Sandustry Hotfix v0.5.3: Logging, Memory and Clearer Objectives

TL;DR for players

This is a stability patch and nothing else. No new materials, no new machines, no balance changes. Its real purpose is to make the next patch possible: the developers added substantially more diagnostic logging so that the crash reports they were receiving could actually be acted on. Alongside that, three concrete wins for players — rain clouds use far less memory, blocked factory tiers now tell you why they are blocked, and there is an optional launch flag to try if your machine crashes on startup.

Diagnostics and logging

The bulk of this release is instrumentation. Diagnostics and improved logging were added ahead of a larger patch aimed at the crashes and problems players had been reporting, on the reasonable theory that a crash you cannot see is a crash you cannot fix.

The log file locations are documented for all three platforms, with the Windows path given as %AppData%/sandustry/logs/main.log and equivalents on macOS and Linux. If you are filing a bug report, that file is the single most useful thing you can attach.

Fixes and improvements

Instructional videos now unmount properly. Previously they could exhaust the video decoder, which is a slow-building failure mode — the game feels fine and then abruptly does not, usually after you have hovered a lot of tutorial previews.

Clouds rendered when Steam condenses into rain now use much less memory. This is the change most likely to be felt directly in a large factory, since anyone running condensation-heavy Water recycling was generating a lot of cloud geometry.

When a factory tier is blocked by an objective, the game now shows you why. Translations for the new text were still pending at release, so some languages may show English strings. Special objectives were also made visually clearer.

Finally, a new launch option: --sandustry-no-overlay-gpu-flags, set through Steam by right-clicking Sandustry, choosing Properties, and entering it under Launch Options. It may help prevent crashes on affected hardware. The trade-off is that it disables the Steam overlay, though achievements continue to work normally.

What this means for your factory

Nothing in this patch changes a recipe, a ratio or a machine, so no existing layout needs rebuilding. The practical implications are about stability rather than design.

If you are crashing, the launch flag is worth trying, accepting the loss of the Steam overlay as the cost. If you are reporting a crash, check main.log at the documented path and include it — that is precisely why the logging was expanded. If you run steam condensation or rain-heavy setups, expect reduced memory usage and fewer of the slowdowns and crashes that came with them. Tutorial and instructional-video playback should be more stable now that decoder exhaustion is fixed. And if you were stuck wondering why a factory tier refused to unlock, the game will now tell you which objective is holding it.

Treat this one as maintenance. The content changes arrive in the numbered updates that follow.

Affected guides and materials

Nothing here alters material behaviour, but the memory work touches anyone running a condensation loop.

The official announcement is linked below; the summary above is our paraphrase rather than a reproduction of it.