Happy Monday, everyone! Alpha 3.18 is now in Wave 2 PTU, and love is in the air as Coramor approaches.

CitizenCon 2953 - Save the Date!

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0 PTU.8356208 Patch Notes

INDUSTRIAL[rust.facepunch.com]


Bring new levels of efficiency and unlock new avenues for automation with this month's set of Industrial entities. With these new tools you can move items around your base as well as craft items automatically without you needing to lift a finger.

Storage AdaptorThe Storage Adaptor is the starting point for most of your Industrial plans - simply attach an adaptor to an existing storage entity to make that entity compatible with your Industrial systems. The adaptor does not require power.



Some entities have more than one slot that a storage adaptor can be attached to for ease of placement. Typically the storage adaptor can use all inventory slots on it's attached storage for input/output, although there are some exceptions:
When attached to a furnace the Input will insert items into the Fuel/Inputs item slots while the output will remove items from the output slots
When attached to a locker the storage adaptor will only access one partition, to access all partitions you'll need to place three storage adaptors


The storage adaptor is compatible with:
Tool Cupboard
Large Wooden Box
Small Wooden Box
Small Furnace
Large Furnace
Refinery
Electric Furnace
Locker
Fridge
Drop box
Vending Machine
Industrial ConveyorThe Conveyor is responsible for moving items from one entity to another, generally via Storage Adaptors. Once powered and turned on the conveyor will look for items in containers connected to its inputs and then divide those items amongst its outputs.



By default a Conveyor will move any item it can find, but you can also assign a filter to have more precise control over exactly what items you're moving. Each Conveyor's filter can have up to 12 items or categories (resources/components/clothing/etc). When a filter is assigned the Conveyor will only transfer items that pass those conditions. You can also assign values to each item in a filter to control quantities, by setting the Maximum amount (don't send resources if the target container has over X of that resource already) and Minimum amount (only send resources in a minimum batch of X size).

You'll also find a Filter Pass and Filter Fail electrical passthrough, these will activate based on the current state of the conveyor allowing you to control other parts of the Industrial network based on what items are being moved around.


Pipe ToolThe Pipe Tool is how you connect industrial entities - if you've used the Wire or Hose tool before you'll be right at home. Pipes come in 4 colours to help identify what's going where. Same distance rules apply here except that the anchor points need to be a small distance apart from one another and that pipes cannot go through building blocks or Vending Machines. They can go through deployables like doors.



Industrial Splitter/CombinerThese work as you'd expect, allowing you to funnel or split the flow of items. In the case of a splitter connected to the output of a Conveyor, the Conveyor will spread its resources across all of its connections (eg. a Conveyor connected to a splitter which connects to three boxes that wants to send 600 wood will send 200 wood to each box).




Industrial CrafterOnce attached to a workbench (any tier) the Industrial Crafter allows you to automatically craft items once provided with a blueprint and the required materials. Simply insert the blueprint of your choice in the blueprint slot, insert the required materials, connect some power and turn it on to start producing items.



The Industrial Crafter has built in Industrial slots (so no need for an adaptor) so that you can use Conveyors to insert materials and then extract the finished result. There is also a Blueprint In/Out Industrial slot allowing you to swap out the blueprint being crafted. The Crafter can only craft items that are appropriate for the workbench it's attached to and will take the same amount of time to craft an item as a player would.


Electric FurnaceTo complement the Industrial items we're also releasing the new Electric Furnace. It works similarly to other furnaces with a slightly accelerated smelting rate except that it requires power instead of a fuel item. This also means that it doesn't produce charcoal.



Limitations and Server optionsTo maintain server performance there are several limitations to prevent Industrial networks from becoming too out of control. There is a hardcoded 16 container input/output limit for each conveyor. This means that as well as the max depth limitation of regular IO, a conveyor will only be able to see the first 16 containers it encounters in the input/output network.

There is also a hardcoded limit on how many items in a stack a Conveyor can move in a single tick - 32. If a stack has a count higher than this it will be moved gradually over several ticks.

