BETA 0.7.0.0

BETA 0.7.0.0

DISTRICTS!
Using the laws system, you can now define districts for your world. Once one or more districts have been defined, you can pass laws that reference these districts, for example that only apply inside a certain district – or that only apply outside of it.

SIMULATION IMPROVEMENTS

• World generation has been tweaked and balanced, in order to generate a better balance of biomes.
• Optimized simulation code, in order to speed up world generation and simulation ticks.

REDESIGNED PLANT SIMULATION
The behavior and simulation of plants has been redone in order to be both more simple and more realistic. Plant populations are more dynamic, and can migrate and out-compete one another as the environment changes. Soil nutrients are easier to understand, and can be tuned with a variety of fertilizers.

Farmed plants are now treated no differently than wild plants; they will flourish in appropriate environments, wither and die in inappropriate ones, can spread to nearby areas and can be out-competed by other plants. You will need to pick a good spot to farm – or carefully manage soil moisture and soil nutrients – in order to succeed.

Finally, with the new Cause and Effect page (accessible from the server website), interactions between plants and their environments can be explored and understood, in order to get better results with farming and controlling plant populations in the wild.

NEW SPECIES
Several new species were added to the game (Note: requires generating a new world).

• Fir and Oak trees
• Saguaro Cactus
• Rice
• Desert Tortoise

ADDED SUPPORT FOR PASSWORD PROTECTED SERVERS

• You can now specify a password required to connect to a server.
• Whitelisted users are exempt from needing to enter a password.
• This removes the prior “Private Server” setting

REWORKED AND IMPROVED TUTORIALS

• Tutorials now give a base set of items, rather than specialties. (Skipping tutorials will give you all the starter items)
• Some specialties will award an improved initial tool instead.
• New tutorial content has been added, and existing content has been rearranged and improved.

HUD

• Updated the HUD with new art, including the nutrition and housing displays, the toolbar, the action bar, and the time of day display.

MOD.IO

• Initial support for downloading and installing mods via mod.io
• More support to come here soon after beta release, stay tuned

CHANGELOG:

