Update 0.5: World generation

Hey folks,

finally the world generation update is available! This is a real game changer, because the game now provides a very varied, randomly generated world.



The game now generates various huge islands surrounded by an infinite ocean. These islands contain many details like bays, lakes and mountains. Tall mountain peaks are covered with snow.
There are also temperate climate biomes available, like diverse forests, and the game also generates various terrain details to keep the landscape rich in variety.







Water is now dynamic (albeit still experimental), this means it will adapt to the terrain if you dig up the banks of a lake, for example. In creative mode, you can either place dynamic water or static water (which makes building a bit easier sometimes) - there are also various new water-related tools available in creative mode now. However, this isn't the final water implementation yet, so this still has some limitations. There will be another, dedicated water update in the future.

In order to travel between islands, this update introduces two boats: A rowboat and a rigid-inflatable boat. More vessels, especially larger ships are planned.





When creating a new world, you can now also create superflat worlds (similar to how they worked in the Java version). Old demo worlds (created prior to this update) also stay compatible. If you wish to create a new demo world, just use the seed "Demo" ;)

There are also new ores available (which spawn underground), a new pumpkin plant as well as various new items, including a measuring tape, which allows you to measure the distance between two points (which is quite helpful when building).
Another handy change affects the paint roller and paint brush: right click now brings up a color selection dialog, including a color picker.

There is now a ton of other Quality-of-Life features available (hotkeys for inventory, preview on blueprint items etc), backup functionality (especially relevant for multiplayer), we've done some optimizations to speed up the creative mode terrain and removal tools and of course we've also fixed a lot of bugs.

Apart from the new content, we've also reworked the Steam P2P multiplayer mode (i.e. the "Play with friends" option). It's now based on Steams new "Networking Sockets", which should provide better performance compared to the legacy P2P networking.







The game spawns a lot more vegetation now, which may have performance implications unfortunately, especially on lower hardware. We're aware of this problem and we're working on some optimizations which will handle vegetation much more efficiently. Unfortunately this wasn't ready in time, but we will get it ready as soon as possible.

As always, if you find any bugs or if you have questions or feedback, please let us know! Stay tuned for the next update, which will introduce NPCs! :)

Changelog 2022-10-31 (0.5):

• World generation
  
  • Random island generation
    
  • Infinite ocean
    
  • Random generation of bays and lakes
    
  • Random generation of tall mountains
    
  • High mountain peaks are covered with snow
    
  • Randomly distributed temperate climate biomes (forests, meadows etc)
    
  • Randomly generated terrain details
  
  
• Flowing water (experimental)
  
• Added 30 new terrain materials / textures
  
• New boats: Rowboat and RIB
  
• Rowboat is expandable with a storage compartment
  
• New item: Measuring tape to measure the distance between two points
  
• New ores: gold, aluminium, tungsten, coal and sulfur
  
• New cultivable plant: pumpkin plant
  
• New items: pumpkin, pumpkin slices and jack o' lanterns
  
• New items: cloth, fibers, yarn, rope, wires, circuitboard
  
• Spinning wheel, which is used for spinning yarn from fibers or cotton
  
• World creation dialog where you can change ore amount and world type (default and superflat)
  
• Paint roller now brings up a color selection menu on right click (which also enables you to select a custom color)
  
• New creative mode water tools (F5): Place water (5), Paint water (6) and Water area tool (7)
  
• New "edit attribute" console command to change element attributes (e.g. prevent doors from getting obstructed)
  
• New "recalculatelods" console command to regenerate currently loaded LOD chunks (to fix gaps between chunks, for example)
  
• Crafting menu now automatically scrolls to the last position
  
• Sort and merge buttons are now also available for storages
  
• Added teleport options to player list (i) context menu (multiplayer)
  
• Added option to duplicate an item in inventory in creative mode (rightclick on item in inventory or hotkey while hovering item)
  
• Added optional hotkeys to split items in inventory, duplicate item in inventory or change block shapes
  
• Added small lamp icon to the lower right screen corner which is shown when the creative mode light (L) is active
  
• If a world conversion is necessary, the game first creates a backup of the world (in case something goes wrong)
  
• New "worldbackup" command to create a backup of the currently loaded world (also works in multiplayer, compatible with scheduler)
  
• Implemented new Steam P2P Multiplayer (based on "Steam Networking Sockets", which provides better performance)
  
• Added more details to terrain materials
  
• You get more stone now when mining terrain
  
• Improved transition between various terrain materials
  
• Added text showing the current elevation of the creative mode terrain (F5) flatten tool (enter)
  
• Greatly sped up undo command for large blueprints
  
• Sped up creative mode removal tool (when removing lots of elements simultaneously)
  
• Sped up creative mode terrain tools when working with a large brush
  
• Terrain tools in creative mode (F5) now show preview images of terrain textures
  
• Increased max stacksize of cotton to 999
  
• Blueprint item icons now contain a preview image of the blueprint content
  
• When adding new items to inventory, the game first checks for any existing item stacks they could be added to
  
• Update crafting recipe of bandages and certain other items (temporarily)
  
• Elements now also align their rotation to the world element if manual pivot snapping is active
  
• Hunger and thirst is now enabled by default
  
• Creative removal tool now only removes elements if the selection area contains at least 50% of them
  
• Increased range of paint roller
  
• "Copy block" key now only adds a single item to your inventory (can be changed in config file)
  
• Hotkey to drop an item now also works in inventory (press the key while hovering the item you want to drop)
  
• You can now switch to inventory while you're in crafting menu (and vice-versa) by pressing the inventory/crafting hotkey
  
• You now get damage when standing right on top of a smelting furnace or when getting too close to the fire
  
• Fixed bug that caused furnaces to smelt a single ore only (while smelting over night)
  
• Fixed bug that caused terrain to disappear in rare cases when using creative mode terrain tools
  
• Fixed wrong billboard (depending from view angle) of spruce
  
• Fixed error when joining a multiplayer P2P session through the Steam friend list
  
• Fixed blueprints not placing construction elements correctly if they contain a modified surface and the blueprint was resized
  
• Fixed various issues with the console and command suggestions
  
• Planting chili saplings no longer results in instantly fully grown plants
  
• You no longer fall through the ground after sleeping in a tent
  
• Fixed error when trying to send a report while using a large screen resolution
  
• Fixed mouse button input sometimes being suddenly no longer recognized
  
• Fixed bug that prevented you from climbing inclined ladders
  
• Fixed floating plants sometimes not being removed while using creative mode terrain tools
  
• Fixed server browser sometimes not finding LAN games
  
• Depth-of-field effect no longer blurs the night sky
  
• Fixed some smaller typos and other issues