Update 0.7.5: Bandits, Monsters, Map, Sailing and more!

Hi folks,

A new update is available now! It introduces a lot of new content, including various enemies, new animals like wolves, a female character, a map and much more!

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Enemies

This update introduces hostile bandits (which spawn at night) and barbarians (which spawn in arid regions). In addition to this, there are various new monsters which spawn in underground areas: there are firewolves and ghouls which spawn in hell, and spiders in caves.

This update introduces a new, experimental feature: an optional setting to let skeletons spawn at the surface at night. They despawn at dawn automatically. This feature is disabled by default, but you can enable it in the misc settings. Please give us some feedback about that!

Animals

Several new animals were added with this update, but the new wolves are particularly worth mentioning: unlike other animals, they have a defensive-aggressive behaviour. This means that they won't attack on sight (unlike bears, for example), instead they will try to warn the player. If the player ignores the warnings and still gets closer to the wolves, they will attack though.

Sailing

This update adds a new vehicle: a sailing boat! The game has a detailed sailing mechanic, but it isn't 100% realistic due to reasons of accessibility. Sailing is quite simple: just make sure that the sail is aligned to the wind. A small flag on top of the mast indicate the current wind direction.

If the sails are set, you can still leave your seat, but it's not recommended to jump off the boat (however, the sail is automatically furled if the player is too far away, so the boat does not sail on indefinitely).

You can also give a custom name to your sailing boat btw, which will then be visible on the hull. In a future update, you will also be able to set a custom image/emblem for the sail.

Map

Finally this update introdues a map. Unlike the Java version, this map mainly focuses on navigation: it provides a topological overview of the current island. Of course you can still create markers (like in the Java version), and in multiplayer, other players are also visible on the map (this can be disabled). If creative mode is enabled, you can teleport to any location on the map (via right-click).

An additional map view like in the Java version is still planned for a future update. However, there is a new command "renderworld" available which renders a top-down view of the currently generated world and stores this image in the screenshots folder in the game directory.

Female character

A female character is available now! A new tab "Character" is available in the main menu which enables you to change your character - including gender, hairstyle and colors, facial tattos etc. Changing your character has no impact on your progress in a world or a server, it only affects your appearance.

The current character editor is just a temporary solution: we're already working on a better version for that, but unfortunately it didn't make it into this update.

Npc editor

After spawning an npc, you can type "editnpc" into console (while looking at the npc) to bring up a small npc editor. It enables you to change the appearance of the npc, but you can also change their clothes or equipped item (only for humanoid npcs).

Apart from that, you can override their default behaviour towards the player, i.e make a hostile npc friendly or vice versa.

Building

This update introduces 15 new block shapes (almost every shape that was requested by the community in the past) and also terrain materials (like dirt, stone, gravel etc) for construction elements.

If you're still missing any shapes or if you run into any issues, please let us know!

Other

Of course there are also various other new features, changes and bugfixes. For example, vehicles can now be disassembled (to get the construction kits back), there are several new moon phases available during night and this update also introduces new items and objects. In addition to this, the inventory now contains a button in creative mode to bring up an item spawn menu. Alternatively this menu is also available when typing "item" into console.

This update also fixes the wrong player sync when riding a horse in multiplayer, and there are many changes and additions to the Plugin API (link).

To get an overview of all changes, please find the changelog below!

Please let us know if you have feedback or if you run into any problems with this update!

Changelog 0.7.5 (2024-08-30):

• [New] Added map item

  
  

