VEIN Weekly: Stump Removal

Hi everyone! Welcome to another VEIN Weekly. We're very busy with hotfixes thanks to the 0.023 update. We're also at GDC, so expect few updates this week.

0.023

On Friday we launched 0.023. From what we can tell there weren't too many issues. On Saturday we launched hotfix 1.

Dedicated servers that had third-party hosts had some problems with save directories as those hosts grant less control over the server to their customers, but we fixed this in Hotfix 1. Ditto for some GeForce Now users, but that will come in the next hotfix.

Code locks weren't clearing, some UI wasn't refocusing, and some other minor issues were fixed with the hotfix. We also fixed a UI issue causing some unique binds (like binding the use key to mouse side buttons) would cause a weird code string to appear. The scoreboard UI was also always reflecting that players had been playing for 2 hours. All has been fixed in Hotfix 1.

We added the ability to remove trees and stumps with an axe, just like how you'd chop down a full sized tree, but these don't give you any rewards.

We fixed the quality of fluids not saving when stored in barrels (e.g. adding clean car oil to an empty barrel formerly containing dirty water would make the clean car oil dirty).

We changed the grass to not be so 'wavy' and visually heaving.

We fixed an issue created by the previous update causing a ton of zombies to spawn in buildings you revisit. It was due to some of our code reducing the zombies that should appear in visited buildings.

Moving candles now extinguishes them, binoculars will no longer go invisible when zooming in in third person, and explosives will properly remove from inventories of people they've killed. There are a few misc. fixes here and there, so check out the entire changelog on Steam to see what else is there.

We removed the sticky filter on inventories for Hotfix 1. The reason this was removed was because too many people were getting confused and thinking inventories had nothing in them, when in reality they had a filter selected from looting an inventory before. We've restored the old behavior on player inventory UI only for Hotfix 2, which isn't out yet.

Fish bait currently uses the entire stack instead of just taking one out of a stack, but we've fixed this for the next hotfix.

0.024

In non-hotfix news, we've increased the fall damage significantly for the next update.

We're planning on doing a lot of condition related rebalancing to make the game more difficult (and intricate) as well. Some conditions will be made easier and some harder. There will be more ways to resolve bad conditions and encourage good ones. Zoe has gone through all conditions and rebalanced them on-paper, so we will implement this for the next update.

We'll be adding foraging in the next update. You'll be able to find herbs among other things on the ground (and of course anywhere else edible plants can be found) that can be used for medicine crafting.

We have plans for plant-able trees. These are super early in development though.

We've already added Japanese, German and Russian languages to the next update. There is a new language dropdown in the game UI settings. If you don't speak any of those, we have a large list of localizations we'd like to support over time, and will get on the second batch as soon as we can.

We're still going to be chipping away at gamepad and native Steam Deck support. We wanted this in for 0.023, but we didn't have enough time.

We're adding a junction buildable item, which sort of functions as a power bar or extension cord for wiring things, so you can wire longer distances.

We'll be adding sub-inventories in the next update. These are like bags or backpacks – they're items that contain other items. There is of course a limit to the number and weight of items that can fit in a sub-inventory, but this allows for things like waterproof containers, bags to organize your inventory into categories, and dropping a bunch of items at the same time.

We're going to be adding a new save format to the next version that should be way more robust. Yan finished this a while ago, but we didn't want to ship it with 0.023, in case it has issues. This way we can test it properly with enough time.

Of course, as always, we are going to be fixing bugs that are a bit more involved and need a lot more code written to fix.

There are a number of other features planned but we don't want to post them here just in case we end up not getting them in in time. We're hoping this update takes much less time than 0.023 did; pre-Early Access we released updates every month or two, but it took us five months to release 0.023, mostly due to the hotfixes from launch. Now that we're no longer in the launch period, we have more time to spend on updates.

So that about wraps up the weekly for this week! We're at GDC, so this week (and probably the next weekly update) will be light on updates. We will probably be working on hotfix-able updates and bug fixes here and there though.

We are still hiring for most roles, especially for character art and programming, so if at all interested please email jobs@ramjetstudios.com with a portfolio or resume.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week.