Where can I get the update?
Update 0.126 has been released for both client and server. It can be downloaded using the Update button on the login screen or downloading from the site.
What's in the Update?
The update brings with it the base for one of the major features which was until now not been part of the game. Hand held weapons! Although you could have ship battles with cannons there was no way to defend your ship from boarders. Now you can send them on their merry way with a shotgun which does high damage at close range with a 2 shot kill for those straying to close to you and a Prod which will allows you to melee your enemies with electrifying consequences. The Prod is also now part of the starting gear so you have at least some way to defend yourself from other players initially. Some minor changes have been made to some of mechanics as well such as Thrusters now burning blocks behind them which will encourage players to place them on the outside of ships. Meaning ships can be easier disabled by some tactical cannon use. Item descriptions have also seen an improvement now showing their stats for many items such as damage, power usage and defense with clearer text. Making it easier to determine best building materials or weapons.
The update also brings a string of bug fixes and some major performance gains for lower and higher end machines. Lighting has been changed to be per-vertex in order to help performance for areas with many lanterns and light sources placed by players. The frame limiter for the game has been disabled which was causing some issues for slower machines where it would cap them further when the game was running slow in the first place. Much of how the game sends chunks has been fine tuned for the client to help the smoothness during play as well. For a full list you can check out the change log at the bottom of this post.
Next Update?
I'm hoping to get a Demo done for players wanting to try the game to see if it is for them, which will allow them to login to the Official Server with some limitations on what they can do until they purchase the game. To coincide with this I'm also hoping to release a better trailer than the current one posted on Desura which is just waiting on some final touches before it can be launched. As always they'll be more bug fixes and performance tuning and hopefully a couple more guns, re-textures of existing blocks, animated block textures and the next major feature on my list!
Changelog 0.126
Changes
- Removed frame limiter. Should increase performance in some cases where XNA frame limiter would behave weirdly.
- Changed lighting to per vertex to increase performance with lots of lights.
- Changed chunk load checking time. Should help improve client performance.
- Changed death boon icon.
- Reduced texture size on a bunch of boons.
- Changed boon cool down animation.
- Optimized chunk loading checks.
- Substantially increased the time between chunk unload checks.
- Removed Ice buff. I know it’s crazy!
- Added base gun functionality to the game.
- Added Old Shotgun.
- Added Copper Bullets.
- Added a reload boon for weapons so you know the exact reload time.
- Changed many item descriptions to be more informative and include some stats.
- Added secondary markup for item descriptions for pre-formatted stats.
- Optimizations and further features added to particle system for coming updates.
- Enabled thrusters will now burn blocks behind them and eventually break them. They inflict 50 damage to blocks behind them every minute. Blocks destroyed by thrusters DO NOT drop items.
- Added command /god and /ungod for admins which enables ‘god mode’ which prevents damage to them.
- Added boon for god mode.
- Added recipe for Copper Bullets. 1 Copper = 6 Bullets.
- Added recipe for Old Shotgun. 1 Steel and 4 Planks.
- Added Prod. 15 Damage melee weapon. This is part of the starting gear. This still needs a lot of work.
- Added recipe for Prod. 1 Copper.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bloom toggle not saving correctly.
- Fixed FXAA toggle not saving correctly.
- Fixed chunk lighting toggle not saving correctly.
- Fixed skins link in client.
- Fixed a crash with /ds command.
- Fixed formatting on chat commands from old chat system.
- Fixed Next/Previous page buttons on server lobby being slightly out of position.
- Fixed audio not changing based on player rotation.
- Fixed items selected not being shown on other players until they switch item.