  • Map shows entire current island
  • Player position and orientation is always visible (TBD)
  • You can create various markers
  • Multiplayer: You can create global markers (visible for all players)
  • In creative mode, you can rightclick on a position to teleport there
  • Optionally you can visualize the terrain altitude/elevation (as color gradient)
  • Multiplayer: Other players are visible on the map (optional)
• [New] New defensive-aggressive animal: wolves and arctic wolves (including several variants)
• [New] New enemy: bandits (including several variants) which spawn randomly at night
• [New] New enemy: barbarians (including several variants) which spawn in arid regions
• [New] New monsters: firewolf and ghoul which spawn in hell
• [New] New critter: scorpion which spawns in arid regions
• [New] New animals: foal, fox cub and arctic fox cub
• [New] Added sailing boat
• [New] Implemented sailing mechanic (sail/wind direction, furl/unfurl etc)
• [New] You can set up a custom name for your sailboat (which will be visible on the hull)
• [New] Added 15 new block shapes (half sphere, hollow half sphere, hollow block, quarter cone etc)
• [New] Terrain materials are now available for construction elements
• [New] Added new swords (for bandits and barbarians)
• [New] New objects: loom (required to craft clothes) and weather vane (shows current wind direction)
• [New] Female character is available now
• [New] Added character editor (in main menu) to change the visual appearance of your character (work-in-progress)
• [New] Added various haircuts and beards/mustaches (see character editor)
• [New] Added various facial tattoos (see character editor)
• [New] Added various moon phases during night (full moon, new moon, waxing/waning moon etc) with different light intensities
• [New] Added "editnpc" console command to edit an animal/npc (provides many new options compared to the Java version)
• [New] You can override the behaviour of animals/npcs now (make them hostile or friendly etc), see "editnpc" command (experimental feature)
• [New] You can now disassemble boats (hold interaction key)
• [New] In creative mode, there is a new button in inventory to bring up an item spawn menu (also available when typing "item" into console)
• [New] Melee weapons now show their damage and DPS value in inventory (when hovered)
• [New] You can now get saplings from cotton plants
• [New] Poster menu now has a search bar (to search for a particular image)
• [New] Plant and texture selection menu in creative mode now also have a search bar
• [New] Added "posterinfo" console command to get all information about a particular poster in the world
• [New] Plants now support a "DisableSnowiness" and "ForceSnowiness" edit flag/attribute (to force or remove snowiness from a plant)
• [New] Added support for non-latin characters (japanese, korean, chinese, greek and cyrillic characters). Please let us know if you still run into any problems
• [New] Added sort options for the singleplayer world list in main menu
• [New] Added "renderworld" console command to render a top-down view of the currently loaded world part (stored in "Screenshots" folder)
• [New] Added option to always show the grid on construction elements
• [New] Added permissions "changeskin" and "changeclothes" ("general" section)
• [New] Added permission "destroyownvehicles" ("general" section)
• [New] Added area permissions "create", "delete", "addplayer", "removeplayer", "setpriority", "setpermission", "setclaimable" ("area" section)
• [Change] Updated engine to Unity 2023.1
• [Change] Updated FMOD (audio engine) to 2.02.22
• [Change] You can now get sticks from dead bushes
• [Change] Reduced damage dealt by wild animals
• [Change] You can now properly move single items in inventory via rightclick while dragging an item
• [Change] The game now properly keeps settings which were changed manually in the config file, even if they're out of default range
• [Change] Npcs no longer die due to fall damage when using the "toggleterrain" console command
• [Change] Npcs now open their mouth when making noises
• [Change] Locked doors or chests are now 4 times stronger (when trying to destroy them)
• [Change] Nights are now a bit darker in general
• [Change] Bears no longer spawn on grass fields
• [Change] Sun and moon have smoother movement now
• [Change] Empty blueprints now require paper instead of lumber
• [Change] If creative mode water edit tool is active (F5->5,6,7), the flatten tool level is now properly aligned to the water surface
• [Change] Cobblestone (terrain material) now properly keeps the underlying/surrounding material
• [Change] Footprints are now also visible on sand and mud
• [Change] Building radial menu now provides more precision values
• [Change] Console command "size" works properly with window frames now
• [Change] Areas in creative mode (F9) can now also be edited while standing inside them
• [Change] Reduced flickering on overlapping areas (F9 in creative mode)
• [Change] If area permissions override the "group" field (under "info"), it's now shown in the playerlist (i) in multiplayer
• [Change] Slightly increased ore spawn rate on "high" and "very high" settings
• [Change] Projectile ricochets can now occur again
• [Change] Updated and improved various sound effects
• [Bugfix] Multiplayer: Fixed wrong player sync when riding a horse
• [Bugfix] Fixed dummy npcs sometimes wearing different clothes suddenly
• [Bugfix] Fixed visual artifacts on clothes (specifically on medieval suit)
• [Bugfix] Fixed wrong tooltip when using a knife on the tanning rack
• [Bugfix] Fixed random crash at 10% when loading a world (caused by invalid npc data)
• [Bugfix] Fixed wrong steering direction of the RIB (motorized boat) in reverse gear
• [Bugfix] Updated some wrong item names
• [Bugfix] Fixed underwater area sometimes being clearly visible for a brief moment when jumping into water
• [Bugfix] Fixed player sometimes getting fall damage when dismounting a horse
• [Bugfix] Fixed "reloadpermissions" messing up permissions if a player was inside an area
• [Bugfix] Fixed colors not being correctly recognized in permissions if they didn't have a leading "#" or "0x"

