Blockscape — August 2026
This is a big one. Worlds look richer, Survival has a clearer loop, creatures and tools feel more alive — and multiplayer can finally share the same world with monsters, inventories, and vehicles.
Multiplayer
- Monsters, NPCs, vehicles, inventories, and thrown projectiles now sync over the network.
- Remote players, creatures, and vehicles move more smoothly instead of snapping or teleporting.
- Join a session and see existing creatures, settlers, and vehicles already in the world.
- Vehicles: enter, exit, and drive together. Your weapon is hidden while seated.
- Combat, mining bugs, pickups, and bed sleep are host-authoritative so everyone stays in sync.
- Sleeping in a bed waits until every connected player is in bed (“Waiting for other players…”). Time of day pauses until then.
- TAB shows the player roster. Fog, clouds, landscape type, and weather follow the host.
- Steam Networking (including Steam IP) is supported for sessions.
Worlds & exploration
- New Mesa Landscape — high plateaus, coastal cliffs, and eroded shorelines. It is the recommended world type in the landscape picker (hover a world for a short description). Wild, Realistic, and Flat World are still there.
- Realistic landscapes get coastal terraces, a procedural snow line, and sharper mountain cover.
- New lot trees, open house lots without fences, and a spring pine-leaves material.
- Terrain holes, building-edge errors, and flat-world ground gaps are fixed.
- The world map is redrawn from the actual terrain (including water and cover), with a parchment look and a player arrow.
- Press M to toggle the map. Dungeon finds are Region Maps (for claiming land). The full-screen map needs a crafted World Map (dyes, textile, and oil at a workbench). Region Maps use the same map marking as World Maps.
- Loading a save that already has a World Map fades the map in on the load screen.
- New music, including title-screen music. Battle music starts when a hostile is in range of you.
- Entering the Mysterious Machine now plays a short encounter with the Old Ones.
Look & atmosphere
- New lighting: probes and a 3D light field for bounced light, with less light leaking through walls.
- Brighter, more filmic image — exposure, contrast, bloom, film grain, and vignette.
- Clear weather (no clouds), height-based fog, and indoor fog that respects room size.
- Cumulus clouds and ground mist, plus water that keeps swell at a distance instead of a repeating grid.
- Chamfered voxel edges, detail maps, and more 3D brick/plank materials.
- Better grass, snow, fur, and cover (snow on mountains, more natural grass color).
- Explosions, smoke, embers, snowflakes, air motes, fireflies, and voxel debris.
- Higher-resolution shadows, smoother screen-space reflections, and better underwater glass/transparency.
- If Windows HDR is washing out caves and nights, the game will warn you (toggle in Options).
Creatures & combat
- New player body and armor meshes. Shoulder armor follows the upper arm. Hands grip tools, stay open while placing, and fist when you punch.
- First version of strafing. Stairs and ladders use walk/run instead of a jump pose, with footsteps on stairs.
- New models and motion for the flower monster, mother bug, ghost, worm, and golem.
- Fire golems in dry caves — burning bodies, fireballs, and crackle.
- Ghosts have a draped robe, lagging sleeves, and a cooldown after a hit so they can’t stunlock you. Snakes and Enigmas get the same pause.
- Azure armor protects against magic (ghosts). A full set can block it entirely (“Protected by Azure”). Hits you can’t hurt with a normal weapon show a Magic warning.
- Heat/cold warnings on the HUD, with Fire/Snowflake protection on armor tooltips.
- Creatures fade in, stay grounded, and path around corners and water more reliably. Grass is no longer treated as solid floor/canopy.
- Settlers and guards share the player figure and spawn on lots without clipping into the ground. Guards carry a sword; settlers keep a pick on their back.
Building, crafting & tools
- Two hands: left is the hotbar / active tool, right is your weapon. With a weapon selected, LMB mines or attacks; Shift + LMB places the tool in the world.
- You can still open doors and chests with LMB even if a weapon is selected (Shift still picks).
- Inventory: click to select or equip, drag to move. Shift + drag moves 64, Ctrl + drag moves all. Vehicle parts show in inventory.
- Player panel is four columns; armor sits in the fourth. Properties panel matches.
- Axis-aligned materials: inventory shows the base material; pick X / Y / Z / Auto for grain direction (Auto is available).
- Pipes and cables: pick a start and end point and the game finds a path between them. Pipes use gold, silver, steel, or copper — Azure and Dragon Scale stay for armor and magic.
- Wind generator — power from wind, no fuel. Coal generators now burn coal, have sound, and warn when they’re out of coal or missing water.
- New chest and hatch recipes. Damaged building parts. New potion bottle mesh.
- Recipes stay locked until you’ve crafted them once. Painted materials stay painted when you mine, drop, craft, and play together.
- Plastic crafts (like fur boots) keep the color of the input (brown fur → brown boots).
- Torches and lanterns are proper held lights you can mount on walls or floors.
- Raise, Lower, and Level terrain use a soft brush that matches the cursor size. The old Edge Nudge tool is now just Nudge.
- You can’t place blocks inside yourself or another player. Size-1 placement snaps to the closest block.
- Right-click with the symbol tool no longer mines the block behind the symbol.
Controls, HUD & options
- Graphics settings live in Options (including from the start menu): shaders, virtual resolution, invert mouse, reflections, and refractions. Settings save when you press Esc. Shader quality stays on Normal.
- Field of view slider (60–110°). Optional sprint FOV (+10° while sprinting).
- HUD, inventory, and the held map use world lighting and stay sharp.
- Hovering a dropped item shows name, material, and count. Walk-over pickup reaches from feet to head, so table and shelf drops collect.
- Blinking caret in menus and chat. Resolution-independent UI. Menu titles stay on screen (including when Windows HDR status is shown).
- Copters lose lift in water and can’t punch through the world ceiling. You can’t toggle fly (F) while seated.
Fixes
- Terrain holes and holes between chunks.
- Transparent objects underwater, LOD pops, and distant trees looking too sharp.
- Protector material orientation, beam material direction, and network-component edges.
- Drag-and-drop into state-model inventories. Plant delete also clears seeds/saplings.
- Destroying symbols and other special blocks no longer sprays the wrong rock or wood chips.
- Faster new-game / load progress, and a smoother Save / Load As list.
- Many multiplayer join, pose, inventory, paint, and vehicle issues.
Thank you for playing — and for waiting on this one. If something feels off in multiplayer or on a new Mesa world, please let me know!
/Jens