Patch 22 now available!

Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2023
FortressCraft Evolved! Game Banner
Genre: Adventure, Casual, Indie, RPG, Simulation, Strategy
Developer: ProjectorGames
Release Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2015
Different days can provide wildly inconsistent amounts of work. Some days I can get half a dozen new machines in. Other days, I can spend looking at one line of code and end up achiving nothing. This month has been one of the latter months; after the end-to-end playthrough that took about a month for P20, this month has been a consolidation of all the new things. And just a couple of shiny toys for everyone. The handbook has also received a ton of love - if there's any entries for non-obvious machines missing, please let me know!

TL;DR



  • Launch the Railgun to unlock the GPS (Adventures Pack)
  • Use Hive Brains to craft Hive Agitators to get more Resin. (Adventures Pack)
  • Use AntiGrav-tubes to move vertically without risk of dying.
  • Colour-coded Freight Tracks (Adventures Pack)
  • Advanced Teleporters! (Adventures Pack)
  • Context Help overhaul
  • Massive performance improvements to threaded work.
  • Added a 14-page handbook entry, covering the complete game, from your first steps until the RailGun. Feedback wanted!


The Adventures Pack is planned for release in P23 next month; my work until then will pretty much be polishing and fixing issues with that, as opposed to adding anything new.



Performance



  • Altered HBAO to be dynamic based on framerate; this should heavily improve framerate for 1440p and 4k users.
  • Fixed a performance issue on Fabulous and above when many Airlocks were nearby.
  • Performance improvements to animated plants
  • Performance improvement to ConstructoBots when not visible.
  • Fixed Instancing on a large number of plants
  • Fixed a potential issue where plants clearing themselves up would massively overload the Build Orders.
  • Tunnel Nukers will now delay and re-try explosions on successive frames as opposed to locking the mob thread up.
  • Item simulation has been spread out over a number of ticks, and should use approximately 500% less CPU time.
  • Significant memory and performance improvements disk queuing. This should alleviate a number of microstuttering bugs, as well as improve worst-case memory usage.
  • Fixed an issue where exiting the game shortly after running around in a new world could cause a long exit queue time.
  • Plants now smartly request segment saves, as opposed to forcing save too often
  • Tunnel Nukers should now try a little harder to pre-page their segment
  • Tracking of orphaned Build Orders and executed Build Orders
  • Made ArchiveManagement Lock a non-blocking call, meaning no long gaps where SegmentRequests can't be serviced. TL;DR, a queue is much smaller than it used to be.
  • Optimisation of Shifting and Population, reducing the worst-case scenario from ~180,000ms down to 80ms. This is not a typo.
  • Teleporting should be virtually instant for single-players now
  • Complete rework and new caching system for the GetSegment code; this is an exceptionally risky change, but should provide enormous performance benefits.
  • Fixed performance issue with Electric Lights when inside rooms
  • Reduced Good from 10 segment draw distance to 8 segment draw distance, to see if any issues from this thread are resolved : https://steamcommunity.com/app/254200/discussions/0/1760230157503109103/?ctp=3




Quality of Life



  • Added ToneMapping and EyeAdaptation. I don't like the look, so it's disabled by default. When Bloom is off, this turns on, adding to the 'low contrast' look. Simply type

    enter /detail bloom enter enter


  • Medbay now ticks longer, to avoid any timing hiccups on busy worlds
  • Heists now attempt to inject power boosters and ampules to the player's suit inventory first if slots are free
  • Heists now have a configurable limit for injection so you can prevent them from injecting beyond a defined inventory quantity - enables stocking you with a handful of the essentials when you pass by
  • Tweak to heists to support all suit items for all your clumsy suit replacement needs :D
  • Repeat button should now work again on the Manufacturing Plant
  • Paintable variants of blocks should now be placeable if the base block is craftable.
  • Blueprints requiring DLC packs will now be colour-coded in the Manufacturing Plant.
  • Researched/Available counts on the Progression screen are now actually correct.
  • Removed a large number of archaic Console commands, meaning that the help is readable again


Fixes



  • Altered HBAO system so color-bleeding is modulated by depth. TL;DR you won't see weird glowing blocks within the fog.
  • Fog distance is now much more dependent on detail and bake amount, giving a significant draw advantage to higher detail settings.
  • CC plants rendering improved
  • Fixed GPS readout
  • GPS now goes offline if the CPH is destroyed on Important CPH mode.
  • Fixed CCCCC rendering
  • Fixed Toxic plant rendering
  • Fixed animated plants in CC
  • Advanced Teleporter should now work correctly networked (TY MadVandal)
  • Fixed TryExtract to stop taking additional items after it has one and it's an ItemSingle (Ty Pacasa)
  • RecalculateAvailableStackHeight(bool periodicCheck) modified to allow clients to visually update when periodicCheck is true.




New things!