• Added automatic windows firewall rule settings for the web server ports.
• Added brightness option
• World layers can be viewed in-world by selecting a layer in the minimap and checking the “Show In World” toggle
• World layers are now displayed with a colorblind friendly gradient
• Polished the world object UI panel graphics
• Plant nutrients and fertilizer have been redesigned and simplified
• Nutrients are now consumed and produced by the ecosystem in a cycle, instead of being a static capacity-based constraint on the ecosystem
• Plants consume nutrients as they mature, and return those nutrients to the soil when they die
• Only half of the nutrients are returned from plants killed or harvested by direct player action
• Fertilizer adds nutrients to the cycle, thus restoring the ecosystem
• The nutrient cycle and plant maturity changes support the Cause & Effect UI
• Plant maturation mechanics are adjusted to be simpler and to work well with the new nutrient behaviour
• Plants age at a constant rate independently of the properties of the local environment
• Plants consume more nutrients, and produce proportionally more yield, if they are raised in a nutrient-rich environment
• Plants are less effective at taking up nutrients if they are in an inhospitable environment (poor temperature or moisture match or high pollution levels) and therefore have lower yields
• You can see the potential yield of each species in its corresponding PotentialYield layer
• Plant population growth mechanics are redesigned to be simpler, more directly related to the behaviour of real plants and to work with the new nutrient mechanics
• Plant reproduction is constrained by nutrient availability
• The more nutrients are available, the more rapidly they will reproduce, up to a maximum intrinsic reproduction rate.
• If there are very few nutrients available, plants will slowly start to die; the fewer nutrients, the faster they’ll die, up to a maximum intrinsic death rate.
• Plants require greater nutrient availability to survive and reproduce if they are raised in an inhospitable * environment (poor temperature or moisture match or high pollution levels)
• Plant reproduction is constrained by available empty space
• There are three kinds of empty space – canopy space, shrub space, and fertile ground. Trees consume canopy space and fertile ground, farmable plants the last two, and grasses only occupy fertile ground.
• The more empty space there is, the more rapidly plants will reproduce, up to a maximum intrinsic growth rate if there is no competition for space
• In inhospitable environments (poor temperature or moisture match or high pollution levels), plants require extra empty space to survive and reproduce.
• If more space is consumed than is available – for example, if a farm is planted too densely and the plants are crowding one another – the plants will slowly start to die. The more overcrowded they are, the faster they will die.
• Only the tightest constraint limits plant reproduction – for example, if there is very little nitrogen available, plants will grow at the same slow rate no matter how much empty space there is.
• Different species have different requirements for empty space and nutrient availability, different intrinsic growth and death rates, and different temperature, moisture, and pollution tolerances.
• As a rule of thumb, intrinsic growth and death rates are tuned so that in perfect conditions the plant population in an area will double in 24 hours, and in completely inhospitable conditions the plant population will halve in 24 hours.
• Plant reproduction supports the Cause & Effect UI
• Added the world layers: OccupiedFertileGround, OccupiedShrubSpace, and OccupiedCanopySpace, which record the amount of each kind of space that’s currently occupied by plants in the area.
• Fixed empty tooltips appearing over empty item slots
• When you right click to add food to a crafting project, you will no longer also eat one
• Fixed a null reference exception in the inventory system
• Added ability to change screen resolution at runtime
• Added ability to toggle fullscreen mode at runtime
• Allowed unlearning specialties that give you items. Only gives you items the first time.
• New art & design for the HUD
• Power type is now displayed on the Power tab for all objects that produce or consume power
• Fixed some things not being saved when the server’s save menu option was clicked
• Allowed reporting a bug from the title screen
• Added a report a bug button to the title screen error popup
• Avatar creation occurs in-world
• Improved network performance (faster chunk loading, more consistent physics / avatar syncing!)
• Redid Meteor impact sequence:
• Meteor enters atmosphere, starts to burn
• When it contacts ground, triggers a huge explosion + 30 meter radius crater
• Atmosphere begins to cloud with debris, becomes fully overcast in a few minutes
• Meteor chunks ejected from the blast begin raining down, creating craters from 2-10m radius
• These meteor chunks number 1 per 250 square meters of world area (4000 on a 100×100) and rain down once every .2 seconds (13 minutes on a 100×100)
• High pollution emanates from the crater positions
• Temperature drops 20 degrees across the globe
• Fixed bug that made dismounting vehicles difficult
• Fixed players teleporting to surface on login
• Removed the default Unity launcher dialog.
• Fixed 100% GPU usage in title scene
• Added error message when failing to collect output of a project
• Fixed getting kicked with an error message when trying to repair some tools
• Fixed the Repair Station’s requirements text sometimes not updating
• Optimized world layer tick time when checking for tailings in the world.
• DevTool now places forms like a Hammer
• Can now select property for contracts.