There are also several convars to control the speed and efficiency of industrial systems:
server.conveyorMoveFrequency - How often conveyors attempt a move (default 5s)
server.industrialCrafterFrequency - How often crafters attempt to craft something (default 5s)
server.maxItemStacksMovedPerTickIndustrial - How many whole stacks a conveyor can move in a single tick (default 12)

CODELOCK DEFAULT OPTIONS[rust.facepunch.com]
Previously doors would show "Open" as the default option whether you had the code or not, requiring you to randomly stumble upon doors you couldn't open, beeping in your face then requiring you to holding E to bring up radial menu and select unlock.

The new default options are as follows:
first placed = "change code" (to quickly set your code)
unauthorized on codelock & auth on TC = "enter code"
authorized on codelock & unlocked door = "lock door" (to prevent leaving doors unlocked)This should allow you to see at a glance what you still need to enter a code on & open the codelock UI much easier.


TRAIN WAGON LOOT[rust.facepunch.com]
Train wagons containing crates now have different variants of varying qualities. Overall should be seeing wagons with much higher-quality loot from crates.




CLIENT PERFORMANCE METRICS[rust.facepunch.com]
Performance is always a hot topic but it is difficult to address without having an accurate image of the problem. This month I setup logging of client performance and displayed them in various graphs.

This has already proven to be useful. We noticed that exclusive fullscreen had lower FPS than borderless. Rather than guessing, we were able to query the database and confirm it.



See below for various graphs to get an idea of the insights we are seeing & some interesting data.

Overall FPSFirst up is median FPS across all hardware. It doesn't give a full picture: players with 60hz monitors are included beside 144hz gamers.



A better metric may be comparing average fps to monitor refresh rate to see how many players are getting lower FPS than their monitor supports... something we will look at in the future.

Best Performing HardwareThese charts clearly shows how Rust is CPU bottlenecked (no surprise). What is interesting is how much the extra cache does: a 5800x3D is on average 50% faster than a 5950x!

Please don't use this as an excuse to go buy a better CPU as performance is subject to change... but do use this info so you avoid buying a new GPU for Rust then being surprised when it yields no performance improvement (at this time).




Hardware Capacity~75% of the playerbase is running 16GB or less of RAM.... perhaps we should really prioritize why Unity is hogging all the RAM.



The majority of players (73%) using 1080p... yet only 2.5% of players using 4k?!



Popular HardwareLooking at most popular CPU & GPU we find that it is similar to steam's hardware survey but differs slightly as for Rust. Here are some GPUs as % of total:

Our Metrics:
GTX 1650 = 6%
GTX 1060 = 2.5%
GTX 2060 = 5.5%
RTX 3060 = 7%
RTX 3090 = 0.6%
RTX 4090 = 0.2%


Graphics settings30% of people using motion blur 👀 only 5% of players using SMAA, 20% of players using primarily windowed mode (not borderless)... all interesting. I thought more players would have turned shadows off.



Operating SystemOur Mac playerbase is very small, only 0.3% of players.



Yet even stranger are the people still on Windows 8... laptops perhaps?



FutureNext steps are to expand to gameplay metrics. Technically.... we already have some gameplay stats but they are very limited: "total wood gathered", "total kills", etc.

Better gameplay metrics will give us the ability to drill down to specific information such as:
most popular weapon each day of a wipe
win ratio of different weapon match-ups
deaths per size of team
hourly loot per monuments
least used items

WATER IO SERVER IMPROVEMENTS[rust.facepunch.com]
We've been aware of some server performance degradation with large scale farms and Water Catcher networks for a while and we've made some improvements this month to hopefully improve the situation.

The primary performance issue at play here is the amount of processing required when an entity in an IO chain switches on or off. Under normal circumstances this doesn't happen that often but water containers are considered On when they have water and Off when they are empty. When a chain of Water Catchers are connected and sending water down a chain each container will turn on when it receives the water and then turn off as it passes the water to its next container. Water transferring is quite quick and responsive, this results in rapid sequences of entities turning on and off repeatedly which sends a lot of network updates to any clients in range and involves a lot of (largely useless) IO processing as the network changes state so rapidly.

To solve these issues water will now take 10 seconds to start draining once it's inserted into a container. This means that when water travels through multiple containers each container in the sequence will build up a buffer (usually 50-100 water) in each container. This allows the same water flow as before but mostly prevents the containers rapidly turning on/off. The result is that a small sequence of 3 full barrels connected to each other powering a sprinkler used to be sending 10-20 network updates every few seconds will no longer send any updates at all while the system is active, only a few updates when the system runs out of water. This should improve performance primarily on the server but receiving less network traffic will help client performance as well.