  • Added Techno Anti-Gravity Lift for Frozen Factory Owners
  • Added Rainbow Anti-Gravity Lift for Dapper owners
  • Added Predator Anti-Gravity Lift for Adventure Pack owners
  • Added Basic and Regular Corner Conveyors
  • Added Basic and Regular Conveyor Crafters!
  • Added Hive Agitators - build within 32m of a Hive and feed with power to cause the nearest hivemind to grow. (Adventures Pack only)
  • Added MK4 turret as a multi-block upgrade from MK3s, using Purple (Boss/Perfect) eyes and some Alloyed Blocks. Yes, the turret from the trailer has been redone, made to work, and been made public. Sorry it took so long.


Handbook



  • An enormous amount of translation and handbook work from Zebra + co.
  • Updated Mass Storage Controller and CryoSpawner handbook entries.
  • Updated Energy Grommet handbook entry.
  • Added full handbook entries and guides for all 7 of the Mass Storage machines.
  • Loads of Handbook entries added and updated. Too many to list. Did I miss one?
  • Added Tools handbook entry, explaining all of the tools. This was submitted by a community member, but I haven't got a note as to who! Thank you, mysterious stranger.
  • Updated a number of handbook entries for clarity.
  • Ensures the machine 'hint' was displayed in the crafting interface
  • Updated a large number of machine's descriptions and hints.
  • Handbook fixes to AmpuleCrafters, Attack Scanners and Base Scanners
  • Welcome and First Night Handbook entries no longer display after 200 Base Rating.
  • Added context-sensitive subtitle to Handbook entries
  • Research Panel no longer always inserts itself as the Selected Machine in the Contextual Help Handler
  • Fixed an issue with the Contextual Help handler, due to the Translation team renamingUnknown_Materials to unknown materials.
  • Removed the unnecessary numbers from the short 'Contextual Help' page list.




Fixes



  • Dust in rooms will no longer be present if the room is correctly filtered.
  • Fixed all NonHelp console commands (so /coords works again!)
  • Macerator no longer incorrectly lists power
  • MagmaBore correctly displays power needs
  • Fixed invisible StockPort on initial build
  • Fixed AutoUpgrader with down slopes/corners
  • Resolved log spam due to error with slopes on delete
  • Fix to UI redraw spam for freight cart stations.
  • Fixes display of stacks of >1 million
  • Fixes cube stacks max stack size not being obeyed in Hardcore Inventory
    .
  • Fixed an issue with Advanced Teleporters when a network client.
  • CargoLifts that attempt to spawn into overloaded segments will now fail gracefully and try again.
  • Added QueueLength readout to the Server Monitor - if this is regularly at or over 200, your machine is beginning to struggle to keep up.
  • Implemented a Fix where MSIO ports were causing an exception when non-stackable items were used.
  • Fixed MSIO issue with ItemSingles
  • Railgun is now marked as part of the Adventures Pack.
  • Verified issues with CryoSleeping with no issues
  • Melters will re-awaken fluid even if it can't move.
  • Alloyed Assemblers are no longer part of Frozen Factory DLC (oops)
  • Researching an Unknown Material will now correctly display the information about researching it again.
  • Advanced Teleporters now available to Adventures Pack/Patreons - they do not work Networked currently, tho single-player should be just fine.
  • Added RailGun stat tracking
  • Fixed Scrap Track Junction rendering
  • Fixed a hopper exploit
  • Player will no longer be sent to look for Biomass once they have a Geothermal Plant.
  • Crystal and Lithium 'search' missions no longer trigger once you have Solar Panels
  • ARTHER PTG and Biomass 'comments' are also predicated appropriately.
  • Fixed Tutorial message sizes
  • Removed Copper Wire cost from Slopes, meaning a direct conversion is now available from regular Straights.




Freight Carts


  • Hooked up auto track colorer to the track pieces in the scene
  • Adds the color lighting update code for non-entity track pieces
  • Added ILightingDataUserInterface - this interface is attached to GOs to receive network lighting data updates
  • Added LightingDataOrderManager to pass the lighting updates to GOs on the unity thread
  • Added TrackAutoColor - a script that uses this interface to receive lighting updates for track color updates
  • Deleting cubes now check if they are tracks and queues a scan of the local track to determine if a freight connection was broken and will automatically trigger a grid reset
  • Added more verbose logging in FreightCartMob for some mystery errors recently reported to try to track down the source
  • Adds an error state for FreightCarts for when they can't find a place to offload excess (primarily to sync clients)
  • Adds necessary networking to support transmission of lighting data updates to clients
  • Adds AP DLC check and added tag for crafted items
  • Adds one way track to the AP DLC cube build check as they're of no use to players without the DLC (hidden to avoid confusion)
  • Adds depots and their cart contents to the freight system monitor grid display
  • Carts now tell depots if they can't navigate to them so they can tell the player there's something wrong
  • Blast furnaces no longer hint that they can connect to mass storage (they cant!)
  • Stations now only error for grids of 2 nodes (3 is minimum valid)
  • Junctions color by grid ID
  • Passes the entrydirection through to TrackPiece on create to cache for easy iteration







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