Let there bee light (v1.5.2)

Beekeeping Vintarians
Version 1.5.2, a testing release, is now ready for download in the account manager. But beeware of the bugs! But seriously, this version might be exceptionally buggy, so if you decide to try it out on your old worlds, create a backup first! Also don't forget to execute the update commands for old worlds as listed on the wiki!

The price bump
First of all, thank you all for participating on the twitter and forum polls on the price of vintage story. On twitter 87% voted for raising and on the forums it was 63%. So after long consideration I did conclude to raise it by 2 Eur/3.5USD. To those that voted to keep the previous price, I hear you too! 
So, as promised, everyone that purchased the game so far can get a gift-able game account for 50% off. Additionally, buyers of the supporter add-on can use their coupon twice. Only works on vintagestory.at and not through humble bundle and they will be valid for 1 year.

For Vintarians, use coupon code: 9CF76
For Very Important Vintarians, use coupon code: 1AA72
(This is my first time using the coupon system though, I might have gotten something wrong, so please let me know if you have any issues with it!)
 

But back to the update itself
Despite my heavy disclaimers, this update does contain the 2 major requested features that I mentioned I would be working on: Bee keeping and more intricate lantern crafting with a greater variety. Colored lantern lights are not there yet, but I already prepared the engine for that :-)

A metric ton of features made it into this release, in fact I think this is the largest update since ever. I don't know how we managed to cram so many fixes, changes and additions into those 15 days since the previous release. I didn't even had the impression we were particularly productive these days.

My favorite additions are probably the stone skipping, the angry bee mob and the json patching system. The latter is gonna get so extremely useful not only for modders but also for us to invent new play styles with much less effort.

Many of the changes and additions that made it into this release have been requested by you! It's awesome to have such creative input from everyone of you and we're looking forward to implement more community requested features. Thank you and keep beeing awesome! <3

Pretty pictures

New creature - The  Locust


Medieval Bee Keeping


More Lanterns, Bunch'o'Candles, Brick Slabs, Brick Stairs, Vertical slabs, Vertical trapdoors and Mudbricks

Full Game update list

• Feature: New Creature - The Locust
  • Required several new engine mechanics, but these creatures will now climb any block, stick in herds, attack in herds, might startle the unsuspecting spelunker and are generally just really creepy
• Feature: Greater lantern variety
  • New recipe. Is now made from metal plates, clear quartz and a candle
  • Metal plates can now be smithed on the anvil
  • Can now be made from several metals, including a new 90% lead+ 10% copper alloy: Molybdochalkos. |
    All available variants: Copper, Brass, Black Bronze, Tin bronze, Bismuth bronze, Iron, Molybdochalkos, Silver and Gold
  • It's intensity can now be boosted by 2 light levels with gold/silver lining
• Feature: Medieval bee keeping
  • Bee hives will now rarely spawn in warm, rather dry climates
  • Can now build skeps which, when placed nearby a hive will get populated, if there is enough nearby flowers 
  • Populated skeps can be picked up (but only be held in one of the 4 backpack slots) and transported to your home. Hold down CTRL and then move the mouse wheel to also cycle through your backpack slots! 
  • Populated skeps will eventually turn into harvestable skeps that can be broken to collect honeycomb, this destroys the hive though, so make sure to keep spreading those bee hives into more nearby empty skeps
  • Honeycomb can be separated into honey and beeswax by squeezing it out over an empty clay bowl
  • Eating Honey heals you by 2 health points, Beeswax can be turned into candles
  • Can use populated skeps to craft Beenades which can be thrown for a stingy surprise. Hint: Bees are pretty much angry at anything.
• Feature: New block - Bunch'o'Candles
  • Candles crafted from beeswax can now be placed in a bunch of up to 9 in one block. Never burn out. Each candle adds one light level to the block
• Feature: Server block ticking
  • Barren soil now grows back it's grass
  • Lava ignites nearby combustible blocks
• Feature: Infinite Ladder Stacking! Spam place a ladder on a ladder and watch it grow until the sky or hell, whatever you like better
• Feature: Vertical slabs and vertical trapdoors by @Milo Christiansen
• Feature: New blocks - Clay brick slabs and stairs
• Feature: New blocks - Light and dark mudbricks (creative mode only for now)
• Feature: Stone Skipping - thrown stones now bounce of water surfaces
• Feature: Bamboo Saplings - leaves and the upper segments of bamboo bushes now drop bamboo saplings
• Feature: Can now select backpack slots. Hold CTRL+Mousewheel to loop through all 14 slots or use CTRL+1/2/3/4 to select a backpack slot
• Feature: Mushroom regrowth. When broken with a knife, a stem will remain that eventually regrows into a mushroom again. Mushrooms are no longer placeable in survival mode.
• Feature: Improved positional awareness for ambient sounds. They should also no longer travel further vertically than horizontally.
• Feature: Can now list privileges of a user role via /role (rolename) privilege and revoke/grant privileges to a role via /role [rolename] privilege (grant|revoke) (privname)
• Tweak: Updated server.sh by @skol. Makes use of a new backup mechanic that is way more reliable and can be done without pausing the server
• Tweak: The game client can no longer be started twice, should prevent various issues with the game still running in the background unnoticeably and hogging your computers resources, as well as potential savegame corruption issues
• Tweak: /addarea now prints out more meaningful error messages
• Tweak: Clay brick block recipe now yields double the amount of brick blocks
• Nerf: Berries now only heal 0.5 hp instead of 1 hp
• Fixed: Grass stepping sounds somewhat smudgy sounding
• Fixed: Drifter spawning unaffected by block light
• Fixed: Game still on fast-forward for a minute after getting out of bed
• Fixed: Client not logging chat messages to client-chat.txt
• Fixed: Might fixed the crafting corruption bug that crashes the client and makes crafting impossible on a server until restarted
• Fixed: Obsidian knapping missing texture
• Fixed: Several cases where the block loader crashes from invalid blocktype configurations
• Fixed: Client crashing with a IndexOutOfRangeException
• Fixed: Player getting damaged when standing on a fence that is over 3 blocks in the air
• Fixed: Issues when updating by using the windows installer when the game is still running in the background. The installer now test for that case
• Fixed: Opening/Closing Trapdoors played the sound twice
• Fixed: Mono download url outdated on mac os
• Fixed: Game crashing when trying to place metal plates on the ground
• Fixed: Fixed horsetail plant spawning white particles upon breaking
• Fixed: Torches, Lanterns and Vines attaching wrongly to some blocks
• Fixed: Default server setups causing players not to have permissions to break or use blocks. Again. Jesus.

