Patch Notes 1.9.8 - Additional Collections, New Perks
In this patch you may now do "Additional Collections" to spend 10 reputation to get 10 ticks of income. You need a net income of at least $1,000/tick to use it. This will also give you 10 aggression, which will hurt your income while it ticks down. The button is on the map screen
In this patch you may now do "Additional Collections" to spend 10 reputation to get 10 ticks of income. You need a net income of at least $1,000/tick to use it. This will also give you 10 aggression, which will hurt your income while it ticks down. The button is on the map screen.
I have added two new perks. The first is "Collection Gangs", which doubles the income from "Additional Collections". The next perk is "Athletics". This gives a small 10% HP boost, increases sprint speed by 25% and quadruples your sprint and swim timers. Your sprint meter will recharge at the same rate, but decrease at 1/4 of the un-perked rate. This makes your character go fassssst
Finally I multithreaded texture decoding on game startup. Before the game would load each texture one-by-one. Now a thread pool loads each file, decodes it, does DXT compression and mipmap generation. Finally it is uploaded to opengl singlethreaded. Because it is multithreaded we can decode a texture while another one is being fetched from disc. This decreases game load time on my maching from ~9.5s down to 1.5s. Disc i/o is still a bottleneck, the speed up is most noticable when the files are cached by the OS.
In Turf 2 news, I have been busy working on World Generation. In Voxel Turf, the map is divided into lots and you control territory surrounding a base. In Turf2, the world is divided into Neighbourhoods (about 2x the size of VT's base radius), Suburbs (groups of ~16 neighbourhoods), City Tiles (groups of 16 Suburbs) and Supergroups (groups of ~16 City Tiles). Rivers will flow from inland sources to the sea, and they will either flow around city tiles (making good natural borders) or flow through the middle of city tiles (making a good place for settlement). Not every City Tile will be a city, some will be farmlands, mountains, deserts, etc.
Above: A part of the world divided into superregions, City Tiles and Suburbs.
Follow the discord to keep up-to-date with Turf 2 news, I post near-daily updates of what I'm working on.
https://discord.gg/UDV6qGj
EDIT: Hotfix on 19/05/26 adds a flag to enable the dGPU on hybrid laptops
Full Changelog:
VERSION 1.9.8 - 18/05/26
===========
- [Feature] - You can now do Additional Collections. This costs 10 reputation, gives you 10 aggression but instantly gives you 10 ticks of income
- [Feature] - New Perk - Collection Gangs. Doubles the income from Additional Collections.
- [Feature] - New Perk - Athletics. Increases sprint speed and time, and lets you stay underwater longer. Also gives +10% HP.
- [Performance] - Multithreaded texture loading at game start. On my machine it lowers loading time from 9.5s -> 1.5s. Loading is still bottlenecked by disc i/o, but loading, DXT compression and mip-map generation is now down by thread pool.
- [Misc] - Added some flags so that NVidia Optimus/AMD PowerXpress will enable the dGPU on hybrid laptops
- [Bugfix] - Fixed selecting inventory item using mouse scrollwheel on linux
- [Bugfix] - Fixed stun/auth server domains
Original post
I have added two new perks. The first is "Collection Gangs", which doubles the income from "Additional Collections". The next perk is "Athletics". This gives a small 10% HP boost, increases sprint speed by 25% and quadruples your sprint and swim timers. Your sprint meter will recharge at the same rate, but decrease at 1/4 of the un-perked rate. This makes your character go fassssst
Finally I multithreaded texture decoding on game startup. Before the game would load each texture one-by-one. Now a thread pool loads each file, decodes it, does DXT compression and mipmap generation. Finally it is uploaded to opengl singlethreaded. Because it is multithreaded we can decode a texture while another one is being fetched from disc. This decreases game load time on my maching from ~9.5s down to 1.5s. Disc i/o is still a bottleneck, the speed up is most noticable when the files are cached by the OS.
