PATCH NOTES 0.3 - Lava Levels, Mac & Controller Support

Patch Notes 0.3

(version 0.3.4, including Beta Patches 0.3, 0.3.1, 0.3.2, 0.3.3)

☀️ Fixes & Improvements Based on Community Feedback

Cinnakeet & New Levels

• Added campaign sectors 12, 13, and 14 with new story and dialogue

• Introduced a new star system: Cinnakeet

• Added new feature: Lava

• Added new feature: Cooling overheated buildings

• Added new feature: Alien Trader

• Added new energy generation methods: Bio Energy Reactor and Geothermic Reactor

• ☀️ Added new logistics building: Resource Filter, obtainable from the Alien Trader

• Added 8 new buildings

• Added 2 new alien plants

• Added 7 new resources

• Added 8 new hidden resources with secret crafting recipes

• Implemented 3 new cutscenes

• Added alien trader dialogue character, speaking in alien language

Free Play Mode

• Moved Free Play mode to the main menu

• ☀️ Added many features to Free Play mode: Plateaus, Ice, Plants, Seedlings, Spider Ducks, Wigglers, Alien Trader, Slime, Lava, and Heat

• Added the Kardashev Scale to configure advancement state, available energy generators and production buildings

• ☀️ Added 15 Free Play mode challenges

• All star systems, features, buildings, and crafting recipes can now be unlocked in Free Play mode without playing the campaign

• Improved goal complexity calculation

• Some craftable resources, such as Carbon and Quartz, can now appear as natural resources

• ☀️ Stats and victory screens in Free Play mode now display more relevant information

☀️Controller Support

• Star Birds can now be played with controller

• Added controller navigation for asteroid view, building placement, and pipe drawing via a 3D cursor

• Added controller navigation and interaction for the star system map

• Added switching between UI and Game Layer with Y, using quick jump or radial menu

• Added D-Pad hotkeys for quick access to important UI sections

• Added X button support to move or recall buildings

• Added left and right shoulder buttons to switch directly between asteroids

• Added priority-based quest selection to quickly collect quest rewards or accept new quests

• Added controller support for menu, level selection, and UI navigation

• Added gamepad input labels for some less obvious shortcuts

• Added UI scaling to parts of the UI, more will follow in upcoming updates

☀️ Mac Support

• Star Birds is now playable on Mac with Apple Silicon processors

☀️ Total Score & Leaderboards

• Added new Total Score display in the main menu

• Added Total Score leaderboard: the sum of all stars collected across all levels

• Added Campaign Highscore leaderboard: the sum of highscores across all campaign levels

• Added in-game leaderboard display with a Friends Only filter

• Improved calculation of the maximum achievable score in campaign levels

New Achievements & Perks

• Added 21 new achievements

• Added 7 new perks

Visuals

• Added new star system visuals, color scheme, and star design for Cinnakeet

• Added new level selection area and main menu visuals for Cinnakeet

• Overhauled the look and feel of the star system map

• Added icons for new buildings, resources, Free Play mode features, and achievements

• ☀️ Different resource entities in pipes now have different colors

• Space station and star system map colors now differ per star system

• Added new dialogue backgrounds

• Added many new VFX for new features and improved some existing VFX

Audio

• Implemented new music track that only plays in Cinnakeet

• Implemented new and improved sound effects for many gameplay actions

• ☀️ Added sound effects for many gameplay actions that did not have sound yet

• Improved the general audio mix

Improvements

• Rover now drives faster on ice and slower on slime

• ☀️ Added an experimental resource crafting tree, accessible via the Wiki

• Resource and building icons embedded in dialogues now have a light blue backdrop for better readability

• Launch Pads and Landing Pads can now always be placed on unscanned plateaus, if allowed in the sector, and will trigger scanning of those plateaus

• Energy and cooling requirements are now previewed while placing buildings

• ☀️ Rover nuggets no longer respawn immediately when all nuggets on an asteroid are collected; instead, they reduce the timer of one random spawner to 10 seconds

• Improved random position calculation for landmarks, pre-placed buildings, and plants. It is now more performant and should no longer prevent spawning when enough space is available

• Reduced unnecessary memory allocations in asteroid generation

• ☀️ Massively improved asteroid generation performance through more optimized algorithms

• Launch Pads can now send rockets to Landing Pads on the same asteroid

• When more than 9 production buildings are available in one level, they are split into Production and Advanced Production categories

• Improved building hover UI positioning, so the speech bubble pointer now points to the building instead of overlapping it or pointing away when the bubble becomes too large

• Buildings that cannot be purchased, such as plants, are considered locked until they are discovered or received in the inventory. For example, quests asking for fruit now only appear after the player has access to plants that produce fruit

• ☀️ Wiki building section now only displays buildings available in the current level, not all buildings

• Added a confirmation screen before quitting the game

• ☀️ Wall-mounted buildings, such as Geothermic Reactor and Ramp, can now be placed when the pointer is close to the wall instead of only directly on it