Hotfix (2024-08-31):

• [Change] Seedlings can now also be planted on farmland blocks
• [Change] Cobble stone now remains partly visible on snowy surfaces (e.g if "snowiness" is greater 0)
• [Change] Removed some unnecessary debug output
• [Bugfix] Fixed a crash when enabling modular snapping on certain block shapes
• [Bugfix] Fixed map being invisible on Linux/Vulkan
• [Bugfix] Fixed cobble stone being invisible when placed on grass
• [Bugfix] Fixed bug which prevented you from removing dead bodies of female characters
• [Bugfix] Fixed some minor sound issues

Hotfix 0.7.5.1 (2024-09-02):

• [Change] Rain and snow is no longer visible above the clouds
• [Change] You can now interact with the loom to bring up the crafting menu
• [Change] Block shape selection (via "item pnb" command or when changing the shape) now shows all shapes
• [Change] Added missing wolf pelts (white, grey and black variant)
• [Change] Increased spawn rate for bandits
• [Change] Map now no longer moves with the player if the player is out of view (to focus back on player, just click the button in the upper left corner of the map)
• [Change] Dedicated server is no longer a devmode build (resulted in verbose logging)
• [Bugfix] Fixed rain and snow being visible inside buildings and in caves
• [Bugfix] Fixed map always being locked on starter island (sector 0|0)
• [Bugfix] Map now displays terrain with custom flat/mountainous settings correctly as well as superflat worlds
• [Bugfix] Fixed some minor visual issues on block shapes
• [Bugfix] Fixed female npcs having no collision
• [Bugfix] Fixed torch still staying active after turning it off
• [Bugfix] Fixed map markers flickering sometimes in multiplayer
• [Bugfix] Fixed crash when an npc was killed while the edit dialog was still open
• [Bugfix] Fixed sporadic black screen when returning to the main menu while map was equipped

Hotfix 0.7.5.2 (2024-09-09):

• [New] Added square patch of grass as plant (which can be placed on grass blocks, for example)
• [New] Added setting to hide chat in multiplayer (see settings -> miscellaneous -> multiplayer). Does not affect private messages
• [New] Added setting to change pause between two music tracks (see settings -> audio)
• [Change] Game now also reacts to key M if the map is equipped and the mouse cursor is visible
• [Change] Text on signs is displayed more properly now (it's now partly masked instead of entirely hidden if font is too big)
• [Change] Text on signs no longer has automatic line breaks
• [Change] Water is now rendered correctly even if refractions are disabled
• [Change] If you unequip an item (by pressing H), it is no longer re-equipped automatically when crafting an item
• [Change] Slightly increased animal spawn rate
• [Change] Increased spawn rate for wolves
• [Change] Increased ore spawn amount (and also ore vein size) on "very low" setting
• [Change] Spinning wheel works a bit faster now (in addition to that, you can hold F on the reel to pick up yarn)
• [Change] Block texture selection (in creative mode F8 tools) scrolls to the active texture
• [Change] Increased fire range of npc archers
• [Bugfix] Cotton plant is now visible again
• [Bugfix] Fixed npc archers not firing any projectiles
• [Bugfix] Fixed npc (like bandits or skeletons) not dropping their item upon death in multiplayer
• [Bugfix] Fixed issue which caused the game to always spawn the same animal variants
• [Bugfix] Fixed a few issues regarding horse sync in multiplayer
• [Bugfix] Fixed sporadic broken npc animations in multiplayer (animals sliding instead of walking etc)
• [Bugfix] Reduced chance of spaghettification of dead bodies in multiplayer (need feedback)
• [Bugfix] Fixed crash under certain circumstances when equipping the map
• [Bugfix] Fixed campfire/bonfire fire not being visible in front of water
• [Bugfix] Fixed sudden sporadic performance issues (up to a crash) if there were many sailing boats in proximity

Hotfix (2024-09-10):

• [Change] Hovering map markers is a bit easier now (larger interaction area)
• [Bugfix] Fixed text sometimes not being visible on signs
• [Bugfix] Fixed material error on hanging sign
• [Bugfix] Fixed npc behaviour changes (via editnpc) not working for some npcs
• [Bugfix] Fixed selection preview in creative mode F8 tool on natural blocks not being visible
• [Bugfix] Fixed gravity checks (when removing plants) causing too high load on CPU

Thank you so much for your feedback

Quote from diegomarino80gongo

very good, but i don't see animal husbandry that is a top feature for me

Unfortunately animal husbandry wasn't part of this update But we've done some preparations for taming animals The term "husbandry" is a bit generic, which feature are you most looking forward to? Taming, catch, breeding etc? Or getting goods from animals (like milk, eggs etc)?

