Updates

• Ivan has joined the team as builder! He will demonstrate what the games creative mode is capable of!
   
• Chest Inventory! Chests can now be opened and hold up to 12 items at the moment. Might still have a glitch or two.
   
• A lot of new blocks
  • Epic Quartz: Plain, Ornate, Stairs, Slabs and Vertical/Horizontal Pillars   (finally I can make my ruined greek temple \o/)
  • 15 beautifully crafted Metal Sheets each with 5 random textures, can be attached to any solid block side
  • Linen and 3 Wool Carpet style blocks, can be attached to any solid block side
  • Leather Block
  • Clay shingle slabs
  • One new mushroom type
     
• Added a new hud element: Player friendly coordinate display. Toggles on 'C' Key. Shows the distance to the players spawn position in blocks. Adjusted /tp command to teleport relative to player spawn pos (so /tp 0 0 0 will always bring you back to spawn), can still tele to absolute position using /tp =x =y =z, relative movement via /tp ~x ~y ~z remains unchanged.
   
• New player skin: Finally we have our own pretty and fitting skin. Drawn by Nachtfalter.
   
• Improved NPC Tool: Can now spawn named and permanent NPCs. They don't move or can be interacted with yet though. (via /npc add name)
   
• Added basic Linux server run script server.sh
   
• Includes all updates from previous news article:
  • New Theme Track that plays in the main menu
  • Remake of all ore textures (also enabled display of all ore blocks in creative inventory for now)
  • Load music on demand, resulting in the game taking 8 seconds less to start
  • Etc.
     
• Other features
  • Added ability to perform direct network communication between client and server block entities. 
  • Added ability to export the item and block texture atlas the game generates using the command .exptexatlas 
  • Added ability to debug/fix incorrect block mappings if a bug in the mappings should ever occur using the new command /bir
  • Added Multiplayer Version checks. Client now properly reports if the server runs on an incompatible game version
     
• Tweaks / Fixes
  • Tweaked: Music tracks should now play more often 
  • Tweaked: Godrays no longer on by default. 
  • Fixed a crash when using the macro editor. Also now autofills the macro name if none is supplied.
  • Fixed tick profiler not staying attached to the right side of the screen
  • Fixed sideways logs textures not being sideways
  • Fixed Name tags no longer visible in multiplayer
  • Fixed 1-2 rare crashes
  • Fixed door not in a closed state when placing
  • Fixed stuck connecting screen on different server version
     

Pictures
     

Updates

• Nachtfalter joined the team \o/
  He will hopefully provide us with much fancier logos+icons and improve our presence on various sites and communities.
   
• Hayden made a new Theme Track that plays in the main menu. It sounds awesome and mysterious.
   
• Saraty remade many of the ore textures and included 3 different variants for each. Bitmiunous coal and Gold-In-Quartz look especially juicy
   

Tyrons Tweaks, Refactors, Fixes

• Load Music on Demand: When starting the game, instead of 10 seconds loading sounds it should now only take 2 seconds \o/
   
• Large Refactor - GUI Dialog Handling: In preparation for chest inventories I have added another layer of abstraction between the running game instance and all the dialog systems. This allows me to open any number of inventory simultaneously, even multiple chests. Could surely come in handy when organizing chest contents. This also improved code cleanliness. I still have to fully connect the dots before the actual chest inventory works.
   
• Large Refactor - Block Texture Handling: Added yet another layer of abstraction for block texture definitions. Instead of a single filename, a block texture now may have several other properties, which are currently any amounts of overlays or alternate versions. These features were available before but were limited in certain ways which are now gone. This enables:
  • combining any amount of textures based on block/item type. Examples:
    • Stone Texture + Ore Overlay + Erosion Overlay
    • Stick + Pickaxe Head + Flax Binding
       
  • using overlays in combination with alternate versions. Only with this we ware able to add 3 random variants for every ore overlay
    
     
• Worked towards Linux compatiblity: Changed several places in the code to allow playing the game under Linux. Probably still some more steps needed to make it work fully.
• Cleaned up some of the shader code to not use outdated features. Maybe improve compabtility for some graphics cards. Also for ATI cards the game should now print to the log files if something is running in software mode.
• Fixed serverconfig.json and servermagicnumbers.json containing obfuscated names
• Fixed some wrong/missing block names

