v1.18.0-pre.1 Lore Update: The Resonance Archives

Dear Extraordinary Survivalists
v1.18.0-pre.1, a preview release, can now be downloaded through the account manager (section "Other Goodies").

Phew, what a journey that was to get here - particularly the last 2 weeks got quite hectic for the team, probably the single largest combined undertaking in the game's history. Our efforts were fruitful - our first main story event is here: The Resonance Archives. I believe we've managed to create a magnificent experience - I think most players will be dazzled by the experience

To discover the archives, a vast underground structure: create a new world and find a Treasure Hunter trader. He will request from you a bronze tool, and in return will give you a map of the approximate location (he's not necessarily fully reliable on this). Assuming you found it, before you venture in, make sure to be well prepared - with good armor and provisions.
Please note: In pre.1, some aspects are a work in progress. Some things will still get changed notably. Some things will receive more polishing. There is also still a low chance that random world generation elements will prevent you from completing the entire story event, such as stalagmites getting placed at just the wrong spot. In those cases, doing the event in another brand new world should let you finish it.

What do I do in the Resonance Archives?
For now, we will leave it up to you all to figure out all its inner workings . Feel free to ask for help in the community though, such as #gameplay-help on our discord server, but please use spoiler tags. The VS Team would love to see your first reactions on a Let's play or Stream! Also, we highly recommend you enable music and stay in survival mode (gear up from creative inventory if you must) while exploring the Resonance Archives, to get the full experience. Optionally with earphones/headset for an extra level of immersion.

Is that all?
Nope, there's also tons of other goodies in this update.

• World generation got some massive upgrades. I personally can't get enough of 1.18 world generation and feel myself compelled to do another play session with my family once 1.18 is stable.
• Rafts and Gliders add new dimensions of movement to the game.
• The writing system lets you create your own lore
• Over 1000 new blocks and items added (in Creative mode, 5470 available blocks and items -> 6509)

There's something for everyone! \o/

What about mods?
In this update I was a bit more liberal when it comes to API changes with the potential to break 1.17 (or older) mods. This is for the benefit of more functionality, and future-proofing with a cleaner API and assets structure. Some coded mods may work if simply recompiled against the 1.18 API. For others, we believe that simple multi-file search&replace edits should generally be enough to get your codebase working on 1.18 again (Notepad++ works well for that, btw). I have aimed to list all the API changes in the changelog, as always. Modders, please let me know in the #gamedev channel on Discord if there are significant difficulties in updating your mods to 1.18 - some breaking changes can be expected, it's a preview release, after all.

What about my old worlds?
The pre releases have a good chance of breaking existing worlds, so make sure to backup your savegame before trying a pre. Also there will be chunk borders and no main story event in existing worlds. The chunk borders part we might be able to mitigate between pre.1 and stable. Due to the significance of the main story event, generally we expect that people updating to 1.18 will want to start new worlds. As mentioned in Discord it should now be easier for players to preserve cherished parts of existing worlds.

(Specifically, the new /land claim download <index> command exports a copy of a player's claimed land to their own PC.  Note for now this is available only if server and client updated to 1.18-pre.1, we are looking at also in future making a new 1.17.12 game version with this command so that 1.17 servers can offer it to their players without a full update to 1.18.x.  Potentially there will be a /land claim backup/restore feature - WIP - so that players can preserve and restore their builds on a server which updates from 1.17 to 1.18 - the server would announce to players generally they should do this, individual players would back up their builds and the server store those backups in a specific folder, then the server starts a new 1.18 world, and players with permission can restore their backed up builds into the new world.)

Please note
1. This is an unfinished update, mostly intended for modders and very adventurous players. You will encounter major bugs, incomplete features, performance issues and crashes. In next 1.18 releases, worldgen might also significantly change and therefore produce chunk borders or unknown blocks until rc.1
2. Further preview releases will only be posted in discord #news and on info.vintagestory.at and not on the blog. A new v1.18 blog post will come when the first release candidate (rc.1) is ready
3. It is strongly advisable to start a new world, for testing 1.18-pre.1.  This will allow testing of the new features without risk.  In any case, most people will probably want to start a new 1.18 world anyhow, because existing 1.17 worlds will lack the main story event, and the terrain generation in 1.18 is very different in terms of large-scale features like mountains, plains, land, water, etc.
4.  Known issues already:

• firewood can't be made into charcoal
• occasional terrain color blending problem (different color tones of grass / trees / plants either side of a straight line through the map)
• Resonator model changes orientation if a tuning cylinder is inserted
• various issues with doors

Still planned for rc.1
A lot of final polishing of the main story event. Even more lore content: the ability to combine transcribed parchments back into a full book possibly more (wearable) gadgetry. Possibly a rewrite of the oceans world generation system resulting in massive terrain changes! Final polishing of all the other new mechanics.

.NET7
Concurrently to the work on 1.18 release, we are still refining our transition from .NET Framework 4.6 to .NET7. This will provide smoother performance, some future-proofing, and potentially broader stability on Linux and MacOS. At present, test builds of v.1.17 are available in a .NET7 version for Windows, Linux and MacOS. If all goes well, at some point we will also make a .NET7 build of v.1.18 available.  Though there is no certainty yet, the intention is for that then to become our standard release for 1.18 if it presents no major issues: only time will tell. We are currently interested in feedback from any Windows 7/8 users who have tried the .NET7 test build.

In other news
Today also marks 1 year since Russia launched an Invasion of Ukraine. One year ago, we launched a fundraiser and were able to donate 5600 eur towards humanitarian aid - we donated to a respectable charity project in our area. I will personally donate another 2800 eur in the coming days.

Screenshots & Gifs

Added first main story event: The Resonance Archives. A vast underground structure for you to explore, master its challenges and loot rare treasures.

Added NPC Dialogue. You can now have conversations with traders


Added Glider: Descend elegantly from tall mountains. Added rift wards to defuse treacherous rifts near your base.
 

Added rafts. Stay dry when traversing the seas.

Oceans: You can now create worlds with large bodies of water. (Currently) off by default, enable it in the Customize World screen


More diverse world generation, such as the new upheaval system, which creates large-scale mountainous areas


Geologic activity system. Some areas in the world now spawn hot springs, and possibly even lava rivers closer to the surface


Overhauled poles. Instead of massive mountains, there are now windswept glaciers and desolate valleys


Rocktyped ruins: Ruins now adapt to the local rock strata (the builders apparently liked to source their rock locally)

New landforms: You will fall in love with the new terraced mountains and super flat areas


Moss now grows on trees


Added veins of cracked rock



Added writing system and interactable bookshelves. 1.18 is also "your lore update" \o/


160+ new types of butterflies and a butterfly net to catch them. