Hello everyone,
For this week, we worked on new trees, we added new bushes, different stones, different decor for the map as well as optimized the farming system and models some more. We also addressed reported bugs and want to thank everyone for their input. We're still short of a chicken and hit marks, but they will come too :)
Fixes and improvements
- Tree and terrain decor LOD This is for performance. Objects that are further away will now render in a lower quality to enhance performance, however this technique makes it difficult for the player to even notice the change in quality as further away objects would normally be too small to see the quality of anyway.
- Steam player name When connecting to a server in the main menu, you will now notice that you cannot use a name of your own preference, in stead, your Steam name will now be used, it will also show in in-game chats as well as float above your head when close to other players
- Improvements with our new veggies Our veggies have different life stages and different life stages to us means more models and more processing. We've spent the week optimizing all these models one by one to reduce their tax on the CPU and GPU, especially seeing that some servers have laid out farms in 15x15 plots
- Axe damage bug A bug was found in the previous build where if you have 2 axes in your inventory and sent the last one to the belt, the first one in your inventory will go to the belt with the last ones reference, causing both axes to take damage when just the one is used. This has now been fixed.
- Bug report form bug A cosmetic issue, but has been rectified. Some users reported that their caption texts would go red when they entered text in the bug report form. The form would still submit fine.
- Construction items hit sound When you hit a wooden wall, it will now sound like it.
Theres minor bug fixes across the environment, we also have the nice water back without the lag tax
New additions
- New Stone Rock Players will no longer find our vertically upright stone to mine from, in stead we are introducing a new model that blends in better with the environment
- Logging back in To avoid relogging into the server over and over and scoring wood every time, players will now just be whoever they were before they logged out with their inventory restored, back where they were. If you died while you were offline, you will respawn randomly or you can spawn by your bed
- Footsteps We added footsteps for walking on wood. Next we'll put in footsteps for when the player goes through water, as soon as we create more water holes
- And of course, the new trees, bushes etc We've added a new set of trees, bushes, stones, logs and textures with flowers and more dressings on the cards. Our finishing touch will be a wall that surrounds the map, effectively isolating the player inside
Next week
We have plans and work according to a structured task system, so we have a good idea of whats coming next week, but making empty promises is just not cool, so we try to avoid making too many promises, rather under promise and over deliver, so heres a short list :)
- Combination cooking We want players to start cooking with all these meats and new veggies. So we will introduce combo cooking, where you add different produce with a meat and get a very filling stew that provides health regeneration and a hunger kick.
- Corn seeds and carrots If you want to plant corn and wheat, then lets do it! Mielie pap, anyone?
- Name your bed It can get confusing to identify your bed when you have 4 and they have 4 digit numbers for names, lets change it!
Until next time ~ Happy surviving!
Jean