Clarification on our recent announcement
So it looks like I’ve missed the mark with expectations here. Hydroneer development started five years ago, with the goal of making an exciting sandbox experience that was unique, and different from other games on the market. I always prided myself on wanting to become a developer that wasn’t seen as “scummy”, and would do well to listen to the community surrounding Hydroneer. I have previously turned down offers from large publishers to take control over Hydroneer too, for the sake of keeping Hydroneer, Hydroneer.
Shortly after the 2.2 Prospecting Update release, I decided the next best route forward is to create a DLC - This was for a few reasons. Firstly, Hydroneer is something I am really passionate about and enjoy playing. I wanted to take the Hydroneer formula and drop it into a different setting, innovating on the systems it already had to create a separate gaming experience. For us to create the DLC, I set our goals to create a large expansion to the main game, and not just a small content update. When pricing the DLC, I decided $10 would fit the current theme of our pricing for Hydroneer ($15), which is to severely under-price Hydroneer. Since our 2020 release, game sales are starting to slow down, and by releasing a DLC we could increase our revenue to grow the team size to continue development on Hydroneer and explore other projects.
Lastly, I’d like to clear the confusion on a point regularly made on the previous Steam announcement: Hydroneer isn’t an early access game. We’ve been supporting it with free updates since its launch in 2020. It has never been listed as an Early Access game and has always primarily been sold as a $15 open-ended mining sandbox game. The 2.2 update was the icing on the top of our extra content releases. We want to continue to support the game with free patches and this DLC is just one way we can do that.
Changes and Fixes Coming to the Base Game:
The following is a list of interesting things that’ll be applied to the base game when the DLC launches. You will not need to own the DLC to get these changes. This list is not complete.
- New build-snapping while placing build items.Building items can be pretty annoying in Hydroneer, which is why we have implemented a new snapping system. Whilst placing an item, if you look at another placed item, it’ll offset what you’re placing to the corresponding side.
- Lighting is reworked. Shadows are now brighter, making it easier to see in the dark. Shadows in Hydroneer are quite dark and make it difficult to see when inside caves or at night. We’ve changed the way shadows/shade works in Hydroneer, which was a technical challenge to work flawlessly with the Day/Night cycle, and to not affect daytime brightness.
- Water pipe and logic cable optimizations. We’ve made some optimizations on water and logic cables. We’ve found some edge cases which hindered performance, as well as increased the baseline performance of these objects.
- Coins/Tokens combine stack whilst stored. Previously you were un-able to combine coins/tokens when they were stored in a truck/pan/bucket. This was due to them not having collision and thus not able to hit each other to combine.
- Skip save and return to menu. You guys asked for it, we’re adding it - a button on the ‘esc’ menu which allows you to return to the main menu without saving.
- Tooltips dynamically change size depending on its contents to prevent them from going off screen. Players using translations sometimes find that due to languages with longer words, sometimes names/descriptions trail off screen (We’re looking at you, Germany). This fix dynamically scales the box to fit all the text.
- Improved outline highlight when looking at items. The highlighting effect when looking at items has been reworked and looks crispier.
- Keybind tips now appear when entering vehicles. Some vehicles have multiple actions, these keybind tips appear in the corner of the screen and help players understand what actions require which key inputs.
- Shard model reworked. Shard models are sometimes problematic on conveyor belts. We updated the ‘hitbox’ of the shard to combat this, and figured we’d also remodel the shard.
- New signposts. We've reworked the signposts on the original island (Bastion). These sign posts are larger and easier to read, making traversal around the map a lot easier.
- Screenshot camera can now move faster. When capturing footage for the trailer, we noticed the Screenshot Camera was a bit slow, it can now move faster.
- Gamepad controller improvements. Firstly we calibrated the sensitivity with the controller, thumbsticks will feel better. We also reworked vehicle controller input, you drive using left/right triggers for acceleration and the thumbstick to turn now, which feels a lot better than before.
- Logic fixes. We noticed there were a few issues with logic, mainly the game not believing that 000000000 is the same as 0 when performing logic operations. We’ve fixed that.
This is just a selection of some of the fixes and changes that'll be released on the main version of the game when the DLC drops.
I'd like to finish off this post by thanking everyone for your patience, this has definitely shown me that I need to work on communicating more with the community at large in regards to future plans. I know everyone here wants what is best for the game, its evident to see by the responses we've seen since our last announcement, thank you.
- Max