Updates

• Added ability to configure the world height directly from the singleplayer screen. (it was always configurable but only through editing the serversettings.json)
• Two new music tracks: Mirror and Groove.
• World Edit Updates
  • Added undo/redo capabilities. Can now perform /we undo up to 20 times 
  • Added santity checks to every operation. These prevent you from doing stuff that can potentially crash the server, such as placing large amount of light sources or more than 8 million blocks. Can be disabled via /we sovp 0
• Singleplayer List Items now a bit more informative, now shows:
  • Cheats On/Off and World height
  • Total Real-World play time
• Added new blocks
  • Hardened Clay (4 variants)
  • Unlit and Lit Stove
  • Cobblestone Stairs
• Added frame tick profiler (CTRL+F10) to help track down performance issues
• The installer is finally properly code signed! You now get a pretty blue shield instead of a yellow one when installing the game. I hope this will also resolve any issues with AntiVirus when downloading the game.
• Fixed Server Crash using Mono: The Server should now run under Linux!
• Added proper music system that selects tracks according to the daytime and playstyle
• Improved Brick Textures 
• Tweaked world gen to generate significantly less rock strata

Updates

• Large World Edit update
  • Added 3 new tools, improved paint brush tool
    • New RaiseLower Tool: To raise or lower terrain using 4 different modes
    • New Airbrush Tool: Scatter blocks randomly on the terrains surface using various distribution methods
    • New Erode Tool: Erodes the terrain by averaging the height of the terrain
    • New Import Tool: Import one or many exported files randomly at the selected position
    • New Paint Brush Mode: Replace selected block
       
  • The mod now handles tools in a very generic way, which should make it quite easy to make the mod moddable in itself O_O
     
  • All commands are now fully documented on their own page
     
• Improved Mod API Documentation, uploaded reference documentation at apidocs.vintagestory.at
  
   

Updates

• Added more world edit tools
  • Added ability to set block selection range 
  • Added ball brush/eraser to place or remove larger amounts of blocks at once
  • Added 3 brush modes (fill, replace solid, replace air, replace toplayer)
  • Added ability to export and import areas of the world
    
    
     
• Improved AutoCamera tools for recording smooth cinematic flyovers.
  • Now shows a path preview,
  • Can delete the latest path point
  • Camera should now move smoothly and correctly
    
     
• Improved performance of multi-block operations
• Fixed block breaking animation wrongly positioned for some blocks
• Fixed block breaking particles wrong color for most blocks

My ongoing period of low activity will continue for another 5 days, I can hardly await to finally be able to binge type some game code again.

I did solve a some administrative and interopability issues though, which means the release should only be days away now. The online shop is pretty much done and configured to automatically generate a game key on successful purchase. There will be also a VIP Addon which will give a perk or two, but it's mostly there for anyone who wants to support the game beyond buying a normal game account.

There is one more thing I would like to have before the release - which is a code signed installer, at is it might eliminate some issues with downloading or installing the game. If Comodo is quick enough to deliver my code signing certificate, I will include it in the official release. 

In any case, I will probably put the game up for sale within the coming 7 days.

Updates

• New high-res app icon for the game as well as the model creator
• Topsoil blocks are now displayed more correctly in the inventory (still not quite right though)
• Added some code to worldgen to allow for sub-landforms, which should help create a greater variety of biomes in the future.

If you see no big news from Vintage Story in the coming two weeks, don't worry, I'm probably still alive ;-)
I will be having a voluntary period of low activity and instead spend some more time with my family.

In any case, here are todays...

Updates / Tweaks

• Added a god rays shader pass to create beautiful light shafts during daytime. Elegantly attenuates when looking away from the sun and with some extra intensity boost during dawn and dusk. 
  I would actually like to see them also when looking away from the sun, during the nights and have it more constrained to very bright light sources, but it would require more shader tech and tweaking, so that'll be for another time.
• Added a rather hackish solution so that the grassy sides of the topsoil blocks are only climate tinted. This restores the classic brown on dirt blocks - something our lead artist has been impatiently awaiting for months ;-)
• Allow jump while sneaking
• Bloom tweaks: Lava and ember blocks now glow as well. Added a block-wide glow level. Glowing elements no longer so intensely bright during daytime.
• Added some more documentation to the server API
• Mushrooms, Torches and Firepits a bit larger in the inventory. Torch glow particles decrease in size over time.

Bugfixes

• The 4 backpack slots can no longer non-backpack items (backpacks don't exist yet though)
• Fixed clouds no longer visible
• Fixed game speed not saved with world
• Fixed several issues with shaders for certain players which resulted in a black screen when a game was running
   

v0.9 Pre-Release 6 is now online for all owners of a game key

Yesterday I spent the major part of the day implementing a shader bloom effect and even got it all working by evening. What an impressive effect, it makes everything so pretty *_*
However if bloom is not your cup of tea you can reduce or disable it easily in the graphics setttings.

