Research Overhaul

• There were a few issues we had with how Research played in Ficterra, so we wanted to change things up.
  • Each research unlocked too many things. This made it hard to keep track of what was unlocked or feel overwhelmed with too many item to craft at once, with no direction. To address this we have added 25 new Researches and spread crafting plan unlock out amount them. This drastically lowers the amount you unlock with each research and gives a focus of what to do with each Research unlocked. The cost of these new Researches is also relatively lower to make them more effortless to unlock
  • Research and Crafting Plans were too similar. Even though underneath these are very similar, the experience and feel they give should be different. We added a new research screen which can show off all the Researches in the game, and show which are available. It has a UI designed to fit better with Research including a larger vertical progress bar to more easily visualize the longer times that Research takes
  • No way to see future research. It could be difficult to know if a Research led to other Research or just gave crafting recipes. So you could ignore a research that actually unlocked more things, and not realize it. Also a lookahead lets you plan and get excited for future research. With this in mind you can now see all Research available in your current Tier and below as well as what unlocks them

• Added 25 new Researches to the game: Holidays, Pathing, Cartography, Smelting, Painting, Woodworking, Specialty Woodworking, Furniture, Tailoring, Iron Tools, Advanced Tailoring, Explosives, Engineering, Signaling, Pneumatics, Conveyance, Bricklaying, Breadmaking, Metalworking, Indoor Lighting, Advanced Explosives, Exotic Cooking, Advanced Metalworking, Quantum Tech, Specialty Metals
  
• Added a new Research Screen which lays out available researches by tier. This screen is separate from the crafting/inventory screen.
  
• Researches now show the prerequisite needed to unlock them
  
• Researches now show the reason you might be prevented from researching them
  
• Moved crafting recipes that were in "Tier 0" to unlock from new researches. You now research Tier 1 to unlock Crafting.
  
• Removed the cost for researching Tier 1; it is now free. Having the cost of Trunks and Dirt was too restrictive for starts in some biomes
  
• Metal Pressing removed from available research
  
• Fire has been moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1
  
• Interior Decorating has been moved from Tier 2 to Tier 3
  
• Call a Technologist has been moved from Tier 1 to Tier 3
  
• Many Crafting Plans are now unlocked by the newer more relevant Researches
  

Special Maps

• Special maps have been added to Ficterra that can selected when creating a Custom Game
• Added two types of special maps: Pangaea and From Image.
• Pangaea creates a continent of the specified size, with the rest of the world being ocean/water biomes.
• From Image creates a map from special image in the game. There are several maps including Europe and Sanctuary. The world is still randomized based on the seed and biome factors, but is influenced by the image
• Added options to control the size and accuracy of worlds created from Special maps
• Added Random Spawn Location option for special maps, instead of just starting in the center every time

Other

• The Crafting Screen has been updated to have a better appearance
• Several cube variants have had their mesh building performance improved
• Fixed a visual bug with the Tailoring Bench
• Updated the text that appears on screen when you receive an item
• Updated the text that appears when you select an item
• Fixed a performance issue with the Inspect Info panel at the top of the screen
• Optimized performance when mesh building non-variant cubes
• Fixed a bug when inspecting variants
• Improved mesh building to reduce the number of triangles created
• Changed the way we save/load placeable object data from json to binary. This makes saving ~6 times faster and loading ~10 times faster for this data. Worlds created before this patch will continue to use the old method, while new worlds will utilize this method
• Placing objects has been disallowed within 3 seconds of entering a world. This is to prevent accidental placement while the loading screen is still active