Hey There Everyone!
We are creeping closer and closer to our Early Access release date and with that we've been making some massive changes. We are super excited to get them in your hands and hear what you think about them:
Optimization
We spent a good amount of time optimizing the game. Both in terms of rendering and game logic. We reworked how our renderer handles voxel data to allow not only for more efficient space skipping. We now store all voxel data in the gpu in a format that allows us to do some bitwise operations to determine if and 8^3, 4^3, or 2^3 region of voxels is empty before finally checking the lowest 1^3 level. In simple terms we use a smaller amount of faster operations during rendering. In even simpler terms: less + faster more gooder than more + slower.
This new structure also comes with more or less also built in levels of detail (LOD)!
Because of our top down camera you will almost never see a higher LOD, but we take advantage of them by using higher LODs when rendering shadows. Starting off we use 2^3 as the lowest level for shadows, but then we also aggressively use higher LODs for things outside the camera frustum. This results in some visible artifacts at the highest camera height, but for the moment the advantages far outweigh the drawbacks.
Aside from rendering we also did a lot of work on general game system optimizations. We massively improved performance of mining drills causing terrain updates and addressed some issues with agent pathing that resulted in huge frame drops.
To be clear though while we made huge strides with this update we are still going to continuously work on optimizing. Even still it's not quiet where we want it to be for lower end hardware, but I am 100% sure that we haven't exhausted all the potential avenues for optimizing so expect this to keep getting better with future updates.
Progression & New Building Content
We've been taking a hard look at progression and updated a large number of recipes along with general path progression takes. Previously the early game required a lot of items made from various resources making it a bit hard to just get in and learn how to play without being overwhelmed.
We've also been adding more and more content to the game in terms of building. This includes new variations, or completely new sets of walls and floors. Below is an example with the new Shoji & Tatami set.
The awesome thing about all these changes is everything here requires absolutely no code changes. It's all just changed values, or new elements in our client side definition files. We'll most likely post more information about it after Early Access, but because we've always built the game with modding in mind, anyone can easily add new buildings, recipes, items, pretty much whatever.
Agent Improvements
As mentioned before, agents were also hit with a number of updates. Agent behavior is something that is being continuously worked on and updated. They've gone from dumb dummies some months ago to very capable with some slightly odd behavior, mainly doing things in not very efficient ways. This of course is a true nightmare to efficiency enjoyers.
We buffed their capabilities by making workbenches faster and giving them the capability to "Bulk Craft". This means that if you queue 20 conveyor belts, they will bring as many materials as possible to craft them. We also increased their carry capacity to allow them to craft more items at once. We will most likely continue tweaking their capabilities as this made them absolute crafting machines.
We are also working on other improvements at the moment which would allow them to use items on the ground for tasks instead of needing to store them first.
New Camera Controls
The original camera controller was one of the oldest things in the project and never really got a fresh coat of paint. We decided it was finally time and instead of doing a fresh coat we threw the old one out the window. Instead of being locked into 90 degree angles the camera can be freely rotated with right click or q/e. You can rotate in 45 degree increments with shift + q/e, but the new freedom of movement allows for a refreshing level of exploration of the voxel world. You'll also notice that scrolling in and out is very smooth instead of actively fighting you, so that's great!
Priorities Updates
We've heard your feedback about the priorities window not being very user friendly. We got rid of the moving boxes that all look the same and replaced them with sprites that are much more simpler to read at a glance.
First Pass Audio Update
We are working with Plume Pulse to overhaul just about everything audio in our game, and this will be the first version with many of those updates included. This means active and idle machines, mining drills, workbenches, ambient noises, weapons, and more. There is some functionality not implemented into the game yet so over time the soundscape of the world will just keep improving, but it's a massive improvement over the original sounds.
First Pass Localization
With this update we added the first pass of French, Spanish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Russian! We do have some missing strings and incorrect visuals in the ui that will be fixed in a future update.