Let's have a look at the full list of...

Updates

• Bloom Shader effect
  • Added a glowiness level to particles and individual element faces of blocks to make them glow. Freely configurable for all blocks as always. Should allow for some epic Tron-Style Mods
  • Updated the VS Model Creator to allow entering of glow levels for each block element face
  • Added a switch in the graphics settings to enable/disable bloom calculations for performance. It's not very hard on the graphics card though. My cranky old GT 630M card gives me 53 FPS with bloom and 60 FPS without.
  • Added a slider in the gfx settings to set the ambient bloom between 0% and 200% 
• Worldgen
  • Doubled the size of the climate map, which results in the emerging biomes now being twice the size 
  • We finally have Deserts. I found the bug that prevented them from generating.
  • Saguaro Cacti are now generating in deserts. Also the cactus has an occasional flower now
  • Fixed Trees generating in the wrong climate
• Added rotated logs
• Changing the GUI Scale in the graphics settings is now much faster 
• The game installer now offers to uninstall the game in order to prevent old files messing up the game somehow
• Strafing while running now half as fast
• Changed grass blending (now more smooth over distance)
• Leaves and Branchy leaves blocks are now tinted by the climated. The branches are now a cross model inside the branchy leaves block.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a client crash during game startup for some people
• Probably fixed an old and rare client crash (that showed the message "Chunk has no data?").
  With that, all crashes known to me should be fixed \o/
• Fixed massive gpu memory leak because I forgot to enable 3 lines of code after testing something >.<
• Probably fixed certain mouse wheels jumping 2 hotbar slots
• Probably fixed all scrollbars moving slower than the mouse for some people
• Fixed pressing inventory key not closing an opened inventory
• Fixed some flower stem graphics too dark
• Fixed some minor memory leaks in some of the GUI elements
• Multiplayer
  • Fixed player no longer able to move around on the second time joining a multiplayer server
  • Fixed Teleport not working in multiplayer
  • Fixed one more instance of the game crashing instead of showing the disconnected screen

I have sent out the first few free game keys to a number of youtubers as well as a few other people. If you are a Youtuber with a decent subscriber count feel free to contact me and I'll probably send you a free game key. 

Since the game is officially in the hands of others now, I will change the format of my news articles to always include the version number and notable bugfixes. 

Updates 

• The account manager is complete. It now also allows downloading of the game. \o/ 
• The game now ships with XML Documentation for the Server Mod API
• Two example server mods are now available as open source project at https://github.com/tyronx/vsmodexamples
• Added cobblestone slabs
• Significantly improved readability/crispness of many texts in the game, especially when using a GUI Scale smaller than 8
• Added player names above the players head for multiplayer. 

Fixes

• Fixed many collision and selectionboxes not being correctly applied to blocks. 
• Fixed some networking weirdness that sometimes prevents the player to leave a multiplayer world
• Fixed some instances where the client crashes instead of showing a "disconnected from server" screen
• Adding npcs no longer crashes the game

Updates

• Lo-Phi has joined our cause to make music! He already made two excellent first tracks and two days ago we've signed a contract that should ensure long term collaboration. This is going to take our game to a whole new level.
   
• Nearly completed the game account manager. The site now let's you log in securely, change your password and player name and sends you a password reset email if you've forgotten your password. Still missing is account creation from a given game key.
  I've also integrated a "Forgot Password?" and "Account" button in the game that redirect you to the account manager site.
  Sounds so simple but it actually required a lot of things:
   
  • Had to buy and configure a Wildcard SSL Certificate - this is what creates the secure connection (https) for the account manager and now also for the game client, so nobody can steal your password especially over wifi
     
  • Input validation: Need to ensure no duplicate playernames, correct lengths of playernames and passwords, etc.
     
  • Anti Brute Force Login - Protection against people guessing your password with trying every possible combination: The account manager now shows a re-captcha after 3 failed logins and the game client login slows down the login attempts to once every 2 minutes if there were failed logins for 10 times.
     
  • Setting up email sending, the webspace, the subdomains, etc.
     
• 
   
• Saraty redid some of the last unlicensed textures we had and also made a fantastic new cobblestone texture. There is always room for improvement and more additions but texture wise the game is pretty much ready for a first release. 
  
   

Probably the best news of the month is that we now a (so far) glitch free colored lighting system. We also worked heavily on terrain generation again.

