Update Discount!
November 28th to December 5th, grab Voxel Eras for 15% off!
I'll be continuing to keep Voxel Eras at its current price and discount price for the foreseeable future, and I'll announce in advance when and how that will change.
If you are waiting for the best deal, this is as good as it gets!
Anyways, onto the update.
Hey Everyone!
It's been busy, busy, busy!
I've been spending a lot of time working on improving modding support, filling out machines, and generally just trying to make the game feel better to play.
I intended for this update to be v1.4 (the Steam Era update, sometime December), but instead I broke it into 2 updates, v1.3.2 and v1.4, since I had a lot of things I wanted to address while also having a slipping timeline.
Since development took longer than an engineer estimated (who could have guessed?), I'm falling behind and will need to cut my scopes a bit shorter for v1.4. I do want to still introduce the Steam Era with a holiday update before the end of 2025, so we'll see what I manage to put together between now and then.
I've got a bunch of things left on my growing todo list, so I'm hoping to eventually chop that down in early 2026 while I finish fixing up the biggest issues in the game engine left (multiplayer sync bandwidth, adding dedicated servers, lighting performance / quality).
So, thanks for your patience while I continue to work away on Voxel Eras! I'm looking forward to all the mods people will make - let me know on Discord or Steam Discussions if you run into any issues or have any questions!
Anyways, onto the patch notes!
New
Assembler - Long requested, and finally delivered, the Assembler allows you to automate many more of the "higher tier" secondaries with the power of Clockwork.
Vacuum - Similarly long requested, and finally delivered, the Vacuum completes the trio of machines needed for full tree farm automation by allowing you to collect dropped items.
Workshop Mods - New in-game Steam Workshop support for modding, allowing you to easily manage and share your mods! This includes improving server cached mods as well as ZIP support.
Raw Item Cost - Hovering a crafting recipe while pressing Shift will now show the base cost to craft an item in the current crafter. So Assemblers show Assembler cost, and the Anvil shows the Anvil cost.
Pipe Filtering - You can now allow or deny up to 3 item types for each insert side of a pipe.
Added a skin preview in the main menu and skin upload menu.
Added Emergency Mod Menu to recover from invalid mod configs.
Added Lathe sound.
Added a new "Crafter" category and moved some machines into it.
Added minor sound variation to drive you less insane with a bunch of hammers next to your head.
Added "WINIT_UNIX_BACKEND" environment variable that can be set to "x11" or "wayland". This may resolve the Steam Overlay not appearing on Linux for some systems.
Exiting a world now has confirmation so you don't lose your save.
Overwriting an existing save now requires confirmation so you don't accidentally override a save (please, I don't want to hear sad stories of saves disappearing, it breaks my heart :( ).
Changes
Crafting Small Bronze Gears in the Anvil will now produce 3 instead of 6 gears (use the Assembler).
Joining a server will no longer automatically download the mods, and instead prompt the user for what choices they'd like to make regarding the issue(s) listed.
Replaced fire icons to be pixel art instead of... madness.
Updated machine input, output, and fuel icons to bring them up to speed with other textures.
The Bender and Lathe are now rotatable, and no longer have all faces as "front".
Dropping half a stack in another slot now deselects the slot.
Changed startup background track to be Progress instead of Windswept.
Many minor UI changes, I ended up reworking a lot of the system menu systems and some extras.
Fixes
Linux no longer will stare back from the abyss when you go fullscreen on some configurations (v2).
Outdated or temporarily invalid swapchains will no longer crash the game.
Tutorial hotkeys are now based on the actual bindings instead of the game's defaults.
Joining a server with mods should no longer timeout or overflow your connection.
Auto saves will no longer pause clients to wait for the server to resume to reduce clock issues.
Tweaked game clock to be more responsive.
The server list no longer gaslights you, as it now actually saves instead of doing nothing, ever.
Linux should no longer have a "pop" on startup.
Overwriting a save when using Proton no longer crashes, as well as now displaying any errors.
Swapping graphics cards on Linux no longer crashes on Wayland. Wayland, please, let me control the window and cursor like a normal desktop environment.....
Modding
Breaking Path Change - All file paths in scripts have been replaced, no longer requiring your mod folder name, as well as allowing you to reference other mod assets regardless of where your mod is located.
Breaking Mod Definition Change - Mods have a different TOML config now, and will need to be fixed for your mod to load.
Breaking Setup Change - Added new "load_info" parameter to setup. It provides things like basic date time, as well as the game mod version (v1.2, v1.3...) to support seasonal events and multi version support.
Added proper auto mod load order sorting, before it somehow did it through.. randomness...?
Added ZIP support for mods, servers providing "Folder" mods will automatically create a ZIP to send to players instead.
Sounds can now be .ogg, which is the new recommended format due to sound quality and load times being better for lower file sizes, it's just better.
Added In-Game debug log, please check your mod errors :P
Added VSCode code snippets to help with common events and types.
Sounds can now be hot reloaded (cooler than I expected).
The Array MetaData type now works.
Many APIs have changed, I tried to break all the things I wanted to at once for Workshop support, so I hope you'll forgive me >_>, it's really not that bad though.
Known Issues
Staying on the Personalization Select, Personalization Upload, or Mod Upload for too long will result in your game crashing. (UGC texture refreshing is under cooked)
Pipes drop items when filters are updated, regardless of if it was required or not.
Subject: Welcome to the SimCore Family!
We thank you for your continued participation in the - Voxel Eras - simulation environment program. Your feedback is greatly appreciated! We take pride in our ability to deliver quality experiences with the help of our users as we take on new frontiers - together.
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