Changes
Plume Pulse Audio Update
Re-implemented stockpile state changes on middle mouse
Added logic to not start camera panning if a ui element is hovered
Fixed agent formation logic not properly running during move commands
Added fallback logic if a terraform tile order continues living after completion
Fixed empty stockpile action not properly utilizing agent storage requests
Fixed hpa build error where parent nodes with no children were treated as bottom level nodes
Added small offset to all non-terrain premade objects to avoid z-fighting
Fixed agents not being able to path to chunks for interactions
Fixed agents not facing tile they are mining/terraforming
Fixed idle wandering clearing plans
Added speech bubble to space port with active trades
Fixed improper grammar in hungry agent text
Added toast message when an item is being picked up and no free stockpile is available
Fixed player being able to haul from trader (causes a crash)
Updated tutorials to use copper instead of iron
Fixed wrong font being used in the building stats of some DetailViews (miners and cranes)
Fixed output item images being stretched in ConverterDetailView
Refactored gpu upload and brick map trace to use morton ordered voxel data for efficient space skipping for objects, plants and trees
Adjusted post-processing effects
Increased ambient moon light intensity
Improved performance of plant/tree tracing
Updated plant/tree shadow tracing to use the default voxel object trace path when wind disabled
Added shadow tracing specific lods
Reduced shadow map size 4096 -> 2250
Slightly djusted fog values
Made 70% fixed resolution scaling the default for new players
Updated sun/moon to update incrementally over time
Updated rts camera to use freelook cinemachine camera
Updated how middle mouse and right click inputs are handled in relation to new camera inputs
Updated terrain meshing system to only add the render mesh components the first time through
Added terraformed terrain flag to brick map attributes
Updated all forms of terraforming to set the brick map attribute and render with a terraforming palette
Clicking on a currently animating TextTyping component now instantly completes the typing effect
Fixed gifs in messages not starting while the game is paused
Removed quantity count for global stockpile categories
(still being counted but not shown)
GlobalStockpileController can now also spawn blueprints that stem from base items (like base-lantern or base-wood-wall) on click
Whenever a crafting pioneer brings ingredients to the workstation they will bring extra amount to fulfill the recipe queue requirements (if the same item type).
Crafting pioneers are no longer forced to store the items they craft, instead items are dropped on the ground for another pioneer to store. So the crafting pioneer keeps working until the queue is empty or no longer possible to craft.
Fixed GetNearestHpaNode returning a dynamic blocker node in one case
Fix health bars blocking raycasts (ie. selecting stuff in the world)
Fixed space port being able to be placed over other spaceports
Added slider to haul to menu
Fixed context menu button missing disable animation causing button colors to get stuck
Fixed missing bubbles on converters without fuel storage
Added bubbles to drills (missing fuel & output blocked)
Made output blocked the most important display information
Updated idle logic for energy usage (10% usage when idle)
Updating mining drill logic to allow for going idle/depowering when output is blocked
Fixed autoscrolling text not working when the game is paused
Fixed toast messages not using unscaled delta time for lifetime
Added new trader ship (Beetle)
Priorities modal showing icons instead of different sized bars for level of priority
Darkened color of images in priorities modal
Added explanation texts to priority modal
Added tooltips to skill categories in priorities modal
Changed success chances for mining from 6%-60% (lvl 1-10) to 20%-90% (lvl 1-10)
Changed success chances for wood cutting from 6%-60% (lvl 1-10) to 20%-90% (lvl 1-10)
Agents are now interrupting a mining action after 20 mining attempts (regardless if they were successful or not)
(Was previously 10 successful attempts, which made them stay for a very long time in the lower levels)
Moved help button beside the modal buttons
Removed play button from the time controls
Renamed "disable shadows" option to "shadows"
Deactivated unused back button in HelpModal
Stonemasonry , Chemical Workbench, Mechanical Workbench, Advanced Workbench and High-Tech Workbench craft 2x faster
Carpenter's bench crafts 1.5x faster
Stone blocks take twice the time to craft (thus effectively overpowering stonemasonry compared to punch press)
Punch press recipes come later in the game now
Changed some recipes to start with copper ingots, then copper plates, steel ingots, steel plates and then steel gears rather late, thus making the cutter more important and the punch press only necessary later.
Red Assembler recipe fixed (was somehow buggy)
Assemblers got affordable, thus making a mass scale production of - for example - conveyor belts without pawns possible.
Spaceport accepts two voxels height difference in the landing zone
First item trade is now only producing 30 conveyor belts and is more expensive (asks for plates instead of ingots)
Conveyor belts and feeders are earlier accessible at medium scale
Added new terrain specific box collider system with optimizations specific to terrain with height maps
Added various optimizations to generating box and compound colliders when using quaternion.identity rotation
Added HpaPathingMode enum which describes the type of Hpa pathing which is being performed
Added logic for SuperCoarse pathing which ignores dynamic obstacles and quickly verifies there is a potential path between start and end node
Fixed issue where the same hpa nodes could fully tested during planning
Adjusted interaction ranges for agents slightly
Patched issue with invalid prototype data entities breaking the entire save on load
adding glass door, copper door, hardened steel door, steel door (the new stone door), Shoji (paper walls) and Tatami floors (soft mat), Sandbags
Added first pass French, European Spanish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Russian localization files
Added WIP credits to main menu
Fixed messages modal toggles not being localized
Fixed messages modal back button not being localized
Fixed tab buttons in settings menu not being localized
Fixed text not properly fitting in dropdowns in settings menu
Fixed roof level view button not being localized
Fixed various tooltip texts not being localized
Fixed issue where one item could take up multiple input slots and block up a converter
We hope that you'll notice all the improvements as soon as you launch the game. Have fun playing and we can't wait to hear what you think!
Until next time!
The best place to get in touch with us and see what we are working on is by joining our Discord server. So if you haven't yet, stop by and let us know your thoughts!