Updates

• I have finally fixed the last known lighting glitches related to the colored light system. As mentioned in an earlier article I was unable to make it work in certain cases which was super frustrating, so now I'm all the more happier to finally see it working and no longer something that I have to touch until release. You can see it in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0_M4b9_1TQ
   
• Block Updates
  • New block: Added 10 Paintings that you can hang on walls and which depict Saratys Art \o/
  • New mushroom variant: Bolete mushroom
  • New flower variants: We've added Wild Daisys and Cornflowers
  • New config: Any Block can now be individually be configured to be randomly offseted when placed in the world (currently used for tall grass, flowers, saplings and mushrooms). This now also affects the blocks selection box.
  • New config: Individual elements of a block can now be tinted by climate. This is used to climate color the flowers stems, but not their petals. Looks massively better \o/
    
    
     
• WorldGen Updates
  • New Subsystem: Shrub Generator. Generates small shrubby trees only composed of leaves. Uses it's own shrub layer independent from the forest layer.
  • New Subsystem: Vines Generator. Generates columns of vines on trees in wet climates
  • Added several new tree generators for greater variety
  • Added several new kinds of block patches to the 'Block Patch Generator': Now places single cornflowers and wild daisys, mushrooms in very small groups and heathers, western gorse flower and horsetails rarely in very large groups
  • Some more balancing on the individual landforms
  • Tweaked block layer generator some more, I could finally see something sandy and desert like appear
     
• Inventory Convenience Update: Can now use left shift + mouse click to move items between inventories (e.g. from creative inventory to hotbar)
   
• Half broken blocks now slowly repair themselves (with a backwards running breaking animation)
  
   
• In the create world screen you can now enter a world seed
   
• I've begun work on a 'Game Account Platform' - a website where you will be able to log in with your game account, change your player name or password as well as assisting you when you forgot your password.
   
• Another dozen bugfixes as always

Screenshots

All these screenshots are from procedurally generated terrain, no hand placed blocks (except the first 2 pics obviously)

No video just yet
Everytime I want to get recording I notice a gazillion imperfections that I want to fix, so I did those first >.<
Until next time hopefully.

Saraty and me had our very first usable multiplayer experience and built a small house together (picture below). Still more bugs to squash but that felt totally awesome <3

Alright, let's dig into the git commit log to see what has changed.

Updates

• So I did a lot of polishing, well mostly bugfixes. I usually don't share these, but this time I'll give you a behind the scenes look:
  • Fixed chunks generating twice under certain conditions
  • Fixed a water wave rendering glitch at chunk borders
  • Fixed 2 bugs preventing the standalone server to start
  • Fixed particles wrongly colored from block light and fixed transparent overlapping particles getting very dark.
  • Fixed player characters not illuminated by block light and also fixed precision errors when rendering the character at large coordiantes
  • Fixed Chunk frustum culling being disabled -.-
  • Fixed FXAA not working
  • Fixed /help (cmd) command not recognizing mod commands. .help commands now also sorted alphabetically.
  • Fixed worldgen mod not reloading landforms on server restart
  • Fixed memory not being freed after leaving a multiplayer game
  • Fixed snow layer replacing leaves during world generation
  • Fixed snow layer not rendering if a solid block is above
  • Fixed changing game mode in multiplayer not correctly interpreted by the connected clients
  • Chests and Ladders now have correct collision and selection boxes and are orientable (n e s w)
  • Fixed chunk loader suddenly stopping to generate new chunks after some time. Added another debug command to track such kinds of bugs.
  • Refactored Multilanguage support
  • Fixed not being able to climb out of 2 block deep water
  • Added red mushroom block
     
• Worldgen Updates
  • Added a block patch generator that can produce patches of flowers, different grass, mushroom rings, and later hopefully some smaller patches of sand and gravel near lakes. 
  • Tweaked climate tinting textures to be a bit more pretty
  • Continued work on block layer generation: Works a bit better again, tweaked the grass layer, still not seeing any sandy deserts for some reason.
  • Tweaked landform generator: Mountains and Grasslands probably look better now
     
• Sound and sound engine updates:
  • Refactored the sound engine. The old code was super frustrating for me so I finally went ahead and refactored it. The code is now way cleaner and shorter too. Changing the sound level in the settings now also adjusts all currently running sounds.
     
  • Blocks can now have randomized breaking, placing and stepping-on sounds again freely configurable by anyone. I've spent a day collecting and editing various sounds for the most common blocks. Added about 50 new sounds to the game. Most of them are decent, some need improvement still
     
• Small fun features
  • Each time you you open the "new world" screen, a world name is randomly generated (e.g. "Gloomy Kingdom Worlds")
  • Breaking blocks in creative mode also spawns particles
  • All block sounds now also have a slightly randomized pitch, which sounds super funky. Maybe too funky for our theme

Gallery
This time with some random terrain screenshots, maybe you'll notice the improvements.
  