We've also modified the behaviour of Water Catchers, when a Water Catcher is going to generate some water, it will now deposit its water as far down the chain as possible. This means that if you have 3 Water Catchers connected to a Water Barrel, the catchers will actually never receive water at all, instead the water will be deposited directly into the barrel.

In a benchmark of 1000 water catchers connected to each other, we found that the server's IO would become unresponsive after several minutes of gameplay as the system became overloaded with water transfer processing. With the above changes server IO performance remains instantaneous even if we artificially limit the servers frame rate.

There is also a new optional server convar "server.waterContainersLeaveWaterBehind" that modifies the draining behaviour to leave one unit of water behind in a liquid container that drains into another container. This keeps the container in its "On" state permanently and further helps performance. Since this is a change in functionality it is disabled by default, if your server is still experiencing IO performance issues due to water entities turning this on may improve performance.


HAPIS RETIREMENT[rust.facepunch.com]
Today we're permanently retiring Hapis Island map. Hapis Island was first introduced in April 2015 by Petur, inspired by the original Rust legacy map. Over the years, Hapis has gone through countless revisions to where it is at today.




Why Retire Hapis? We're a small development team with no dedicated staff focusing on map design and creation, our mapping attention is focused on procedural maps. Hapis has continuously been developed on the sidelines as a lower-priority project with any free time Petur has. Free time is harder to find nowadays as we focus more on larger, longer-term features with a higher level of polish. Hapis Island needs a lot of attention requiring hundreds of work hours to be polished and kept fresh, which we can't currently give it.

Hapis Island is missing many key features we've added over the past couple of years, zip lines, subways, new monuments and above-ground rail systems, to name a few. When Hapis can support newer features it often takes an extra month, or few for the features to be introduced to Hapis, leaving players waiting and disappointed, some features, such as the rail systems Hapis can't currently support due to a lack of internal tools.

This isn't the end for static maps on Facepunch servers, we'll be working with the custom map community to fill this void over the coming weeks and months.


UNITY 2021.3 UPGRADE[rust.facepunch.com]
We have upgraded the client engine to Unity version 2021.3 earlier this month. Initially there have been a number of issues from the upgrade, but we've gone through and addressed all the major ones with several small patches.

This new version of Unity should open up new possibilities for both performance and visual improvements that we're hoping to introduce over the coming months. A big one is Unity's Burst compiler that will help us transition existing code in the Jobs system to a higher performance version of it.

Unfortunately the upgrade also introduced a bug in fullscreen exclusive mode that caused a significant performance degradation compared to borderless fullscreen mode. Due to this we had to retire fullscreen exclusive mode. If you're encountering issues that seem related to this, please contact our support team to figure out a workaround for your specific setup.

The server build of the game will remain on 2019.3 for this month while we continue testing the new engine version to make sure the server build is stable enough for a wide release. More on that hopefully next month.


MULTITHREADED NETWORK TESTING[rust.facepunch.com]
We've been working on a major networking performance improvement called multithreaded networking. This will apply to both the client and the server, but naturally it will have a significantly higher impact on the server. Due to the nature of the change we wanted to make sure it's working as intended before enabling it by default, so we're first going to start testing it on select official servers this month before hopefully enabling it by default on all servers next month. If you want to start testing it before then, simply add the startup parameter -networkthread to your server or client. Please note that this is a highly experimental feature that may cause significant problems when enabled.


SERVER QUERY PORT SHARING RETIREMENT[rust.facepunch.com]
As announced in the November[rust.facepunch.com] and December[rust.facepunch.com] devblogs, we are working on a number of networking improvements that require us to retire server query port sharing. Because of this, we have requested that all server owners that are still using this feature update their server startup parameters to use a query port that is separate from the game port.

We have decided to pull the trigger and finally retire query port sharing this month. If you're a server owner who still hasn't updated their server startup parameters, please make sure to do so immediately.

Greetings Exiles,

2022 was another exciting and challenging year for the Conan Exiles team. The game saw quite a few changes in both free playable content, content delivery, and business model. Your feedback and engagement with the game has been incredible throughout these changes. I wanted to share a recap of how 2022 shaped up and where 2023 will be taking us.