In Turf 2 news, I have been busy working on World Generation. In Voxel Turf, the map is divided into lots and you control territory surrounding a base. In Turf2, the world is divided into Neighbourhoods (about 2x the size of VT's base radius), Suburbs (groups of ~16 neighbourhoods), City Tiles (groups of 16 Suburbs) and Supergroups (groups of ~16 City Tiles). Rivers will flow from inland sources to the sea, and they will either flow around city tiles (making good natural borders) or flow through the middle of city tiles (making a good place for settlement). Not every City Tile will be a city, some will be farmlands, mountains, deserts, etc.
Above: A part of the world divided into superregions, City Tiles and Suburbs.
Follow the discord to keep up-to-date with Turf 2 news, I post near-daily updates of what I'm working on.
https://discord.gg/UDV6qGj
EDIT: Hotfix on 19/05/26 adds a flag to enable the dGPU on hybrid laptops
Full Changelog:
VERSION 1.9.8 - 18/05/26
===========
- [Feature] - You can now do Additional Collections. This costs 10 reputation, gives you 10 aggression but instantly gives you 10 ticks of income
- [Feature] - New Perk - Collection Gangs. Doubles the income from Additional Collections.
- [Feature] - New Perk - Athletics. Increases sprint speed and time, and lets you stay underwater longer. Also gives +10% HP.
- [Performance] - Multithreaded texture loading at game start. On my machine it lowers loading time from 9.5s -> 1.5s. Loading is still bottlenecked by disc i/o, but loading, DXT compression and mip-map generation is now down by thread pool.
- [Misc] - Added some flags so that NVidia Optimus/AMD PowerXpress will enable the dGPU on hybrid laptops
- [Bugfix] - Fixed selecting inventory item using mouse scrollwheel on linux
- [Bugfix] - Fixed stun/auth server domains
Secondly you can now remove captured bandit bases from the map with the "Raze Bandit Base" button. This will convert it to an empty lot, but level up a nearby bandit base.
In terms of bug fixes I have hopefully fixed the fix of the fix of the "Exit To Menu" freeze bug I have also upgraded the crash logger so it can properly log crashes outside of the main thread
The prison is about the same size as the Military base but can be attacked right from the game start (although its really not recommended). The reward for holding it is +5 Allure which will help you unlock perks faster. It starts at Level 3 and has a maximum level of 10.
A more typical performance boost is in the order of ~+50% with both techniques enabled.
Test scene (screen resolution has changed from 1080p to 900p in these tests but do not effect results)
The Stat Windows can be spawned by pressing TAB, then navigating to Players and Diplomacy, then pressing the "Spawn Stats Window" button at the bottom of the window. Stats windows let you monitor Networth/Territory/Bases Owned/Bandit Bases Captured/Control Points Owned/Special Buildings Owned for each faction.
Full Changelog:
VERSION 1.8.0 - 10/07/2021
===========
- [Misc] - Bandits (owner == 0) in base attacks/control points no longer wear colours
- [Misc] - MTTH for bandits to retake a bandit base increased to 15 minutes
VERSION 1.8.0-RC1 - 04/07/2021
===========
- [Feature] - Added Stats windows! You can spawn one from the Players menu
- [Feature] - Added an Observatory as a control point!
- [Misc] - Bandits can recapture bandit bases if they hold at least one bandit base on the map (MTTH = once every 10 minutes). Bandits will repair the lot upon capture
- [Misc] - Control points spawning code modified so that they are very unlikey to spawn near each other and very unlikely to spawn near the centre or edge of the map
- [Bugfix] - Joining a faction now transfers any control points to the faction
- [Bugfix] - Fixed graphics settings menu setting borderless window to the opposite of what was requested
- [Bugfix] - Fixed some biome y=10 block rules for Control Points
- [Bugfix] - Hills bandit bases are no longer sunken if repaired (requires a new map to take effect)
VERSION 1.6.11a - 30/12/2020
==========
- [Feature] - Added the "marks" system for construction with server commands
- Enable with "/marks on"
- Disable with "/marks off"
- While active, when you place a block the position will be Marked as will the block you placed
- When you use "/fill m" it will fill from Mark1 to Mark2 with the second block placed
- When you use "/replace m" it will replace the first block placed with the second block placed from Mark1 to Mark2
- [Bugfix] - Added a threshold for gpu vbo unloading to prevent constant loading/unloading of vbos to the gpu.