Boring text is boring

I'll try to record a video or two this weekend to give ya' all an overview on how the game looks like now. That should hopefully be a bit more exhilerating than my constant walls of text 

Updates

• The building blocks in the game received some extra love
  • Doors, the carpenters table and the sign block can now be placed in any 4 directions. 
  • All the torches properly attach to walls, emit colored particles, and they can no longer be attached to non-solid block sides
  • Added upside down slabs
  • We've added brick blocks and improved the textures for Sand, Gravel, and Shingles
      
     
  • All the stair blocks (planks, shingles, cobble) are now correctly, which means they have correct collision boxes and can be placed in 4 directions each up and down side.
     
  • We now have "wildvine ends" that give a nice looking end to the vines. Also fixed wildvines being wrongly shaded and wrongly biome colored. Did I already mention we can now generate 2x2 thick trees (all trees are made by the same generator)?
    
     
  • Finalized the flower pot, which now can hold any flower or sapling. It's my second favorite block after the lantern *_*
    Saraty still plans to make separate potted flower graphics to they fit nice and neat into the pot.
    
     
• I've failed hard on trying to fix a lighting glitch when using coloured lights. I will have to refactor to a slightly simpler system. I'm currently using the HSV color space which seems impossible to get right, so probably will use RGB lights. RGB lights have a small glitch on their own, but a much less noticable one.
   
• The particle system got 2 new properties: OpacityEvolve and SizeEvolve. With those I could make some quite nice smoke particles for the fire pit that increase in size and fade out over time. Freely configurable in each block as always.
  
   
• Spent 3 hours finding a flipped -/+ sign that was causing block side shading glitches  
   
• Many bugfixes and minor tweaks and additions (/help alphabetically sorted, .clearchat clears the chat history, reloading shaders ingame now tells if an error happened, block particle colors now in HSV space). Multiplayer should work a bunch better again. Some weird new issues appeared with trying to start the server on linux which I'm trying to solve next.

Updates

• 64 bit Architecture: It was tough to set up but the game can now run as 64 bit application. When you start the game it will automatically choose the right architecture (32bit or 64bit) and thus on 64bit systems the game is no longer limited to around 1.2gb of memory. That should allow massive view distances as long as the graphics card can handle it and make it run more stable overally.
   
• Block id remapper:  Another boring, but important update. Every game world now remembers what blocks were loaded since last time played and dynamically changes the ids of blocks to match the game world. In simpler terms: If you add or remove a mod or block, the blocks in your old world will not get all mixed up because the blockids have changed.
   
• Added per Block Particle Emitting Configuration: Making blocks emit particles is now just a matter of a few lines of json code. No programming skills required.
   
• Made Multiplayer work again and managed to run a first server on a Linux Machine, but the multiplayer experience is fairly buggy right now and needs fixing.
   
• Lot of progress in the complete block lineup that we want to have for the first release. We now have an absolutely awesome Lantern, Brick blocks, Shingles for Roofs, Doors that can be placed in any direction, upside down slabs, improved gravel and sand textures, 6 random textures for each plank type, and more.
  
  

Updates

• A fantastic fellow going by the Nickname sitatop has joined our cause and has been mass producing high quality block models and textures from dawn to dusk. Saraty has been drawing textures as well, which means I also spent a significant amount of time gathering all the assets and putting them into the game.
    
  
  
   
• Added 2 new client commands to test out how far cloud rendering can go without lagging. As it turns out up the game can render up to 5 kilometers of clouds in every direction without lagging noticably. Admittedly I only tested it on in empty flat world. But then again, a normal world would only increase the load on the GPU and I have a pretty weak one (GT630M). This is how it looks like:
  
   
• Added a FoV Slider that lets you set the Field of View between 20 and 160 degrees.
  
   
• The customized Block Model Creator received some more attention
  • Added block side shading, to give a much better preview of how the block will look like ingame. This one was a hard nut to crack due to boxes being freely rotatable.
  • It now remembers the texture and file save/load path
  • It is now open source and freely available for download at: https://github.com/tyronx/vsmodelcreator/releases
    
     
• I've automated the build process of the game and added a game installer. Both important steps for the relase of the game. My current build process steps: Clear output folder, copy binaries and assets together, obfuscate the binaries, copy some more libraries and finally create installer
   
• Added some cheap print-to-console .help and /help commands to display a list of client and server commands. I want to display those in a seperate dialog someday, to improve readability.
   