First of all, let me introduce myself. I am Rod Harper, the new Project Director for Conan Exiles. I came to the project early in 2022 to manage the production of Conan Exiles. As a long-time player, I was excited about having the opportunity to work on it. Having worked as a game developer since the early 90s, I have seen my share of games being made and worked with many different teams. Working with this particular team has been incredibly rewarding and the sheer amount of support and passion from the community has been equally satisfying.

In September, we achieved significant new milestones for the game. We introduced Sorcery as a prominent new feature, allowing the player to learn and exercise magic for the first time. The second milestone was the introduction of the Battle Pass and Black Lotus Bazaar system. The Battle Pass allowed players to progress and earn in-game items and rewards by completing challenges. At the same time, the Bazaar gave players opportunities to buy cosmetics and in-game items using the new Crom Coins store currency.



In addition to those changes, we further expanded the in-game events, now known as encounters. We improved the building system to make it more streamlined and accessible for all platforms and controllers. The building system has seen some fantastic improvements that have made building structures more enjoyable. Overall, the community has given very positive feedback on these quality-of-life changes.

The new Sorcery feature, as well as the expansion of new encounters, were also well received. However, the new Battle Pass and Black Lotus Bazaar received mixed results; this was primarily due to concerns with the switch from paid DLC to an in-game store model. Even though the Battle Pass allowed players to earn and unlock several free items in-game by completing challenges and earning XP - the pricing of items in the Bazaar is an on-going concern among players. With that in mind, we are evaluating our pricing strategies compared to other games. One much-needed addition that will be forthcoming with the Age of Sorcery — Chapter 3 update, will be regional pricing on Steam. This will allow players to use their local currency to purchase Crom coins, making the currency exchange rates more convenient to our players worldwide.

With the accomplishments mentioned above also came some challenges. One challenge we continue to have is with system performance across the board on all platforms, especially consoles. In 2023 we are focusing more on optimization and bug fixing to improve the player experience. Our development team has already been working on performance optimizations on the consoles, and we recently released an interim performance update on the Public Beta client, which will go live before the release of Age of Sorcery — Chapter 3 that will address several issues on all platforms.



We have also started devoting more attention to the modding community with recent updates. With the release of Age of Sorcery, several last-minute fixes and changes delayed the release of the ModDevKit to modders. This was not ideal and we would have preferred more lead time for the modders to evaluate the changes. Our development team did work with several modders to help them get their mods working with the new release. However, we heard the feedback and in future releases, we will be communicating more about changes affecting mods with better advanced notice, along with releasing updated documentation.

As a community, we saw continued growth with more dedicated streamers on Twitch and YouTube and our dedicated community of content creators. We were also happy to provide some Twitch Drops with Festive Crested Lapdog, a Festive Hunt Trophy and a Snowflake Wall Paint. These were earned by viewing any Exiles streamer that had Twitch Drops enabled on their streams.



So, what can you expect in 2023?

We have so far released the first and second chapters of the Age of Sorcery in 2022 which will wrap up with the release of Age of Sorcery — Chapter 3. Following that release, we will move into the next Age with a new set of game features, a new story, and new Battle Pass and Bazaar items, in the same chapter-based release cadence, and these will continue to be free updates to the game.

2023 will be an exciting year with new challenges for the Conan Exiles team, but one we are eager to tackle. The Conan Exiles team is dedicated to this game and providing you, our community, with a fun player experience. Your feedback is always welcome and encouraged. The team looks forward to seeing what new and amazing things you do in Conan Exiles in 2023 and the years to come.

Rodney W. Harper

Project Director – Conan Exiles

Just a small patch with some additional tweaks!

Patch notes
* Hexagonal door no longer flickers when opened
* Yule items have now been disabled
* Hens should no longer change colour
* Turnips can now be put on item stands

Welcome to January’s PU Monthly Report. Although the upcoming patch is still being tested and tweaked in the Persistent Test Universe (PTU), most teams began the year moving on from their work on Alpha 3.18. From extensive AI updates to new vehicles, locations, and features, read on for everything done in pursuit of 2023’s extensive content schedule.

RSI Launcher 1.6.3 Release Notes

Meet Anvil Aerospace founder J. Harris Arnold and explore the Oberon and Tanga systems in this month’s Galactapedia update.

