Update 5 is Live!
Hi all,
As we promised, Update 5 is now live!
Whilst you frantically force the download through Steam, let’s review the many changes that are coming your way!
Interface
- Firstly, we lost the ‘roller’ – we’re not sure where, maybe under a rug somewhere – but it had got out of hand and had to go. The original theory with this system was to give you access to all the functions with a minimal number of inputs, but in practice as we added more functionality it just meant more visual noise, with too much to take in at once, so we took a hammer to it.
- A big part of the simplification process was to move all the settings into a proper Pause menu. This means we can work separately on the settings & config screens, but for now these are still traditional text menus.
- The other main ingredient is the Backpack – everything is now in one place: all the creative tools, and all of your game items. It means that on mouse you’re only a couple of clicks away from whatever you need, and on controller you don’t need to constantly swap modes.
- When you get into a tool, you can use Y to bring up a tabbed grid of everything corresponding to that tool. This is especially important in Brick Building for finding that one special piece. Please note that the ‘recent bricks’ bar has gone missing – this is a temporary convenience for us, and the intention is to have a Favourites tab instead.
- For mouse & keyboard users, for now we’ve locked the grids into position as they have been before, but we intend to support moving and scaling them however you like.
- The info text in the bottom right of the screen is now a bit more useful and a lot less intrusive. There’s certainly more to be done with this, but if you know what you’re doing or don’t like it, you can turn it off by changing Help Text to Off in the Settings pause menu.
- We now support PS4 controllers. It’ll show up as a generic controller in the help text, but works exactly like a 360 pad, with the touch pad acting as the BACK button.
- Speaking of the BACK button, you can now tap it to open the 3D minimap.
- It will soon be possible to switch characters properly using the Customiser, but there are still a few technical hurdles to clear, so unfortunately for now you’ll still have to use the Models Tool Characters menu to switch. You can still spawn characters into the world via the Characters tab in the Models Tool by dragging them out with the mouse.
- We’re still working on a config screen for the controls, and hope to share something about that soon.
- So is it finished? Of course not, there’s loads still to do, but we hope you like where we’ve taken it - whatever your preferred flavour of input - and we welcome your thoughts because we know you’ll have some cool suggestions.
Optimisations
- You know how the game was stalling a lot when generating new chunks of world and making the framerate pretty bad? Well, it seems the giant Project Badger programming hive mind has found a fix. Here comes the science part: it turns out that this was to do with multiple threads waiting for each other to access the same piece of data – the more threads, the worse this could be, which is why in some cases even your ninja PC may have been struggling while you were exploring new areas. Anyway, we hope you see the same improvements that we have.
- Note that this doesn’t help speed up the generation of new chunks, so it may still be possible to catch up. Please rest assured that work to improve this is underway, and a priority for the hive mind – their brains were willingly extracted and merged with each other for this very purpose.
- You may be able to work out that with a little more work on transitions and sensitivity, all of this should give us a solid base for a proper first-person camera. However, there are a lot of issues with the player character to address.
Cameras
- When using the camera item, telescope or binoculars, you can now move around in the first-person view.
- We’ve added a simple variation of the Tracking camera. It’s called Track & Zoom, and it’s essentially does the same thing but will zoom in if your character is obscured, so it’s more useful in tight spaces. So it’s really a combination of the console-style Chase camera that keeps you visible, and the Tracking camera that leaves the view up to you.
Improvements
- Toby & the models crews have been improving many of the biomes – expect to see nicer brick builds, some new props, and some more landscape variation. No brand new biomes just yet, but we have a few in the pipeline. Maybe we’ll post about some of these ideas soon.
- You should see a lot more activity in the worlds. NPCs will entertain themselves if they find something to drive or ride. Some NPCs may also want to get cozy by a nice fire, while others want nothing to do with it!
- Check out those sunsets!
- The head you set on your Custom character now dictates their animations and abilities!
Content
- We made a point of not adding vast quantities of stuff this time, but there are still a few new discoveries for you to make. Why not try making some noise, choosing some special paint, or doing some off-roading? As usual, see what you can find and let everybody know!
And here are the full patch notes for your to browse through during your….whatever meal it is right now in your part of the world:
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LEGO Worlds v0.6.0 Patch Notes
- Resolved major issues that were resulting in foreground thread stalls
- Changes to various GUI icons aimed at improving readability
- Resolved a problem that caused certain cells to not draw, causing gaps in landscape
- Resolved screen tearing in windowed mode
- Camera should now auto-zoom to fit LXFML being placed
- Resolved a problem that was causing camera roll when moving along certain axes
- Resolved issues that caused the camera to zoom into terrain during certain animations / behaviours
- Tweaked the way vehicles in water spawn
- Tweaked spawn rates of various vehicles / Props
- Area lighting now applied to Character Customiser
- NPC thought bubbles should no longer appear when using Tools
- Added verification to Save + Quit Menu option
- Handing over a quest item will no longer leave your character with a duplicate of that item
- Vampire can now throw items]
- Fixed underwater depth fogging so it is more consistent
- Improved Atmospherics dawn/dusk lighting and tweaked night sky
Enjoy and let us know what you think to the new update!
The LEGO® Worlds Team