VERSION 1.6.11 - 30/12/2020
==========
- [Bugfix] - Another world-hole fix
- [Misc] - /fly speed has been increased 50%
- [Misc] - ChunkRender thread pool now uses only 2 threads while the game is running. While the game is *loading* it'll still use the full pool. The game was rendering chunks too quickly causing frame drops as they were being uploaded to the GPU.
- [Misc] - When the client is approaching full GPU memory utilisation, it will more aggressively unloads vbos at a slightly lower threshold than before, but does not cut the draw distance in half until a later threshold is reached.
- [Misc] - Draw distance increase skydome radius increase animation made more smooth. Makes the yo-yoing of the skydome a lot more comfortable when flying
- [Misc] - Changed chunk unloading again. Vtclient will unload chunks when a chunk count threshold is reached. Only chunks outside of your draw distance are unloaded. This results in smoother performance than if chunks are checked every frame
- If you have less than 7GB of system memory vtclient will unload out-of-draw-distance chunks if there is more than 800, and will stop unloading when the count is less than 100
- If you have less than 7GB - 15GB, unloading starts at 4000 and stops at 400
- If you have less than 15GB - 30GB, unloading starts at 16000 and stops at 4000
- If you have more than 30GB, unloading starts at 25000 and stops at 4000
- [Misc] - The client will only request chunks from the server within 160m of the player while it is unloading the above chunks.
- [Misc] - If the client has its draw distance reduced due to frametimes being too high it will lower the chunk request radius accordingly
- [Misc] - If the client receives a chunk from the server and the chunk is out of the player's draw distance (because, eg the player has moved significantly between requesting and receiving), the client will store the chunk outside of the main chunk store (thus preventing main thread water/lighting calcs for out of range chunks).
- [Misc] - Server now reports system mem when you use /status command. Note that this may or may not include pagefile usage depending on platform
- [Misc] - Slight optimisation of client chunk download from server + netcode optimisation to stop the client getting more laggy over time as more messages are received
VERSION 1.6.10 - 27/12/2020
==========
- [Bugfix] - Fixed clientside world holes introduced in previous hotfix
- [Bugfix] - Fixed CTD on "Return to Main Menu"
- [Bugfix] - Fixed "No Road Access" when using MARK_AS_ROAD lotpack lots
VERSION 1.6.9 - 27/12/2020
==========
- [Performance] - Client now handles chunk counts better - this greatly reduces lag spikes due to too many chunks being loaded
- [Performance] - Client unloading of VBOs and chunks is now staggered to prevent an iteration over 10k chunks.
- [Performance] - Client unloading of VBOs and chunks has been further tuned.
VERSION 1.6.8 - 25/12/2020
==========
- [Performance] - Chunk polygonisation is now VERY multithreaded. This is the "Rendering Chunks" stage of the loading screen + happens when you move to a new area to load the chunks onto the screen. Expect roughly (nThreads/2)x speedup (for 24 threads a 12x speedup).
This also seems to help the game maintain peak framerates when rendering long draw distances. The game still does stutter when moving quickly when high draw distances are enabled, but it is better now.
- [Misc] - Added an "Extreme 2" graphics preset that sets the draw distance to 1,000m.
- [Misc] - The hardcoded max draw distance has been increased to 3,000m. To reach this you have to manually type this in the graphics settings menu
- [Misc] - Building canals over water will now no longer raise the depth of existing water, only lower it.
To allow alternating streetlights I've also added a ALT_AVAIL flag for LotPack items.
Its a control point, giving +1 Base Attack Limit, +1 Base Attack Limit Cap and a slight economic boost in the form of +2 Industry Desirability. But more importantly its a spawn point for tanks! Tanks that spawn here will be loyal to their controller and will defend against enemy attack.
The defenders are very strong - they start at garrison level 6 (same strength as the first dungeon)
Due to the nature of tanks appearing in a Control Point, I've modified tanks so that they can capture lots if driven by the AI or driven by a player.
Finally I added an in-game timer. This is useful for the speed-running achievements, but its also just a nice thing to have. It'll display the hours and minutes you've been playing. Strategic pause will pause the timer (and pause it for achievements)
...and a Bandit Base variant!
