not allowing spoiled plants in its inventory
• T4 Water Purifier: Fixed LOD screensize settings. Removed unused logic and variables in BP. Added supporting Lights (med spec+). Fixed DM not being defined. Updated resource network transforms. Optimized VFX on low spec. Perform material swap when processing and remove emissive setup from base material. Remove unused Glass textures
• Tweaked Uranium Converter LOD screensizes
• Updated collision on all crop meshes to use simple as complex to provide more consistent interaction vs harvesting. Tweaks to LOD screensizes and DF setups to optimize visuals and performance
• Added background blur to rewards delivered popup. Removed redundant 'rewards' text. Fixed Roboto font being used. Extended width from 300 to 320px and shrunk title font size 4pt
• Fixed issue where cows stop being able to be milked after being brought down from orbit. Removed debug logging
• Increased size box by 2px to remove unncessary scrollbar on ItemsOnDrop widget. Fixed OpenProspectWindow using Roboto font for Host text
• Fixing issue where kiwi's would try to eat nearby unreachable foilage when snared by a snare trap to reduce their hunger
• Small creature footstep adjustment based on velocity to better represent size
• Subtle spacializer adjustments to deployable spacializer to ensure they aren't playing over too long distance. Reduction in volume to rain reservoire. Subtle dog idle reductions
• Adjustment to spacializing and start of cleaning device
• Small reduction in spacial distancing of cre chew meat audio
• Adjustments to cleaning device audio so the start and stop is more subtle to help reduce it feeling too annoying when crafting mulitple items
• REducing glass crack sounds as you walk on them. Now triggered only rarely with sprint and land
• Small reduction in anvil t4 constant sound and deployable spacial update
• Small reduction in volume and distancing of T4 anvil - foundry animation audio to help keep it more subtle when crafting a lot.
• Small increase in fireplace distancing when up close
• Small reduction in low end and slight pitch up for gas fly horn to better match their size
• Adjustment to footstep crack audio. Less crack on sprinting on glass
• Small reduction in click sound for crafting mulitple items
• Small scatter voc adjustment to reduce constant idling
• Adjusting wolf idles to be consistent to reduce many breathing sounds when player has a few pets
• Reducing total max numbe of wolf idles and setting to virtualize
• Additional subtle distancing tweak for cre idle
• Small subtle tweak to creature footstep distancing
• Better footstep on sand balancing and adjustments to random pitching layer for better realism. Also adding other temp coastal atmosphere setup that better reflects the desired colour vibe of the atmosphere
• Further simpliification and fine tune to the footstep on sand event. Reducing amount of layers and keeping it feeling more consistent
• Adding the salted audio event to the salting station when an item gets salted
• Fixing issue where item rewards would duplicated if the previous item reward in the entry was invalid, the system now handles items being stripped out such as when feature levels are used
• Lowered the Sand-scuttles meat and bone drop as they where to high for the creatures size and difficulty

Future Content

• Face Customization - Changed the format of the head UI to match the new wireframe. - Added a GetSelectedOptionName() to custom combo box cpp.
• Face Customization - Fixed being able to have more than 2 'none' options for face blending
• Face Customization - Added new variables to CharacterCosmetics struct for directional enums and their float value for saving blending.
• Face Customization - Stopped the doubling up of face shapes. if you select a pre existing face shape it will swap the locations of the two.
• Face Customization - Fixed EFaceShapes name change incorrect references causing face presets to stop blending from working
• Face Customization - Rehooked combo boxes swapping between each other when selecting same face shape
• Face Customization - Fixed face blending not working on default character due to enum name change.
• When moving the blend shape or selecting a preset the camera now properly zooms into the players face.
• Adding newly added beaver jump audio and increasing distance of bump audio
• Added Ginger and Spinach food item and seed packet item icons and modifier icons.
• Increase in distancing and reverb of dino roar to make it feel bigger in the environment
• Added first pass Giant beetle sk mesh, textures and materials
• Reimported the giant beetle SK mesh and deleted the SK mesh with the incorrect naming.
• Added Pineapple item icon.
• Redoing how crab footsteps are done. Now working within the foliage event instead of on each BP. This cleans up occlusion and simplifies things
• Fixing Feature Level on World Boss Fertilizer so it matches 4.0.0 and shifting the talent into the T4 blueprint tree
• Adding Lead Ore Icon and Mesh Setup
• Added Giant Turtle sk meshes, materials and textures
• ARK - mesh placement, landscape sculpting, decal painting in Volcanic, red + purple quads
• Added Trees, Cliffs, Lakes and Landscape Sculpting in the Jungle, Green Quad
• ARK - mesh placement, landscape sculpting in Volcanic, red + purple quads
• more blue quad polish on Ark
• ARK - changed PM on DC_Dirt layerinfo (coastal grass) to grass
• blue quad cliff and decal edits on Aark
• ARK - mesh placement, landscape sculpting in Volcanic, red quad
• Legendary Launcher - Changed ADS anim to by launcher instead of rifle
• Fixed Building Tool not displaying stockpiles in the radial menu
• Fixing the UI so it can be read in the radial menu