Galactapedia Update October 2022

THE ARK, TAYAC SYSTEM

Welcome to this month’s Galactapedia update roundup. This month, we visit the lost Oretani system and the eerie Tanga system, learn about two terraforming companies that caused major disasters, examine the historic Atlas Platform, check out the Cutter, and meet J. Harris Arnold the founder of Anvil Aerospace, among other subjects. Join the Spectrum thread for any discussion or feedback.

Full-Length Article:

Short Articles:

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0 PTU.8352563 Patch Notes

Happy Monday, everyone! We continue painting the town red with the final days of Red Festival 2953 and community events both in and out of the ‘verse!

Time for another patch, and it’s a chunky one! This patch should fix a lot of various bugs and issues, and we hope there’s something in here for everyone. For example, the ballista now has two modes: one where it will still shoot at anything in its range, but also a new mode where you set a specific target by presenting it with a trophy of your choice.

We have also added two new items for you! One is a buildable version of the hexagonal gate you have seen at the various Dvergr strongholds in the Mistlands, and the other is a very stylish hat for all you master fishers out there. You may be in Valheim to prove your worth to Odin, but sometimes you simply have to prove yourself worthy of a cool hat as well.


Abbreviated Patch Notes:
New Content:* New build piece: Hexagonal gate
* New item: Fishing hat

Fixes & Improvements:* Players can now “use” a trophy on ballistas to limit what it will shoot at
* Balance tweaks to various Mistlands enemies
* Mist torches are no longer a primary target for enemies
* Fixes to Mistlands dungeons and boss room entrances
* Various other bug fixes
* Various fishing fixes
* Various networking fixes



Detailed Patch Notes:
New Content:* New build piece: Hexagonal gate
* New item: Fishing hat (needs a super secret recipe)

Balance & Tweaks:* Players can now “use” a trophy on ballistas to limit what it will shoot at
* Seeker circling tweaks (They should now feel a bit more aggressive again)
* Gjall spit attack tweaks (They now shoot 2 projectiles again, but the burst interval is increased. Should now be more visible and somewhat easier to avoid instead. More fire damage, less blunt damage)
* Added post-Queen nightspawns of Seekers, Broods and Ticks in Meadows, Black Forest, Mountain and Plains biomes
* Mistlands boss now tries to flee if unable to reach the player
* Mobs inside Mistlands Dungeons can now respawn
* Royal jelly piles inside Mistlands Dungeons are now respawning (Added hanging Royal Jelly piles as an indicator in big dungeon rooms)
* Wolves can now eat Chicken meat (Yum!)
* Mist torches are no longer a primary target for enemies
* Tweaked portal size to Mistlands boss room (The entrance “box” was a bit too big. Players should no longer be able to mine the top of the entrance and be able to press “E” to enter through the wall/stones)
* Tweaked portal size on Mistlands dungeon exits (The exit “box” was a bit too big. Players should no longer be able to exit the dungeon while being on the floor right above the entrance)
* Eitr regen is no longer affected by swimming or when encumbered
* Ymir Flesh is now purchasable from Haldor after Elder is dead, instead of after Bonemass
* Health and resistance tweaks on some Dvergr pieces
* Ballista ammo capacity increased from 20 to 40


Bug fixes:* Obliterator now converts Mistlands trophies/wood/arrows/bolts properly
* Mistlands biome music no longer stops playing if players use the dev command “env Clear” while being in Mistlands
* Carapace bolt collider fixed (The offset was a bit off previously when you tried to pick ‘em up)
* Depth of Field fix (Stars in the sky no longer blurry)
* Using the console command ‘save’ will now also save your local character file when playing on a multiplayer server
* Cleaned up unused locations and dungeon rooms to lower RAM usage
* Fixed a bug where players could craft an infinite amount of Raw fish
* Hens now lay eggs closer to their bodies
* Skeleton spawners can now spawn skeletons again even if there are summoned friendly skeletons nearby
* Troll trap and Dvergr stake wall no longer take rain damage
* Periodic lag spike fix (Resource unloading will now run while sleeping or pausing afk for 5 seconds if it hasn't been run for a 20 minutes, or when calling "cr" from console, or if none of those things, every 60 minutes)
* Seeker flying sound no longer plays if it dies mid air
* Marble column build pieces: Tweaked snap points (They were previously not 100% aligned with other build pieces)
* Additional damage for Bolt descriptions are now based on Crossbow skill instead of Bow skill
* JotunPuffs, Magecap and a number of other pickables no longer leave invisible dead objects in the world when they are picked, and old dead objects are cleared when loaded in to increase performance and decrease save-file size.
* Pickable DvergrStein no longer fall through objects