New Recipes

Mod Support Improvements

• Feature: JSON Patching System - Infinite powaaaah!!11
  Can now add a few lines of json to surgically patch any json file in the game using the syntax defined by the RFC 6902. Place your patches into the assets/patches folder. Example "doubleoredrops.json" - causes ore blocks to drop double the ores (except flint and quartz).

  [
  	{ file: "blocktypes/stone/ore", op: "replace", path: "/dropsByType/*/0/quantity/avg", value: 2.5 }
  ]

  This has 2 massive advantages over complete file replacements:
  • Your mods are much more likely to be game-update-proof
  • Your mods are much more likely to work well with other mods
  • Basically enables for us to easily add new play styles and difficulty levels! Just patch a few things and a new playing style is born.
     
• Feature: The api docs now use DocFX as the documentation generator. Looks nicer and has a search function! It is also extensible with markdown, so we might be getting a significantly prettier documentation platform in the future.
   
• Feature: The game now also treats folders as mods. You no longer need to zip them up for them to load :-)
• Feature: Mod icons should now work properly (define the location of the icon in the modinfo.json)
• Feature: New server side component api.WorldManager.SaveGame that gives you read/write access to some to properties of the currently loaded world
• Block related updates
  • Feature: BehaviorUnstable now has a setting attachedToFaces to set the face to wish the block should check against for attachment
  • Feature: Can now define the selection and collisionbox together through the new property CollisionSelectionBox or CollisionSelectionBoxes
  • Feature: Can now selectively remove variants using the new skipVariants property
  • Feature: The block light values are now read through the new block.GetLightHsv() method. This allows you to, for example, set the block light values through it's block entity
  • Feature: You can now mod in new chest-like containers without touching any code. The amount of slots can be configured through json files. Check out the chest.json for an example.
  • Feature: In the variantgroups list you can now define a list of states and loadFromProperties together, which adds together the variants. Example: { code: "wood", states: ["aged"], loadFromProperties: "block/wood" }
     
• Blocks / Items (=Collectible) related updates
  • Feature: Collectibles can now define their own creative tabs, just add them to the list in the creativeinventory property, no need to register anything. Might need to add an entry to the lang/en.json for correct naming however
  • Feature: Edible collectibles can now turn into another collectible by setting the new EatenStack property in the nutrition props
  • Feature: New collectible callback - OnConsumedByCrafting which is called after the itemstack was used as part of a grid crafting recipe.
  • Feature: You can now add itemstacks to the creative inventory that only differ by the itemstack attributes using the new property creativeinventoryStacks, see blocktypes/metal/lantern.json as example
     
• Entity updates
  • Feature: Add new 4 properties related to climbing. See locust for an example
  • Feature: Can now have flying creatures. See beemob for an example.
  • Feature: AI Tasks seekplayer (now renamed to seekentity) and meleeattack can now take in a list of entity codes that it should attack. See beemob for an example.
     
• Crafting updates
  • During grid crafting an itemstack can now be converted into another itemstack using the new returnedStack property. Check out the beenade crafting recipe for example
     
• Shape tesselation updates
  • The CompositeShape object (which can be defined for items, blocks and creatures) now accepts 2 new arguments:
    • quantityElements: Amount of box elements should be tesselated. If not set, all elements are tesselated. Checkout blocktypes/bunchocandles.json as an example
    • selectiveElements: List of strings, let's you selectively determine which elements to tesselate (untested, sorry!).
  • For shape alternates, you can now skip the base option if it's the same as the original
     
• Tweak: VintageStoryAPI.dll now set to assembly version 1.0.0 and file version to the current game version. This should fix linux mod issues
• Tweak: blockbehavior.TryPlaceBlock now takes in an ItemStack instead of an IItemStack as argument
• Tweak: New argument for block.DoPlaceBlock: The itemstack that was used for placing
• Tweak: Added sub command .debug wireframe ambsounds for ambient sound debugging
• Tweak: The stairs block no longer users hard coded collision/selection boxes, they are now defined in the blocktype json files
• Tweak: Renamed ITextureSource to ITexPositionSource
• Fixed: Block behavior ExchangeOnInteract now properly respects exchange state block domains
• Fixed: Several cases where broken json code would break the block loader and not load anything