• When switching between hotbar slots you new get to see an info box with the name of the block for 2 seconds
   
• Added the infrastructure to set any player picking range, that is from how far away a player can break, place or use blocks.
   
• Cleaned up the server modding api and seperated the vintage story game content mods from the world edit mod. The latter I will probably release as open source example for server mods.
   
• Many tweaks and fixes, one of them is being able to use the full 65k blocktype range the game supports.

Website

• Added a features page which will give you a glance on what is complete and what I'm currently spending most my time on. 
• Rewrote vision page in the hopes of boiling it down to the essentials

Game Update since last news entry

• Colored lights, just finished minutes ago and super happy to have it completed and it's good looking too. It can seamlessly blend 16k colors in any combination. Through block json configuration files you can add/remove whatever color light source you like, if modding is your thing ;-)
  
  
  
  => More pictures
   
•  Saraty made some great looking flowers and tallgrass, some of them have multiple variants. They all serve a particular purpose during world generation.
   
  • Orange mallow, a flower which will appear in dry climates
    
     
  • Heather and Western Gorse: Will appear in low fertility areas in temperate to cold climates
    
     
  • Edelweiss: A uncommon sight in temperate mountains
     
     
  • Horsetail: Common in temperate forests and wet areas
    

Early Release
I've decided I will release a "Creative Mode Edition" within the following 2 months, before the planned release in 2017. This edition will not contain a playable survival mode but offer all of the elements to allow multiplayer creative building with some extras such as server modding support, a nice worldgen, massive configuration options and hopefully some decent camera tools to be able to make nice recordings of in-game creations.

Pricing
The very first version will probably cost only 8 eur which will get you:

• The full game as it is with all available features which is yours forever. No DLCs you would need to pay for extra.
• No DRM, you can copy and download the game freely. However you will need a game account and log in at least once to be able to play
• Obviously no restrictions in monetizations from uploaded videos of the game (e.g. on Youtube)
• Any subsequent updates for 3 years for free. Once that expires you can get a renewal license for a quarter of the price for another 3 years upgrades.
• A purchaser only forum area 

Updates Since Last Week

• Added a number of new blocks and a few updates to the rendering engine to be able to draw them. 
  The blocks are Snow, Snow layer, Ice and Vines 
   
• Dedicated a few days on improving worldgen again, in particular tree and block layer generation. Several trees look a lot better now and there's a first version of snow covered areas. Deserty and jungly areas will follow soon too now.
   
• Finished implementation of random textures, this was missing for json models and could only applied to the whole block. Now you could have a pillar block with only 1 kind of texture for the top and bottom and any quantity of randomly chosen texture for the horizontal sides.
   
• More work towards multiplayer (added a disconnected screen that displays the disconnect reason, made authentication of players via auth server work)
   
• Saraty (and Devon) did some more work on the planks and logs texture and began redrawing all the tallgrass variants.

• Preparations for an upgrade on the tree generator, which will allow for greater flexibility in the types of trees generated. Tried out a few variants to allow 2 and 3 thick tree trunks. Settled with a multi-trunk-per-tree generation system. Upgraded tree generator to allow different style sub branches 
   
• Added a very basic WorldEdit mod that allows clearing and placing any size cubes of blocks. Available commands:
  • /we ms  Marks a start position
  • /we me Marks an end position
  • /we fillm Fills the marked cube with the currently held block
  • /we clearm Clears the marked cube from any blocks
  • /we clear w h  Clears a cube with w length and h height around the player
  • Any suggestions for other useful WorldEdit commands?
     
• Added bulk-block-update capabilities to the server and client which gives a massive performance boost when clearing/placing many blocks at once. (Perfect for huge explosions \o/)
   
• Added ability for the lake generator to generate any depth lakes (previously they could only be 1 deep)
   
• Controls Setting: Refactor of all existing key combination features to an event driven system, allowing one central component of the client to manage all key kombinations. The Settings dialog now displays all available game controls and they can be set to any key combination of your liking (want to walk forward using CTRL + ALT + W? Uhm ok, sure..)
  
   
• Was forced to refactor significant portions of the GUI system which threw off alignments of gui elements in many places
   
• And the best for last: Making use of the gui refactor, the new key combination system and additional work on text editing I've designed a macro editor from scratch that let's use assign any amount of chat commands to a key combination. Example: Map the command "/time set day" to CTRL+Z
  It made designing new trees so much faster and I never want to go back <3
  It also opens up a huge amount of possibilities of things I can do with it in the future.
  