Quote from agiser

-Standing NPCs should be repositionable

This is still on our to-do list

Quote from agiser

-Buildings should appear on the map

Unfortunately this isn't possible, at least not for this current type of map. The map in the new version is just generated based on the terrain data. Including construction data is basically impossible, because each construction element can have an arbitrary rotation, size and position - trying to turn this information into the according pixels on the map is computationally expensive (and considering there is no limit to the number of construction elements - some buildings consists of hundreds of thousands of elements), this is impossible to implement in a performance-friendly way.

To show buildings on maps, it's necessary to render the scene (i.e. basically making a top-down screenshot of the world). This is how the map in the Java version worked. Unfortunately this has some technical limitations in Unitys HDRP, that's why we decided to implement a topological map first. It's still planned for a future update though.

But if you want to get an overview of your buildings, you can use the console command "renderworld" - this makes a top-down screenshot of your currently loaded world part (this image is stored in the "Screenshots" folder in the game directory). This can then be placed as a custom image in your world

Quote from agiser

-NPCs created with the command must stand still at first

You can add a "locked" paramter to the spawn command if you don't want them to move, e.g. spawnnpc dummy locked

Quote from ArcticuKitsu

Good. Maybe some bear types should share this type of trait. There are some bears out there which are more curious about food than they are about you. If you are between them and food they will attack you. Granted, there are bears which have simply attacked people, as they had done in Canada, and as I've heard them done in Hokkaido.

Thanks for your feedback We will probably add this behaviour for other animals as well^^ For now we want to keep some animals in a "always-hostile-mode", but this wasn't justified for wolves IMO (especially considering that taming will play a role here in the future)

Quote from ArcticuKitsu

Still wishing for NPC Companions to rescue, befriend, or to simply hire NPC mercs.

This is still planned in the long run

Quote from ArcticuKitsu

One problem though, horses and mounts should be able to to be ferried between large bodies of water.

In theory you can move them on a boat, but unfortunately there isn't enough room on them, so it's a bit difficult... but we still want to add rafts and also bigger vessels

Quote from ArcticuKitsu

Cute. I wish I could tame a fox cub as a pet to eventually see it grow up.

Hehe, basically it's possible with the "editnpc" command (you could set his behaviour to "Default", then it won't run away) But we've also done some preparations for taming and I can't wait to put a bigger focus on that after the store page update^^

Quote from ArcticuKitsu

I would LOVE to apply emblems, even customized ones

Yes, they will be customizable, or more precisely, it will be like a poster or decal.

Quote from ArcticuKitsu

- Can't interact with the loom.

Basically it's just a crafting requirement, so it just has to be in your proximity when crafting clothes. But with the next hotfix, we will make the loom interactable (so it brings up the crafting menu directly)

Quote from ArcticuKitsu

- Map needs a player icon on it.

It should be there If it's not visible, try to click on the "focus" button in the top left corner of the map (first hit the right mouse button to show the cursor)

Quote from yahwho

Are we able to set bandits to spawn during the day too like in the java version?

Basically bandits don't despawn, so you might also run into bandits during the day But it's possible to also let them spawn during the day by adding this line to the config.properties file: Game_NpcSpawnBanditsDuringDay=True

Or for multiplayer servers, add this to the server.properties: Settings_NpcSpawnBanditsDuringDay=True

Quote from TJ the HedgeScout

have noticed the idle animation in the editor looks a bit strange, though that can be fixed by updates. (guessing this is the first iteration so it will have some weirdness initially)

Maybe we will rework some animations in the long run (especially if the financial situation improves again)

Quote from xynix

There is some kind of framerate issue going on. Even with the settings literally bottomed out, the game is not rendering above 60 FPS (even though the counter, using fps command, claims it is) and it feels very choppy. Having a 240 Hz screen, this is incredibly noticeable.

That's weird... maybe send a report about that. To do that, open the console (key ~ or `) and type "report" (without quot. marks). Maybe also add some additional information (like "good fps but still runs bad" or something like that)... perhaps there is something else going on causing the stutter

Quote from james1bow

i ask as the server has a target frame rate that is defaulted to 60fps.

Yes, the server indeed has a specific framerate (affecting the server main thread), but that doesn't affect clientside rendering or clientside player movement