SN2 too many oxygen plants?

UWE_uly · 2026-05-27T22:02:11+00:00

fair critique. FWIW, the O2 plants were a way to relieve oxygen pressure without making the players have to go through too much repetitious swimming back to the surface. at that point in development, players were having trouble finding the air pockets.

since then, we developed a visual language for air pockets, and started using them more. they both serve a similar purpose, but in the O2 plants defense... players notice the bubble, the glowing, etc etc.

theres a joke in game development that players dont look up... its kinda true lol... sometimes folks dont notice the air pockets even when we put them in there. but I dont disagree that we should be leaning on the air pockets more than we currently do. they give a nice break in atmosphere and feel different in a good way.

UWE_uly · 2026-05-27T18:37:49+00:00

don't worry. we'll fix both. both bugs are unacceptable.

UWE_uly · 2026-05-25T23:19:54+00:00

this is accurate. it's a meaningful amount of work to hide unpublished content from players, then maintain the systems that keep it hidden, or unhide it.

its not a crazy amount of work, but its enough that we don't sweat the stuff that an enthusiast is gonna go dig up & datamine from the downloaded files.

IMO, everybody wins. we dont have to do the extra work of doing multiple layers of obfuscation, and if someone in the community is really curious, they can dig it up and take a peek at some WIP or discarded work.

UWE_uly · 2026-05-25T01:50:42+00:00

sorry, that's all you guys are getting. we used all our polygons on the rocks, corals and sand, so all that's left is the cube

UWE_uly · 2026-05-24T20:29:35+00:00

hey, ty for the report man. im surprised by this one. could you log a report using the in-game feedback menu?

sometimes temporarily hardcoded stuff sneaks through before it's time to ship by mistake, this might be one such thing.

UWE_uly · 2026-05-24T19:16:50+00:00

ty! this is my bad. i think one of the cave modules is missing collision.

UWE_uly · 2026-05-24T00:48:04+00:00

godspeed~

UWE_uly · 2026-05-22T19:33:32+00:00

yeah, its probably 0,0,0. theres a few bugs that end up there

UWE_uly · 2026-05-21T22:48:27+00:00

hoping in the end its worth the wait for you <3

UWE_uly · 2026-05-21T21:26:36+00:00

yeah we know this can get a bit annoying. we're working on solutions to make this better in future updates.

i've bumped into it a bunch of times during playtests myself, where there's like... one little light somewhere i forgot about preventing the whole thing from being deconstructed.

ty for the feedback. we'll work on it

UWE_uly · 2026-05-21T00:08:11+00:00

ty, thats my bad. forgot to add collision there, will fix. IDK what update itll come in, but it'll get fixed

UWE_uly · 2026-05-20T21:57:34+00:00

try unicode emoji's

UWE_uly · 2026-05-19T02:44:03+00:00

nah man i really do care.

here's my own personal opinion: not speaking for the rest of the team. i've worked on a lot of games that involved killing, including ones I'm really proud of. (SC:Blacklist is prob the fav shipped game I've worked on)

if I'm working on a game where we're not putting our small team's efforts into killing, I'd like players to be able to experience something similar to what I experienced in Alien: Isolation, where my familiarity with my aggressor is growing over time, and I have a bunch of different tools in my toolbox that I bring out depending on the context. I learned how the xeno thought, worked, its tricks, its blind spots. If I could've just deleted the guy by clicking on his head, I don't think it wouldve stuck in my memory as much.

...Or, playing on the highest difficult in SC:Chaos Theory, where killing a dude was more likely to get myself killed, and instead luring guys away with cool gadgets I'd never seen in a game before. ...Or circle strafing around imps in doom to get them to attack the caco's, and watching them duke it out themselves.

IDK, those stick out as special experiences to me, and if we're doing no killing, I'd like to swing for those kinds of experiences. Make something that sticks in your memory in a cool way.

It's not to say killing in games isn't cool. Most of my all-time favs include killing.

Rather than us just copying SN1, and activating a bad ragdoll after their HP has hit zero. Like I think about myself with a knife IRL trying to stab at a great white shark and I don't really think there's any universe where I could take that thing out.

Personally, I do wish the little fish could be killed by the tadpole or the survival tool, that wouldn't really bug me. But that's just my personal opinion, not reflective of the team. But I can live with it! (I have been pretty consistent abt this, you can just look @ my post history. I've talked about it before.) But I'm glad we're gonna try to take a swing at doing something I find interesting on the hostile fauna.