Fishing tweaks & fixes:* New item: Fishing hat
* Fish no longer despawn when far away
* Fish found in Ice Caves now respawn correctly
* Higher tier fish now give slightly more Raw fish and there’s now a small chance for fish to give players some extra materials when they are successfully reeled in
* Fishing bait is now returned if pulled in without fish or when recasting
* Fishing bait recipes now take basic fishing bait instead of previous biome fish
* Fishing bait recipes, and the fishing bait sold from Haldor is now 20 instead of 40 (This change was made due to the fishing bait return change mentioned above)
* Fish will now try to escape when hooked. (Fish will wobble and splash in the water when they try to escape, which increases the stamina usage when pulling in. When they’re not trying to escape, the stamina usage for pulling in is reduced)
* Tetra can now spawn at higher levels correctly
* Tuna now only spawn in the Ocean biome
* Higher-level fish only jump in the Ocean biome
* Slightly increased skill gain when fishing


Networking fixes:* Fixed a bug where players received the “Fail to connect” message instead of “Server full” when trying to join a full PlayFab server
* Fixed a bug where PlayFab accidentally signed in twice
* Major improvements in how the game handles multiplayer sessions when going offline/disconnect. (It now tries more often to succeed with creating lobbies/relog compared to previously)
* Added a pop-up message when players are trying to start a server when they’re not signed in correctly (i.e. being offline in some way)
* Added support for non-crossplay PlayFab servers, and Xbox network users without the “Crossplay privilege” can only host and join non-crossplay supported servers
* Added new server parameter that server owners can use if they want to run multiple dedicated servers using the same MAC-address in order to get unique PlayFab IDs for every server
* Improved error handling of privilege manager
* New “DNS Lookup failed” message when a server with an URL can’t be added to the server list due to DNS lookup failure
* Improved performance and behaviour of local server lists
* Fixed 2 soft lock cases that could happen when using PlayFab
* Fixed a bug that paused matchmaking-timers when the game was paused


Misc:* Reduce lighting flashes accessibility option added, reduces flashes for thunder, monster & player elemental effects, Galdr table, Obliterator and Portal
* Raven hints can be toggled in settings (and console command removed)
* New console commands added: catch (simulates catching a fish), printnetobj (lists number of network objects by name surrounding player) & cr (runs the periodic unloads unused assets routine manually and resets the timer)
* Improvements made for the “Manage Saves” menu, should now be a lot less laggy to use
* Localization updated

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0 PTU.8349208 Patch Notes

Welcome to November and December’s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including crowd control, fire propagation, and alien character development.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0 PTU.8346551 Patch Notes

A look at how the discovery of Davien system helped launch a holiday focused on Earth’s lunisolar cycle into the stars.

This portfolio originally appeared in Jump Point 10.1.

Each year, beginning in late January or early February, millions of gilded red envelopes are hidden across the UEE. Those fated to find one will discover a good-luck token or credit intended as a hopeful sign of the year to come. For centuries, giving friends and relatives red envelopes was one way to celebrate the Red Festival. Yet, it wasn’t until the 26th century that hiding the envelopes for anyone to find became part of the tradition after the Banu enthusiastically embraced it as a way to honor Cassa, their Patron of Luck. People took to the new tradition and relished the chance to find a little bit of luck tucked inside a discarded magazine or hiding atop a storage locker at the end of a dark space station hallway.

The Red Festival originated on Earth well before Humanity explored the stars when some early cultures carefully observed the moon and celebrated the start of a new lunar year. The holiday eventually became known as the Red Festival as its reach and influence spiraled further and further away from Earth’s orbit. Still, many of the traditions stayed the same, like wearing red and gold for good luck and exchanging gilded red envelopes. Humanity celebrated these traditions for millennia before colonists took them to Mars when it was settled in the 22nd century. While the Red Festival was celebrated on the red planet, its popularity wouldn’t explode until the early 25th century when an explorer claimed it helped him make history, and many others came to believe that celebrating it would bring luck to their journey.

