Custom Games Patch Notes

HOTFIX 2 – V 1.28.79.0 ———– August 22, 2023

We fixed a few more things! 

• Players can no longer add a “|” to their Custom Game name 
• Players can now confirm their Custom Game settings in a separate step from launching into the game 
• Players can no longer set Starting Bytes to a negative number 
• Custom Games Global Power setting now affects all power-generating items 
• Wind Power Generators are now affected by the Custom Game Wind setting and not the Solar Power setting 
• Mission Failure Screen will now correctly reflect Active Mission Time 
• The Confirmation Prompt should now display when changing to Creative Mode 
• A player can now play in a Creative Mode save with their friends without getting booted

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HOTFIX 1 – V 1.28.65.0 —————- July 14, 2023

The following bugs have been fixed as of version 1.28.65.0

• Players are able to invite/join a multiplayer game using the Custom Game configuration: No Starting Shelter
• In a MP game, Client’s dropship now lands in the same spot as the Host with Custom Game configuration: No Starting Shelter

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Feature Update: Custom Games Mode

Hey everyone, excited to release the patch notes for this very unique update, the Custom Games update!

This update cracks open Astroneer in a way that allows players to do all sorts of really fun things. From creating new saves with unique characteristics like hardcore permadeath, to setting up exact scenarios and speedruns, the custom game tools added will allow you to make the experience your own and then share them with others.

Some context: We have always wanted to add new game modes to Astroneer, but we felt like that might be too prescriptive. Instead, we endeavored to create a plethora of customizations that allowed you all to fine-tune the exact experience you want. Hoping for a little more challenge? Change the amount of oxygen produced by all sources, pick a different starting planet, and prevent respawns for a hardcore experience. Do you have trouble with some of the more tedious parts of the game and could use some shortcuts from an accessibility standpoint? Feel free to adjust to your liking and experience the entire game your way. We indexed hard on player choice so everyone can enjoy the game however they would like.

Ok now for the details: Upon loading the game players will be greeted with a brand new option when creating saves: CUSTOM GAME. This will take you to a submenu where you can start creating your “configuration”.

Preconfigured Custom Game Modes + Management

The first screen will present you with some premade options so you can jump right into a custom configuration. SES will prepopulate these, and eventually, will pull configurations from the community to share with everyone else. If you feel like you have made something awesome, share it with us on Discord or social media so we can keep these slots fresh! You can also access previously saved configurations from this screen. NOTE: These configurations get saved to your account, so if you log in on another machine, or play somewhere else, your configs will move with you.

If you want to make your own, click CREATE NEW CONFIGURATION and put your lab coat on.

On the custom game mode screen, you can navigate between the different pages of options on the top left, then save, share, and launch your shiny new configs from the initial tab.

SHARING

By pressing “PUBLISH CONFIG” you can share your configuration with friends on any platform. When you publish your configuration we bind it to a numerical “Share Code” that you can give to other users. If they put the code in, all pages will auto-populate with your settings, which you can still adjust!

CUSTOM GAME CONFIGURATION VARIABLES:

This is the list of things you can adjust in this update, please share more ideas of things you might want beyond these with us!

GENERAL

• SKIP LAUNCH SEQUENCE
• NO STARTING SHELTER
• CHOOSE STARTING PLANET

That’s right folks, we finally did it. You can choose your starting planet, and for a real challenge, you can spawn on the planet with no starting habitat. That second option is not for the faint of heart, you need to find a reliable oxygen source ASAP to begin to start your base!

STARTING BACKPACK ITEMS

Select from a number of T1 items to start with in your backpack. You can choose the specific slot where things will spawn for players in your save.

RESPAWN SETTINGS

• LIMIT RESPAWNS
• LIMIT PLAYER RESPAWNS INDIVIDUALLY
• DEFAULT RESPAWN LIMIT

These options allow you to set a limited number of respawns individually or in a shared pool before a GAME OVER state gets triggered for a permadeath experience. Fear not though, your save will still be accessible, but it will be automatically converted to a Creative Mode save in which achievements and missions can no longer be completed.

POWER SETTINGS

• GLOBAL POWER GENERATION MULTIPLIER
• GLOBAL POWER CONSUMPTION MULTIPLIER
• SOLAR POWER GENERATION MULTIPLIER
• WIND POWER GENERATION MULTIPLIER

These are pretty self-explanatory, the default (1) is vanilla Astroneer value, and you can slide the bar to change how it scales up or down!

OXYGEN SETTINGS

• OXYGEN CONSUMPTION MULTIPLIER
• FREE OXYGEN TOGGLE

Also self-explanatory, but likely to be somewhat controversial, you can just set the game to allow for free oxygen. While this might make the game “easy” we believe having this option is a good one. For players who want a chill story mode experience, or for players for whom managing oxygen prevents them from enjoying the game we believe letting players choose to opt into this is great for accessibility. Play with your kids or your partners with no worries about suffocation <3

RESEARCH SETTINGS & RESEARCH CATALOG SETTINGS

• STARTING RESEARCH BYTES
• RESEARCH REWARD MULTIPLIER
• RESEARCH SPEED MULTIPLIER

The first is self-explanatory, while the others are specific to how many bytes you receive, as well as how fast. These multipliers will modify the default values for all research items.

This page also allows you to stop certain items from ever being researched via bundles:

• DISABLE VEHICLES
• DISABLE POWER GENERATORS
• DISABLE OXYGEN ITEMS
• DISABLE PRINTERS
• DISABLE BASE MODULES
• DISABLE PLATFORMS
• DISABLE SHUTTLES

These will allow you to stop items from being researched, but not found in the world. Hover over the checkbox to see the full list of items in each bundle.

SOLAR SYSTEM SETTINGS

This is the big one, you can now modify planet generation across the SOL system. These work via modifiers, and can be adjusted per planet or per biome. You can even set specific seeds so other players can share their amazing start points or seeds so players can experience the exact planet generation. Speedrunners take notice!

PLANET WIDE SETTINGS

• GRAVITY
• SEED
• AMBIENT WIND RATE
• RANDOM GUST WIND RATE

BIOME MODIFIERS – All modifiers can be adjusted per biome including cave layers

• BIOME WEIGHT
• POI FREQUENCY
• DECORATOR FREQUENCY
• PUZZLE FREQUENCY
• RESOURCE FREQUENCY
• SNAIL SHELL FREQUENCY

ASTROPEDIA

Astropedia now has two new pages: The first addition allows players to see the active custom game settings in a list, so you know what things are active in the save you are playing in.

The second is the addition of the credits. The list was getting a little long for our end-game cutscene so we added it to Astropedia so you can read the names of all of the awesome humans past and future that have worked on Astroneer.

New Cosmetic Item

Unlock the “Old Gold” palette by completing the game in hard mode on any save. You must use the following parameters in order to qualify:

• Limit Respawns: Active
• Default Respawn Count: 0
• Free Oxygen: Off

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DISCLAIMER: There are so many options here and we did our best to test them across all platforms, but there are bound to be some interesting results based on how many changes we have made. Please report anything you see to us! That also means you might be able to do things like softlock your save or degrade performance by spawning in tons of things via planet settings. As we mentioned above, we opted to give you options rather than limit them, so if your GTX 1060 starts melting because you set every slider to max, do not be mad at us!

OK, that is all for this one, we are so excited to get this into the communities’ hands and I personally am so proud of the team for this one. This was my first update at the helm of the team working on Astroneer and I am consistently so surprised that our little 6-year-old game is still showing up in bestseller lists and making millions more players happy. Can’t wait to share what we have coming next.

-jt