Dear Scaper,
The time has come! It's been quiet for a long time, we've fixed a lot of bugs and ironed out a lot of annoying little things. But now it's time to announce the long-awaited Voyage update and make it available to you.
This update brings many changes, including many that you won't see directly and will only notice because the game simply runs a lot smoother and faster. But in the meantime, we have also prepared TerraScape for some major new features that require many adjustments.
But first to the really cool new stuff!
The Voyage Update
TL;DR
- Main menu rework
- Completely new representation of building placement, range, influence points and highlighting of building complexes
- New animation for obtaining points for buildings on place
- Blueprints/Ping and map overlays (controller) are now quickly selectable via right-click and ring menu
- controller support (full Steam deck support is coming in the future)
- A new but important building complex
- Anti-Cheat mechanisms
- Performance improvements when placing buildings, merging and loading terrain
- Unique rewards for the weekly challenges when you reach bronze, silver and gold
- Animals now walk freely on their little hexagons and are no longer rooted to the ground
- New map overlay for displaying buildings (type)
- Reworked the puzzle map menu
Explanation of individual features
New Main menu UI
We thought about whether we should continue to use and refresh the old TerraScape main menu a lot. But with the recent update of the logo and the great artwork, we decided: 'Everything’s gonna be new!’ And we are happy with the result and we hope you are too. The new menu is clearer and easier to use, many elements have been combined and a familiar view, like for example a vertical list of Terras, has been used to guarantee easy navigation for controllers too.
Overall, we hope that it is now easier to read and more intuitive to use, even on particularly small and large screens.
Reworked building preview
One of the highlights is the complete overhaul of the building preview. Previously, individual hexagons were highlighted to show the range and influences of a building. Now we have improved this: if you want to build a building, you will now have a much clearer and more concise view of the range and the influences it contains. The preview of the influence points has also been improved and simplified.
When having at least one hexagon of a Merged Building within range, the entire Merged Building will be highlighted now. This makes it much easier to see and understand which Merged Building actually influences the total score of a building.
New points collection animation
Many players have given us feedback, one of the repeatedly feedbacked issues was the view and effect of the 'wave' which were not sufficiently understandable or even unintentionally caused problems. So we wrapped our heads around it and built a completely new effect, which should now be much easier to understand but also more attractive. Depending on how many points (or even minus points) you get, a small or large shooting star is generated, which then makes its way to the building’s points badge. See for yourself.
Blueprints and Overlay - Quick access (Radial menu)
Many of you are enthusiastic users of the recently added QoL features Blueprint and Ping, many found this addition more than helpful and we have already seen really complicated and impressive plans from you on how to plan your settlement construction. That's why we want to accommodate you and no longer hide this menu in the bottom corner, but make it available right where you need it. With a simple right-click on a hexagon, you can now open this menu to quickly place Blueprints and Pings. This should speed things up considerably.
Controller Support
The fact that you can now play TerraScape from the comfort of your couch or lean back and relax with a controller is one of the biggest improvements. All known controllers (as long as they have buttons and are not designed for flight or driving simulators) are now supported, both in the main menu and in the game. This gives you completely new possibilities for relaxing with a round of TerraScape. Controller functionality is also an essential basis for playing with the Steam Deck, for which we definitely want to make TerraScape suitable.
New Merged Building
Some of you will certainly not be satisfied over the fact that there is only one new building combination, but we promise you that this will not be the last. The new Merged Building has a smaller formation and is the first to consist of only 3 hexagons. We are very much looking forward to your feedback about this Merged Building and would like to know whether such small combinations are also fun, so that we can provide you with more of them.
Anti-Cheat Engine
Unfortunately, some of you and also us have had a few annoyances with one or two not quite fair players. That's why we've come up with a mechanism to combat illegal entries in the leaderboards and cheaters in multiplayer. Of course, anyone can cheat in a solo game as they wish, but they will have to live with the fact that they will not be able to collect any experience points or progress in quests in that round. However, we must remain fair and the global leaderboards should remain 100% honest. As soon as a cheat is recognised, this is indicated by a small symbol - even in the multiplayer game.
Performance Improvements
It almost goes without saying that we are always working to make the gaming experience as smooth and pleasant as possible. That's why for most of you, performance improvements are probably part of everyday life. We've slimmed down some heavyweights and added new mechanics to improve the feel, loading and overall gameplay.
At the end
As you will have noticed, we have reached the end of our Early Access roadmap. We weren't quite able to meet one or two deadlines, and we released a few unplanned updates in between because we didn't want to keep some things to ourselves any longer. All in all, this means that version 1.0 is just around the corner.There is still a lot to do until then. TerraScape has grown up together with you and you have influenced it much more than we thought at the beginning. The community has had a huge influence on the game’s journey still has! We still hope that you will give us lots of feedback on what can be improved and what needs to be added to the game to make it a great experience.
Changes & new Features
- Unique rewards for Weekly Challenges (bronze/silver/gold)
- Main Menu rework
- New Merged Building: Fishing Outpost
- Anti-Cheat mechanism; when cheating…
- you see an icon that indicates cheat detection (in single player and multiplayer sessions)
- your highscores will not be saved (neither locally nor in Steam/GOG Leaderboards)
- you do not get any Steam/GOG Achievements within this session
- your Terra Goals in Scenarios won’t progress within this session
- your Ventures will not progress within this session
- you will not get any XP after ending this game
- Full Controller Support
- Main menu
- Ingame
- Better building preview
- Denoised outline for the preview
- Added outline for Merged Buildings
- Simplified influence icons
- New points/score animation
- Radial Menu
- Added radial menu on right click for Blueprints and ping
- Added radial menu (controller only) for map overlays
- Map overlay for built buildings
- Walking Animals
- Balancing improvements
- Adjusted overall game-difficulty in the late-game
- Made some Extra Cards more scarce
- Fixed some confusing influences highlights
- Performance improvements
- Map generation
- Building preview
- Improvements
- Display current leaderboard rank in statistics panel during a weekly challenge
- Improved loading panel in main menu
- Improved save game data format
- Added settings for camera move/zoom/rotate speed
- Endless Loop exploit fix with demolition- and pick-building-card
- Bugfixes
- Fixed several UI button sounds playing on wrong audio channel
- Fixed several gameplay bugs
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