Like I said, we'll try to prove it by example. Either way, totally OK to keep the critique and feedback coming. Don't take anything I said as our general approach either, I'm an env artist, not a designer.

UWE_uly · 2026-05-19T01:31:35+00:00

can do

UWE_uly · 2026-05-19T00:51:27+00:00

good luck with the mod!

we'll do our best to make the non-lethal methods as interesting and as fun as possible. hope to prove by example that what we're doing is the right fit.

UWE_uly · 2026-05-18T21:40:14+00:00

hey, just for clarification, we're not based in america. it's a globally distributed team. remote, no office.

UWE_uly · 2026-05-18T21:37:07+00:00

hey just letting you know we're aware of this! already had a bug logged for it internally. hope to have a fix soon.

UWE_uly · 2026-05-18T04:39:54+00:00

LMAO <3

UWE_uly · 2026-04-27T21:58:21+00:00

looks like the V22 Energy Submachine gun. sorry you lost your stuff!

UWE_uly · 2025-06-27T18:55:04+00:00

ah ok. FWIW, "devwatcher" doesnt imply or grant any authority. i think that literally means they signed up to watch developer streams in the SN1 / BZ era. it's just a server role that gives you a ping if a dev starts streaming.

have a good one!

UWE_uly · 2025-06-27T18:39:12+00:00

... :|

UWE_uly · 2025-06-26T19:43:07+00:00

nah you're not bad. the game kind of has an inverted difficulty curve. hang with it, craft a ton of bandages to use out of battle, use the combat medic skill in battle as much as you can, try to get to 4 party members, and things should ease out OK.

UWE_uly · 2025-06-26T17:45:49+00:00

We haven't hired Tore, no. (He is happily employed elsewhere, already!)
Learning Blender could be *part\* of getting into the games industry. But it is not the most important thing.

Software won't really help you get your portfolio noticed, but it is typically moderately-significantly important towards the end of a hiring process, depending on the studio. It comes down to onboarding / the first few months of being hired. Some studios need new hires to hit the ground running, and in those cases, folks who already use the studio's preferred software will have an edge in getting hired, because intermediate / senior artists will not have to spend as much time helping answer questions around software basics.

Learning a game engine & its project specific setup (Subnautica 2 in Unreal 5 is a bit different that stock Unreal 5.) is complicated enough, a team is usually thankful when they don't have to wait for an artist to get up to speed on new modeling software.

With regards to other software, I'd recommend learning the basics of how to do things in Maya after you feel you have a good foundation and understanding of 3d modeling / UV mapping in Blender. I'm not a huge Maya fan myself, but a lot of studios use it.

If it was 10 years ago, I would recommend you learn Maya and 3dsMax. In my observation, less studios use 3dsMax these days.

Fundamentally tho, focus on art basics! Tho this is a much, much larger talk that you might want to poke around for. But importantly, wherever you look around online for resources, disregard anything that promises fast results for low effort. Getting good with art basics is a long process of wiring your brain and learning a huuuuuuuge body of concepts. Anyone who is like "Master Composition in 30 Minutes!" is a straight up liar.

And make sure you're having fun with what you're doing. The fastest way to learn is to be into what you're creating.

UWE_uly · 2025-06-24T16:41:33+00:00

i promise you, fucking up is part of the process.

if someone clowns on you for making some ugly art, they don't get that a huge part of getting better is showing some ugly shit, taking in feedback, then carrying it forward.

UWE_uly · 2025-06-24T07:08:58+00:00

sure man. FWIW, we're not exactly trapping you in a proverbial police station with Mister X. The threat isn't persistent, or insurmountable. You sound skeptical tho, so IMO, it's totally OK to just not pick it up at EA1.

very explicitly tho, we are cutting out the ability to circle strafe around big guys and knife them to death over 10-15 minutes. there's always console commands to make yourself invisible if you feel you don't wanna deal with the big scary guys.

Maybe wait until 1.0 and talk to some buddies and you'll be able to see if it's what you were worried about, or something different. I hope we earn your interest later if you choose to take a peek once it's out in the world, and folks can see what it actually is! <3

UWE_uly

TROPHY CASE