Hello Fellow Penal Colony Workers,
My apologies for the delay, the state has been working me hard and this patch ended up being much more work than anticipated.
Future of Crabmeat
This is the last planned feature/content update for the game. I have been working towards getting the Steam Deck green tick which I believe I'm quite close to. Expect future patches to be improvements to UI for said Steam Deck approval and small bug fixes to resolve new issues introduced that I missed in testing.
This is a Save breaking update!
Flagging this upfront, I had to increase the save version of the game and was unable to write a compatibility tool to move saves forward due to some of the changes.
The game is now playable in 7 Languages including, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Latin American Spanish and Russian. The majority of text elements in the game will appear fully localised when playing in a non-english language. Some elements of the game remain in english when localisation is enabled and will display a localised string when moused over and a small segment are left untranslated like decorative signs that don't serve a mechanical purpose.
Gamepad Support
There is now full gamepad support, yes it's still click to move. While i still think mouse is the best way to play, this lets the game work on Steam Deck out of the box and with most gamepads. I made the slightly counter intuitive choice to put "Look" on the left stick by default. I found with the other actions you perform this is the most comfortable. Gamepad Inputs are rebindable same as keyboard and mouse.
Narrative Notes/Keys Tweaks
Notes have been visually improved and the content has been revised slightly with additional notes, keys added. This is not a fundamental revision, more of an edit that should have been done prior to launch but I simply did not have time.
Binoculars Change
Binoculars are now a full item, this means they work like a regular item and can be raised/lowered and "used" to zoom further in and out. This is a bit of a tradeoff but I feel like it makes for a more consistent experience and makes them significantly more useful as binoculars as the zoom level is substantially increased. This was another change I had planned before launch but just didn't get to.
Afterburner Change
The afterburner now has a dedicated engine unit in the lower deck. It will appear on the ship's computer map and can be damaged by attackers.
Warnings
Save breaking update, saves from older versions of the game will be discarded on boot
Improvements
Localisation Added
Gamepad Support
Narrative notes polished
Binoculars are now a functional item and not a hotkey
Afterburner now has dedicated engine more like the ships engine
UI has been revised to read better on smaller screens, handle new languages better and support gamepad navigation
Localisers Added to Credits
Minor Pacing and Polish pass on final encounter
Added more rare fish
Signature signing now has visible pen (this is partially for gamepad support)
Engine update to Unity 6.3 from 6.1
Paralomis now has two attack animations it's randomly picks between to create more audio and visual variety
General optimisation to ship rendering and physics but it's unlikely to be noticed
Palette swaps added to brachys as you get closer to your goal
Fixes
Fixed some ugliness on ship snow mesh
Fixed AI spawn path that would cause them to get stuck still
Fixed bug in jumping attackers
Fixed % collected on crab trap being incorrect in a rare context
Fixed deeply embarrassing spelling mistake
Fixed "Exit Hotspot" tutorial in How To Play menu looking janky
Prevent screens rendering in more cases when they aren't visible for to reduce cpu overhead
Fixed bird particles scale not being uniform
Fixed blow torch end use sound bug
Audio
Audio Pass on final encounter to beef up the ambience
Unique audio added for using keypad
Fixed after burner sound playing after engine shutdown
Metal surface footstep sound broken into two types
Unique Pick up sound added to binoculars
Added an engine blowout sound when the engine is shutdown
What's Next?
I've started prototyping development live at twitch or you can join the discord to chat with me and the community. Thank you to all the players, streamers, youtubers, everyone who has left a review (even people asking for WASD, I still love you). It's been pretty wild to make something this big solo and whilst Crabmeat hasn't been a huge success it's sales will give me time to tinker on the next project without having to immedietly rush out and look for funding.
Happy Crabbing,
Nick