Visual Upgrades
Day and night visuals were altered, volumetric fog and improved terrain tiling were added. The overall effect of these changes can be dramatic. Not all of the lighting values and tuning have been completed so more will improve over time.
NOTE: Volumetric fog has performance impact, so it defaults to OFF currently. You can turn it on in the Options menu.
Our visual upgrades in this update includes:
We replaced the stock Unity point and spot light system with our own light grid solution which renders about 400x faster
Our global illumination supports ambient occlusion and is automatically computed dynamically resulting in darker crevices and caves
Our custom-made reflections implementation takes ambient occlusion into account and results in much better metals, custom reflections on flora, and better performance
Automatic sky hue for different sky colors
Map sized Volumetric Fog adapting to terrain height
Preamble
The initial screens you see after starting a new character have been pared way back. We (hopefully) kept the humor of those screens intact, but now there are only two of the “silently screaming” screens. Then you pick a basic character type and move into the Hallway experience.
Hallway
The initial user experience has been overhauled.
To make the experience less claustrophobic, the hallways have been widened significantly.
The “broken elevator shaft” that you climbed up wasn’t obvious to many players, so it has been replaced with a ladder instead.
A very large number of aesthetic improvements were made.
The dialogs were simplified to make it much harder to become uncertain of what to do next.
The lava room was removed entirely.
The Professions Kiosks at the end of the hallway were removed entirely. Why? Because in the next Update, we’re working on the Training Moon that comes after the Hallway and you’ll be learning skills and gathering tools there instead. For now, every character will receive an OmniShock, Harvester, Terraformer, and Pathfinder when they start. This is temporary but necessary until we get the Training Moon functionality in place.
The Chat Pane is closed while in the Hallway to avoid visual clutter. It opens again when you leave.
You can now roll under the “Crouch” obstacle.
Identity Kiosk
At the start of the Hallway experience, you’ll be able to interface with an Identity Kiosk. There, you’ll be able to select from one of 64 visual appearances available in that kiosk, determining what your character will look like from that point onward.
We no longer randomly change your character appearance when zoning.
This is not a permanent feature, but is a bridge feature that we’ll keep in place until much better character customization options are available in the near-ish future.
Basic NPCs
At the end of the Hallway, there’s a Servitor (the same one you’ve been talking to while you moved through the Hallway). He doesn’t do much at this point, but he was an experimental test so we could put into place the features needed to support basic NPCs going forward (which will be quite useful on the Training Moon).
In the future, you’ll be able to customize NPCs for your Homesteads.
Miscellaneous Improvements
The Starbase got a big update. The basement has been removed entirely. You now spawn into the Garden (of Life) via the Respawn Stations that have been moved there. There were also many significant visual upgrades as well as changes to reduce the number of objects used for performance reasons.
The Wild Wormholes have been turned off currently, in favor of a “planet rotation” feature which will be fully explained later when that feature is ready for testing.
A large number of art assets were introduced to add visual distinctiveness to many ores, plants, etc. when viewing your inventory. (This work is not yet complete, but we made good progress with this update.)
A large number of performance improvements went into the game that should significantly improve framerate for many users.
When you use a ReLife station, there is now a visual effect to make it more obvious that something happened.
You should no longer see multi-boss spawns in various zones.
The recipes for Soil-to-Metal or Soil-to-Gemstones have been removed because they were an early design that has been replaced and are no longer needed. Instead, we have the “adds” system so that when you extract soil, you occasionally get extra drops of the metal or gemstones you could make previously.
Harvesting logs are now beneath the notice of the Servitors and will no longer trigger edicts.
The Xyloslicer and Harvester have been improved with better targeting.
GovBot missions now require less wood. We doubt anyone will be surprised by this.
Many new fruits can be harvested. Seeds for fruit-bearing trees/bushes are now found when harvesting those fruits instead of when chopping them down.
More new furniture and lights were added.
The camera now defaults to Fixed-Reticle mode rather than Free-Reticle mode. Remember that “T” toggles your camera mode, as always. You can also temporarily switch it by holding the ALT key.
Camera behavior in tight spaces has been greatly improved.
You can now have private chats, as long as you’re on the same world. If you use /tell to message another player, it opens up a new chat channel where you can chat back and forth. This does not work across servers yet, but we’re working on it!
Some of you may have noticed a while ago that we did some tests with client prediction on firing certain tools and then removed the feature. Those initial tests only worked for those specific tools but client prediction is now back with a more generic model so all projectile weapons will see you fire them immediately without waiting on a server response. There are still some iterations coming to improve this feature further and fix edge case bugs but you can disable it in the Options menu if you have any issues with it.
Update 1.1
UI Change to Skill Window
The first step to revising the Skill Tree window is accomplished. The aesthetics aren't where we want them yet, but the functionality is great. Take a gander. It's only going to get bigger.
Improvements to Server Memory Usage
We've figured out a number of memory leak and optimization strategies for the servers. They should no longer require the periodic resets you've been experiencing during playtests.
Improved Graphical Settings
The graphic improvements introduced in the last update have been further improved. Also, fog is now turned on by default (but can still be turned off in the new and improved Graphics Options.)
NOTE: The graphics settings are not saving currently between logins. This will be fixed shortly.
Improvements to Hallway
We've made a series of improvements to the First Time User Event Hallway scenario. They are subtle, but they are based on user feedback, so thank you for that feedback!
And a number of other bug fixes
All minor, but all useful. Enjoy!
Update 1.2
Improvements to Settings
Your individual settings should now save between sessions. So tap escape, check out the menu, and get everything just the way you like it.
Day and Night Cycles Extended
We have slowed down the day/night cycle to a modest degree. More tuning of this cycle may be expected in the future.
Simulation Modifications
We felt that the erosion effects of water were too aggressive and we tuned this back.
Bugs and Bug Fixes
The Xyloslicer now works again.
Midotara is running a bit slow so expect to see a slight delay in terraforming operations.