• Unlock effects are now queued, so they no longer overlap when multiple unlocks trigger at once

• Reduced collider size of Small Explosive, allowing placement closer to other obstacles

• ☀️ Ramps now have fixed lanes for pipes, always allowing 4 pipes per ramp

• Default zoom level in the star system map is now based on UI scale, starting closer when UI scale is higher

• ☀️ Quest bar on the left now fills the full screen height when no excavation or Alien Trader quest is present

• UI scale is now initialized according to device: 1.5x on Steam Deck, otherwise 1x. UI scale remains fully configurable in the settings menu

• Sector 05: Rust’s explosive comment now triggers after the explosion, not when placing the explosive

• ☀️ Sector 05: Small Explosive research sequence can now be started before the first excavation quest, hopefully reducing confusion about missing small craters.

• Added selection and hover outline to supply quest icons

• ☀️ Pipe hub now tries to alternate between inputs when input and output connections are jammed; previously, it always preferred the input from the same pipe

• Camera now focuses on the selected asteroid when switching to the star system map

• Added 0.3 player survey, accessible via the news section

• Sector 2.1: Natural resources are no longer selected randomly, so the maximum reachable score stays consistent.

• AdjustedSector 2.1Changed the score achievement to require 75% of the maximum reachable score instead of 100%.

• Added bird buffet Seed → Fertilizer recipe.

• All secret resources are now previewed on the Rewards screen.

• ☀️ Rover can now be controlled directly via Left Stick on Gamepad or WASD on keyboard as an alternative to rover path drawing.

• Added ambience volume slider.

• Rover now ignores pipes when being placed, and pipes ignore rover when being drawn, making the behavior consistent with actual rover movement ignoring pipes.

• With every new free play mode game, if there is any secret resource craftable with the current settings, one is made available, displaying its crafting recipe in the Wiki. It can be selected as goal resource and discovered in the sector.

• Slightly increased goal complexity values for medium and high complexity in free play mode.

• Changed crafting recipes of bird buffet recipes that turn more complex food into Fertilizer to produce two units instead of one, output into the same pipe.

• Building level is now shown in the screen edge tooltip when hovering over a building.

• Reduced default quest icon size to 80% of the original.

• Added star system map panning with WASD.

• Minor improvements for sector 02 and sector 04

• Ramps can now be placed on Ice and Slime.

• Stats screen and victory screen now also display level achievements that were completed before the level started

• Added save game backups as a fallback for when save files are corrupted.

• ☀️ Save data is now stored in a directory that includes the Steam User ID, allowing multiple Steam profiles to keep separate save files on the same device.

• AddedNoteOn the first launch with a new profile, existing save data in the general directory will be copied into the user directory. This may take a few seconds.

Bugfixes

• ☀️ Fixed Solar Panels sometimes no longer producing energy when cycling through asteroids

• ☀️ Fixed infinite money glitch when two nugget spawners are very close to each other

• Fixed small plateau bridges appearing between plateaus with very narrow gaps

• Fixed perks in the Perk Screen being unavailable when a building is locked in the current run, even though it is unlocked globally

• ☀️ Fixed asteroid scanning probe visually getting stuck while scanning an asteroid

• ☀️ Fixed Continue button breaking when deleting the last savegame

• ☀️ Fixed pressing Esc while loading a savegame causing the main menu to load on top of the running game

• Fixed tooltip not anchoring correctly to its UI element when displayed for the first time

• ☀️ Fixed rover driving backwards in loading screen animation

• Fixed rover mistakenly connecting to launch pad and playing an old sound effect when doing so.

• ☀️ Removed outdated crafting recipes that caused non-craftable resources to be counted in the maximum score calculation.

• ☀️ Fixed Launch Pad level 03 upgrade not changing rocket capacity.

• ☀️ Fixed bug in pipe drawing that could cause other systems to break as a consequence, resulting in asteroids not being unloaded and multiple asteroids appearing merged with each other.

• ☀️ Fixed some resources being considered as potential module quest resources twice, resulting in the game displaying a missing module quest but not actually generating one when clicked, displaying an empty speech bubble.

• ☀️ Fixed bird buffet Fruit → Fertilizer recipe crafting speed not being affected by building upgrades.

• It is now possible to land on double-elevated plateaus in Free Play Mode.

• Fixed the radial progress bar occasionally showing floating end pieces.

• The rover no longer scans parts of higher plateau layers when driving over craters.

• ☀️ Fixed birds overlapping dialogue box borders at resolutions other than 16:9.

• Improved error handling for corrupted objects in save data.

• Fixed issues caused by switching asteroid while drawing pipes.

The best place to give feedback is our Discord server. There, we are running a Smart Ticketing System: Leave feedback, vote up change requests and bug reports from other users, and help us to prioritize tasks in the further development of Star Birds.

🙏 A special thanks to everyone who joined the Beta Test during the last few weeks. 🙏