Today the Red Festival is more popular than ever and widely celebrated across the UEE and Banu Protectorate. So how did a holiday focused on Earth’s lunisolar cycle become so beloved?

LIFT OFFWORLD

The United Nations of Earth (UNE) formed in 2380 to unify all of Earth’s nations under one government. It was a historic moment meant to bring people together and facilitate Humanity’s expansion into the stars. At the time, Earth was in a precarious position. Despite having terraformed Mars and the new system of Croshaw, Humanity’s homeworld was still desperately overcrowded and pristine wilderness increasingly scarce. Pollution choked many major cities and people’s quality of life was in decline. While advances in commercial spacecraft and terraforming tech made living offworld possible, it remained extremely expensive to leave Earth and surprisingly difficult to convince people that life offworld might actually be better. To address the issue, the UNE created the Easten Expansion Program to support navjumpers on their search for new frontiers and encourage people to fill colony ships. The program was met with modest success before being rebranded Project Far Star in 2412. Now considered a key driver of the Human Colonial Expansion Era, Project Far Star opened offices in major cities around Earth to recruit colonists, aid explorers with subsidized ship upgrades, and more.

In late 2429, Wendell Dopse visited the Project Far Star office in Shanghai and submitted an application to purchase a discounted jump drive. The application was approved and Dopse received the component in mid-January of 2430. He rushed to install it then meticulously cleaned his ship so it’d be spotless when the Red Festival began on January 25th. According to legend, Wendell Dopse spent the next two weeks celebrating the Red Festival with his family and reconsidering whether or not to leave them. On the final day of the festival, his family attended a lantern festival where Dopse helped his daughter with a particularly difficult riddle. The two spent hours taking in the impressive lanterns and talking through solutions when the answer suddenly struck him. Dopse looked up and saw a solitary lit red lantern rising through the sky. Away from everything else. Off on its own. Convinced it was a sign, he noted its course. Then he said goodbye to his family, raced to his ship, and flew in the direction the red lantern was headed. Days later Dopse discovered the jump from Sol to Davien, upending contemporary scientific thinking that predicted no additional jump point existed in the Sol system.

SPREAD OF THE RED FESTIVAL

Today, many people wonder if Wendell Dopse’s story about the red lantern might have been embellished. They point to numerous voyages Dopse took into that sector of Sol before receiving his jump drive. On those trips he tested and refined new scanning techniques that, after his discovery of Davien, other explorers adopted and inventors integrated into more advanced jump scanning technology. His success inspired others to try their luck launching on the final day of that year’s Red Festival. The practice became so commonplace that several landing zones were forced to place a cap on launches on that day to reduce congestion. They eventually instituted a lottery system to award launch slots after an investigation by the UNE revealed that some landing zone officials were selling slots to the highest bidder.

Shanghai also became considered a lucky place to launch. People traveled from across the world to leave from that landing zone, and many of them celebrated the Red Festival. For decades, the Project Far Star office in Shanghai recruited and helped send more colonists to live offworld than any other. The colonists’ eagerness to go, combined with their comms about what life was really like on these new worlds, convinced millions more to follow. They did and brought the traditions of the Red Festival with them.

In the 25th century, one of the biggest off-Earth celebrations of the Red Festival occurred in Davien where, in 2438, Humanity first encountered the Banu. Since then, Banu traders became a staple of the system and knew to stock their Merchantmans with red items and gilded envelopes around the Red Festival. While no one knows exactly who hid the first envelope for someone to find, the tradition began in Davien and expanded from there. Hiding and searching for these lucky envelopes became commonplace across the empire by the early 26th century, and as the tradition grew in popularity, so did the Red Festival. All thanks in part to Wendell Dopse’s discovery of Davien, the millions of colonists who celebrated the Red Festival, and the Banu who adopted and evolved its traditions.

RSI Launcher 1.6.2 Release Notes

Happy Monday, everyone! Red Festival continues this week, and the Siege of Orison is well underway, so grab your gear and join the CDF to push Nine Tails back!

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0 PTU.8345033 Patch Notes

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0z PTU.8344026 Patch Notes

Carrack- Standalone Ship / Prix : 864$ TTC

C8 Pisces - 2953 Auspicious Red Paint- Paints / Prix : 7.2$ TTC

Carrack - 2953 Auspicious Red Paint- Paints / Prix : 26.4$ TTC

It’s your lucky day! Celebrate Lunar New Year in the ‘verse with a new Star Citizen adventure.

