NEW PLAYTEST UPDATE: Vehicles, Fixes & Visual Overhaul!

Hello Castaways!

The last two weeks have been a real storm in the engine room for our team. We’ve been working at full capacity to bring you a massive quality update to the ongoing 30 Days on Ship playtests. We took a deep dive into your incredible feedback and reports—this patch is heavily focused on fixing the bugs and crashes you encountered while exploring the ship.

Here are the most important features and fixes that just landed in the game! ⚓

🚗 Start Your Engines – Vehicles Update At Your Request!

Vehicles have received a completely overhauled control system. No more clunky transitions—now all vehicles share a unified control and input system, and you can fully remap the keys in the settings!

• Fully Functional Driving HUD: While behind the wheel, you now have a complete overview of the vehicle’s status and your surroundings.

• Inventory Blocked While Driving: No more accidental backpack openings while taking sharp turns!

• AddedVehicle Tips AddedNew vehicles now feature dedicated on-screen tips, making it easy to learn how to operate them instantly.

• Jumping Ramp Cleared: We cleared out the old tires blocking the ramp—it's time to test the limits of physics!

💥 Dynamic Pirates, Firebombs & Total Demolition

Survival sometimes requires radical measures, and exploration should always keep you on your toes. We've introduced major improvements to combat and enemy behavior:

• Slightly Smarter and More Dynamic AI: Enemies received a round of behavior fixes. They are now more responsive and dynamic in combat, making encounters much more engaging and challenging.

• New Firebomb Throw Animation: Throwing firebombs is now smoother and more precise. Perfect for... dealing with pirates?

• Pirate Island Refresh: The pirate island has gained a fresh batch of combat-ready inhabitants, replacing the previous wounded units.

• Demolition Hammer Audio + Destruction Physics Fix: Smashing the environment now features powerful audio feedback. You will truly feel every swing of the hammer against the ship's structures. Now physics is no longer occurs player!

📐 Comprehensive Level Design & Immersion Fixes

Our level design team squashed a ton of geometry issues and map exploits that you pointed out:

• AdjustedNo More Map HolesWe patched up those annoying visual holes and level streaming issues on the Middle Deck, the starting location, and the broken plane wing. We also adjusted the playtest borders to prevent vehicles from escaping bounds.

• FOV-Dependent Hand Location: No more unnaturally stretched character hands when changing your field of view. Hand and weapon placement now dynamically adjust to your FOV.

• New HUD Layout: We refreshed the user interface elements to make key survival indicators much clearer during intense combat or emergency repairs.

🌅 Unreal Engine Lighting (Lumen) & Weather Overhaul

The game world looks better than ever after updating graphic settings.

• Forced Lumen GI on Lower Specs: We want the game to look great for everyone. We have forced global illumination (Lumen GI) to run on medium and low scalability settings as well, while heavily optimizing the underlying code and required components. Some of you asked for shadows on low graphics settings - so we did it!

📜 Full Changelog (Patch Notes in a Nutshell):

• AddedVehiclesUnified Input Actions and Context, added the "Vehicle" category to input settings, fixed remapping, and resolved crashes when exiting a vehicle.
• FixedCommunity Crash & Bug FixesThanks to your detailed reports, we traced and fixed several game-crashing bugs , including a critical freeze that occurred in the Main Menu and crashes during dying enemies' attacks.
• AdjustedWorldFixed resource spawn positions from palm trees on the Middle Deck; updated item balancing and crafting recipes.
• FixedSave SystemFixed bugs related to saving the state of repairable ladders and the last used sleeping bed (skeleton mesh will finally disappear from the bed after interaction!).

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🌍 Community Translation Spotlight!

A massive project we tackled for this update was verifying and proofreading our localization. This wouldn't have been possible without our incredible community members who stepped up to review, correct, and polish the translations to make the game feel natural in every language.

Please give a huge shoutout to our community translators:

• 🇫🇷 French: Shrakito, Wycsword

• 🇩🇪 German: N3cR1d_aka_Yoshi, Master-Mind / It´s Sam

• 🇳🇱 Dutch: Applecat

• 🇨🇳 Chinese: 氿.

• 🇹🇷 Turkish: Kry

• 🇮🇹 Italian: 1lc0rv0

• 🇷🇺 Russian: agerih, Ghoster

Thank you so much for your hard work and dedication to making the ship accessible to sailors worldwide! 🔮 What Does the Future Hold? We Hear You!

We know very well that every player has a unique gameplay style. We’ve been receiving your requests for deeper options to customize the game to match your preferences. We want 30 Days on Ship to give you the exact kind of fun you are looking for.

Moving forward, we plan to introduce advanced gameplay modifiers and difficulty sliders, allowing for full gameplay customization. Our current roadmap includes adding options such as:

• Toggling whether you lose your inventory upon death.

• The ability to completely disable pirate raids for players who prefer a peaceful, sandbox survival experience.

• We are checking your opinions on discord, steam and in pools.

• ...and sand us more informations what can be next!

What's next? This week we will drop a brand-new Community Poll on our Discord server. We want to tailor these upcoming customization options exactly to your preferences, so your vote will be crucial in shaping these mechanics!

Jump into the game, test the new features, and let us know what you think of the new lighting and slightly improved pirate AI!

See you on board, Madnetic Games Team