• Can now split up property easily with buttons on the deed or the minimap panel which spawn new deeds.
• Fixed several contracts bugs
• Fixed the red highlight on crafting ingredients that shows when you don’t have enough
  Removed the delay between law related actions (such as proposing or voting on a law) and others seeing that in their laws window
  Fixed a duplicated message in the nutrition pie tooltip
  Sped up server startup by skipping some unnecessary work ticking world layers.
  Made tooltips for Professions and Specializations in the skills window appear off to the side instead of to the top or bottom (which blocked important parts of the window)
  Fixed targeting and interaction of objects within stockpiles, such as fallen trees or rubble.
  Fixed duplicated vehicle inventories showing on the storage tab
  Removed buy listings where the store is already over ‘max to buy’ from store tooltips
  Significantly reduced specialty costs
  Added a configurable hotkey for opening the skill window
  Made the control popups display the correct key when rebound
  Changed error messages, if a disconnect message was expected, the “report a bug” and “copy to clipboard” * buttons are hidden.
  Contracts can now have repetitions set by the client.
  Fixed permissions not being granted on build room and road clauses.
  Capped players at 10 accepted contracts at once.
  Changed building materials allowed to no longer allow raw logs and stone.
  Made build road accept only materials marked for roads.
  Construction posts can be specified for jobs if they are on public property, if you are the creator of them.
  Hunting animations are now visible on other players
  Arrows remain in animals/objects for a while
  Replaced hunting crosshair with a trajectory prediction line
  Further optimized world layer tick time when checking for tailings in the world.
  Removed avatar button from action bar. Moved avatar clothing inventory into the backpack. Moved ping indicator into the escape menu
  Added a ‘third person’ toggle in the avatar drawer in the backpack
  Saved the state of avatar drawer, minimap filter drawer, and skills ‘show all’ option in player prefs
  Added some wolf whisperer reward items
  Reward items are now automatically given when entering a server for the first time.
  Road tool can now be used on tilled soil
  Fixed tooltips appearing while dragging other items
  Fixed crashes related to equipping clothing
  You can now configure the controls for selecting hammer constructs
  Added scripts to modkit that allow for more interesting mod interactions
  Added NAT detection for local hosted servers. When enabled (enabled by default), it will search for a UPnP device and add proper port-forwarding for that device, to allow easier connecting by outside clients. This makes it easier to join friends servers without needing to forward or open ports in most instances.
  Avatars now sit in or pull vehicles more realistically
  Added support for the “Invite to Game” and “Join Game” features when running in Steam.
  Fixed bug when eating and placing carried items at the same time
  Fixed bow damage
  Fixes some annoying occupancy bugs
  Fixes min/max value bugs in chatcommands
  Tweaked default world generation settings such that they are more acceptable for smaller groups of players (~10 or so). Larger server operators are still encouraged to use larger values.
  Fixed occasional gaps in tree trunks
  Player icons tinted red on minimap to improve visibility
  Added the following useful admin commands
  /kick [user] [reason] – kicks user
  /ban [user] [reason] – kicks the user, and adds them to the blacklist
  /whitelist [user] – whitelists a user
  /admin [user] – grants admin to a user
  /removeadmin [user] – removes admin permissions from a user (if they have it)
  Starting a new world will automatically make you an admin.
  Added a ‘showserver’ launch option, starting the client with this will cause the server console window to be visible if you start a new world.
  Can now pass an admin to the server with a command line, -admin=name
  Fixed some parts of the ugly Escape Menu UI
  Moved Resolution dropdown to a sensible location.
  Fixed several scrollbars
  Added ability to authorize using your steam account, rather than requiring an slg one.
  Fixed some bugs with resolution/fullscreen switching
  Hat color is now saved
  Re-enabled pollution, sea level rising, and etc.
  Fixed tutorial bugs
  Improved OpenGL shader pre-loading
  Fixed a variety of audio bugs.
  Added /warn admin command
  Sorter the YieldPotential world layers for each species to the bottom of the list, and hid the Growth world layers for each species completely
  Added /skillrate to view or change the global skill rate multiplier for the server.
  Fixed some errors with special characters in names (such as deed or currency names) when used with laws.
  Fixed a minor issue with setting resolution
  Tweaedk player audio settings
  Fixed admin fly mode
  Added a second pie displaying your different room values.
  Fixed a problem where if you exited a server before saving your avatar, when you re-entered the ui would be invisible
  Made the action bar prettier
  Faster world creation!
  Fixed an invisible error occurring when attempting to create a new world with the same name as an existing world.
  Added in-game shortcuts for a few server configuration options when creating a new world
  Redid habitability information in the soil sampler to match the new mechanics.
  Removed the option to set store currency to null (this caused crashes)
  Fixed deeds given with /give (these caused crashes)
  Added a item weight summary display on the backpack tooltip.
  Added a server setting so admins can specify an exact spawn location for new players