Join us for the Red Festival 2953!

Anvil Hurricane Pledge Update

The CDF is calling all volunteers to fight back against the Nine Tails pirate threat. Start here to join the fight for Orison.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0y PTU.8342974 Patch Notes

Welcome to November and December’s PU Monthly Report, which combines everything worked on during the last two months of 2022. Read on for everything done to round out last year, including new tech for Alpha 3.18, updates to narrative content, and the development of all-new vehicles.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.17.5 LIVE.8338165 Patch Notes

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0x PTU.8340717 Patch Notes

Star Citizen Alpha 3.17.5b EPTU.8338165 Patch Notes

Siege of Orison Returns for Lunar New Year

Happy Monday, everyone! The roar of engines, parties in red robes, and a gang of criminals that apparently have not learned their lesson yet – all this and more await you this week in Star Citizen.

Happy new year, vikings!

We opted out of writing these regular development blogs for the last part of 2022, figuring there wasn’t much more we could tell you that wasn’t about announcing the Mistlands update itself! But now we have passed that particular milestone, and it’s time to look towards the future.

First though, we want to say a most heartfelt thank you to all of you who played the Mistlands during the Public Test phase, and to all of you who have played the update since it was released properly. Thank you for your feedback, for your thoughts and for your time! With Mistlands being such a large and long-expected update, it was quite scary to finally reveal it to all of you, and it was such a relief to see how much you liked it!

But now to the future, for real.

Our next big biome update is going to be the Ashlands, and we have begun with the pre-production of that biome by creating some concept art and trying to work out the feeling we want the biome to have. It will be quite different from what we’re all used to, given that the Ashlands is a large chunk of land at the far south of the map, rather than small islands spread out over the world.

When it comes to development itself, there is something we would like to do very differently this time. With the Mistlands, we were very secretive. This is great for those who want to discover as much as possible for themselves (which is the main reason why we kept so much hidden), but it’s also not very transparent. Therefore, our ambition with the development of the Ashlands is to show you a lot more of the process. This will mean you will see things in their early stages, and maybe even things that won’t end up making it into the game at all, but you will also hopefully have a better understanding of how far along the development has gotten. We’ll be trying this out for the Ashlands development period and see how it goes, and we’d like to start off right away by showing you some enemy concepts:





As you might be able to guess from these images, our current design vision for the Ashlands is that it’s a land of the dead, as well as a place with quite a volcanic nature. We’re really looking forward to exploring the concept and finding out where it will lead us, and we’re excited to have you along for this journey!

If you’re concerned about the Ashlands taking a long time to develop, you can rest assured that we have some fun things planned for you between then and now. Something you already know is that Valheim will get an Xbox release early this year, and with the crossplay support you will be able to play with your console-bound friends. We have also talked about adding some new difficulty settings, and we are working on something which we’re currently calling Hildir’s Quest! While the programming and QA folks were busy working out the final bugs of the Mistlands, our artists got creative and designed some brand new clothes for your characters, which became the start of this little update. The clothes might still get further changes, but we think they’re looking pretty nice so far!



Hildir’s Quest will also have some other fun things, like an additional NPC (the eponymous Hildir herself) and a way for you to re-style your existing characters’ hair! Don’t worry though, an update like this won’t be taking any significant time away from the development of the Ashlands. Due to the nature of game development, not everyone can work on the same thing at the same time, and working on something like Hildir’s Quest will ensure that the Ashlands pre-production can proceed while the team works as efficiently as possible.

Another thing we want to do in the future is to improve the accessibility of the game. This is long overdue, but we want to finally add some options so that more people can enjoy Valheim. If you have a disability or any other factor that affects your gaming, you are more than welcome to send us an email and tell us a bit about it and about any solutions you can think of that would improve your experience.

Build of the monthSince it’s been a while without announcing a Build of the Month, we want to highlight more than one creation this time! Check out the cosy cottage by HelloHellie, MythicBuildV’s epic dragon temple, and the proud Mistlands keep by TBasicBuilder. If you want your creation to be featured, use the hashtag #ValheimBotM on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. You can view previous builds in this thread on Steam.







Thank you for joining us on the Valheim journey thus far, and let’s head into 2023 together!
/The Iron Gate team

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