  
  
  The editor currently allows you to assign 14 macros, but it can be easily extended for an infinite amount. Each macro gets it's own procedurally generated icon. This is there because at a later point I want to have a skill bar e.g. on the right side of the screen and simply click on a macro with my mouse cursor. This would also go well together with any special skills the player has (e.g. healing spell? powerup spell?)
  
  The commands textarea is basically a fully functioning text editor coded from scratch as well. The only missing feature is selecting text, anything else is working the same as in a windows notepad.
   
• Many many bugfixes and tweaks all over the place 

• Added client side block ticking, which, in simple terms allows blocks to emit particles, like torch particles. I still need to make proper smoke particles.
   
• Did some more work and fixes to make connecting to multiplayer servers work again. There is still some components that I have to fix up again for multiplayer to work properly (e.g. other players being visible and moving around)
   
• Massive overhaul of the chat system client side and serverside as well as large cleanup/rewrite of all server commands. Vintagestory is now supports the basics for player groups and separate "chat rooms" for each player group. This has inifinite possibilities. Just a few ideas what this can be used for:
  • Guilds!
  • Player partys going adventuring together 
  • Team chats for Creative Build Teams, or any Team vs Team game (i.e. UHC?)
  • Private conversations
  • Scripting console
  • Server console
  • Damage Log
     
• The new chat system also includes
  • Nearly 1000 Lines of code for managing player groups (create group, disband group, rename group, invite player, kick player, leave group, accept group invite, op player, deop player, etc). The owner has all the privileges over a player group and can grant operators ("op") status to players which then in turn can invite and kick normal members.
     
  • An upgraded chat dialog that shows several clickable tabs, one for each "chat room", has a scroll bar and benefits from the upgraded text editing system and modular gui elements. All elements work the same way you are used to from your favorite operating system, so they feel immediately intuitive and natural to use.
     
  • 

• Players can now step on stairs blocks - this was a new challenge because a stairs block actually consists of 2 hitboxes. One of a slab and a half length one on top for the second step.
   
• Added the basics for fence gates (connecting with fences, opening/closing)
   
• The Server can now also load compiled mods, previously they had to be source files
   
• Added code obfuscation and other preperations for a game release. Personally I couldn't care less for code obfuscation, but with a standard C# decompiler you can basically read the whole source code of the game just without code comments - not much different than to release the whole game as open source - which is not the kind of business model I want to follow. Also, very significant parts of the code will remain unobfuscated, such as the mod api. It would also be thinkable for me to remove the obfuscation for certain parts of the codebase in the future if it would contribute to the modability for the game
   
• Added serveral dialogs to be able to rename and delete singleplayer worlds
   
• Did some work to allow advanced text editing: We now have a Caret (the blinking vertical line) and you can move around that caret using cursor keys and Home/End keys like you would be used to in a Text editor. Multiline editing is also more or less working. Being able to select text is missing still.
   
• Added a new feature to the block json model format: Individual cubes of a block can now be rotated in any of 3 axes together and allow any angle (not just 22.5 degree steps). This update also included the necessary updates on the model editor. 
   
• Finished implementation of block materials (e.g. stairs, doors, planks are of material "wood"). Added some new tools (axe, sword, hoe, shovel) 
   
• Implemented mining speed bonus when using tools on blocks (acccording to the block material - so an axe is faster with breaking wooden materials)
   
• Implemented that items can take damage.
  
  
  (Uhoh I Need to change the interpolation method for items in guis, they look very pixely O_O)

• Large update 1: Reworked the positioning of everything inside the game world (blocks, entities, particles and decals) to allow high precision positioning at very large coordinates. Before this update everything in the game became very shaky at large coordinates (e.g. 250.000 blocks away from 0/0/0). This update now allows for much larger worlds (from ~50.000m² up to 500.000m²), although still not at the theoretical limit of 64mil m², there seems to be some more glitches beyond 600-800k blocks which prevents the world from loading.
   
• Large update 2: I had to turn the game coordinate system by 90 degrees (north to east, east to south, ...) to be consistent with the coordinate system in the model editor, which in turn fixed some texturing errors. This threw off many calculcations which I had to correct everywhere.
   