This an edited version of the command I used to generate the "Lets Build The World" map.
vtserver --saveGame SAVE_NAME --genmap VERT_SIZE HORZ_SIZE --loadBitmapMap YOU_BITMAP.bmp --mapGenSeaMod -30 --mapGenHillsMod -35 --gameMode "Turf Zero"
Be sure to save your bitmaps in RGB24 format.
Bandits in dungeons are stronger than the bandit base inhabitants you're used too. They start at fortification level 6, and progress to level 10. The number of dungeons on the map is dependent on the number of hills lots on the map with a maximum of 5 spawning, space permitting. Each dungeon is progressively bigger than the last.
You can enter the spire at any time, but to be able to capture dungeon rooms you need a relevant key to disable the shields between rooms. To get the key for the first dungeon, the Blue Dungeon Key, you can do one of three things:
1. You can take the "Dungeon Debts" mission and pay the Schemer $50k for one. This mission will spawn once you reach level 10.
2. You can take the Griever's mission to kill Blasty McSurprise, Blasty himself drops a Blue Dungeon Key when he dies.
3. Blue Dungeon Keys are rare loot spawns in Bandit Bases.
In each dungeon there is a Bandit King who functions as the boss, who drops a lot of valuable items + a key to the next dungeon, and perhaps more importantly, they drop a crown you can wear! If you are playing in multiplayer then they'll drop multiple keys.
While in a dungeon you cannot tele-buy items, so stock up on healing items first! I firmly recommend that you level up a bit first (level 10 is a good guide for the first one), and get a few combat perks + silver or gold tier weapons and mods.
Finally dungeon rooms are moddable with the lotpack system, see /lots/packs/vanilla.txt for details. Blank dungeon pieces are provided in /lots/packs/vanilla (for example dungeon_22.lot, dungeon_21.lot)
There are two kinds of factions - Unified Factions and Bloc Factions. In a Unified Factions all investment income goes into a pool and is split amongst the online players. In a Bloc factions individuals keep their money.
Individuals that are part of a faction are no longer independent and can no longer engage in diplomacy. Joining a faction will void any alliances, guarantees and warnings that you have. Instead, the faction itself can ally/guarantee/warn outside forces.
Factions have 3 tiers of membership. Normal members (can't do diplomacy), trustees (can do diplomacy), and leaders (can make trustees and more leaders, and can disband the faction).
Finally, faction members can do all the stuff that allies can do. So they can heal/respawn at friendly bases, do Co-Op missions together.
The game has a full on flag editor. You can add up to 32 layers with lots of flag elements and emblems to chose. You can recolour and reposition them to your liking. You can also mark elements as "always vertical" so they don't get rotated when the flag is rotated and you can even enable "left canton mode", so the flag is flipped when its hanged vertically, so flags like the US Flag can be hanged correctly.
Flags are moddable up the wazoo. You can add more flag layers/emblems by defining a mods/YOUR_MOD/textures/flags/flaglayers.txt file and throwing in some textures. This won't change the client's checksum, multiplayer clients with different mod-flags are able to play together (uninstalled flag parts won't be visible, but MP sessions will work). If players have the same mod-flag-parts installed they will able to see them.
Finally I've added a heap of decorative flag blocks for you to place around your bases and other holdings.
VERSION: 1.2.3 - 06/07/18
==============
- [Feature] - Added a "Mod Picker" screen to the main menu.
- The client will autodetect a preview image for installed mods. First MOD_PATH/thumbnail.tga/png/jpg is looked up, then MOD_PATH/preview.tga/png/jpg are loaded, then the first image file in the MOD_PATH/preview/ directory, then the first image in the MOD_PATH/thumbnail/ directory, then the first image in the MOD_PATH/ directory.
- [Bugfix] - If a server requests you rejoin it should now make you rejoin the right port (in the case that there are multiple servers on the same machine).
- [Bugfix] - Fixed some clientside frame rate dependent physics and graphics issues in multiplayer (ie, the Helicopters not flying bug, Helicopter blades acceleration no longer dependent on framerate, adjustments to Hovercrafts and Boats)