• Large update 3: I had to do some research and fixes on a third party library (OpenTk) to fix some wrong keys being applied on my laptop (pressing Fn+F12 for Volumne up was activating the key 'B' O_O)
   
• ...and another large and really boring update: I've finalized work on an authentication server and basic authentication systems and dialogs in the game client. So in the end it will be the same system as in Minecraft - you need to buy an account which let's you log in into the game and then you can play. Offline play will also be available if you have logged in at least once. For added convenience the will be no launcher, you log in inside the game.
  I'm also trying to make everything correctly right from the start and threw the auth server code and database into a Amazon EC2 / DBS System which allows for very quick scaling if there were a sudden increase in traffic to that server.
   
• Added sound and music level sliders to adjust volume, but no music yet :<
   
• Made the game settings dialogs also available from the main menu
   
• Saraty made a handful of verrry nice textures for planks and logs, which is also pretty much the only noteworthy visual update to show this time
   
• Added randomized block textures! A block can now be textured by any amount of textures which are randomly chosen per coordinate. It looks really good for the planks block and we also working on using it for ores and timber (to build vintage looking log houses)
    
  The random block textures for planks is already in the game. See last picture in below gallery. Notice how some planks are shorter and some longer? Thats perfect matching of random block textures
  
  Pictures: https://imgur.com/a/fQna9

• Two inventory convenience updates: A /clear command now clears the inventory and the keyboard keys 1-9 let's you flip itemstacks between your hotbar and the currently hovered item.
   
• Update on the Physics system to allow stepping on half blocks without jumping
   
• Added GUI Scaling - which is necessary so the GUI can resized to fit your screen size. This is where the GUI System shines - since everypart of the GUI (buttons, text, shadows, borders, lines, sliders, ...) is drawn in code, it can be freely resized without blur.
  
  
   
• New blocks! Vintagestory now has fences, doors, stairs, slabs, glass and polished stone. Some of them still have a very rough implementation, but the placement of stairs and fence works and doors can be interacted with already.
   
• Saraty remade the rock textures and made polished stone, which looks like awesome material for some epic builds.
  
  
   
• I also published a video on my youtube channel that compares the performance of Vintagestory with Teraslogy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KMlWzlbPks

• Added rendering of Items (like Pickaxes) in first person hand
• Added a underwater sounds that loops as long as you stay underwater and fades out near the water surface
• Added ability to set particle size, added underwater particles
• Plenty other fixes and tweaks not worth mentioning

Video as promised \o/

• Added Vsync Toggle to Graphics Settings
• Improved Water swimming physics and added a swimming sound
• Added a water splash sound water particles, both appear when the player jump into the water or drops an item in the water
• Added FXAA (Fast Approximate Antialias) that results in smoother edges which looks nicer
• Mostly finished the block entity system - the game now has a working basic chest where you can right click to get/retrieve items. Next step is to add a GUI
• Many, many bugfixes

I'm doing some more updates on water and once these are done I'll record a short video showcasing all the water updates. You can expect to see it in the next news entry! In the mean time, have a look at some neatly anti aliased terrain!

Pictures: https://imgur.com/a/ASLAw

• Refactor decal system (which is draws the block breaking animation), can now draw decals on any block model (e.g. cross damage texture on a grass block)
   
• Finished item rendering system (voxel style items)
  
  
   
• Begin work on block entities (needed for chests)
   
• Added new properties to blocks and items to modify size, position and rotation when they are displayed in the gui, the players hand or on the ground.
   
• Reworked single player dialogs. Can now create and select existing worlds from a neat menu.
  Also added 2 new gui elements: A toggle button and hover text.
  
  
   
• Added ability to pass custom settings when starting a single player server (like world name, etc.). Begin work of different playstyles. Added super flat world generation for creative playstyle. So now a player can choose to play a survival with normal world generation or creative with superflat worldgen.
   
• Added a very basic loading screen before the main menu appears (takes about 4 seconds)
   

Playstyles

Above GUI Screenshot reveals one essential difference from Vintagecraft - the introduction of Playstyles. I'm quite hopeful that I managed to distill some of them most interesting play styles of a voxel game into 4 distinct modes. 

• Wilderness Survival: If you know TerraFirmaCraft or Don't Starve then you should have an idea what this means :-)
  This play style would alter standard gameplay in a few but significant places to shift the main focus onto survival and place a smaller focus on creative building. In the future this would be the playstyle that could include natural disasters and other game mechanics that destory the terrain.
   
• Survive and Build: The standard mode. A healthy balance between surviving and building
   
• Survive and Automate: Like 'Survive and Build' bit with larger focus on automating your farms and material refining processes. Again only a few but significant changes. Like the introduction of advanced automation, logistics and other technical blocks and perhaps some sort of jetpack like device that requires fuel?
   
• Creative Building: No survival aspect. Infinite supply of blocks. Can fly around freely.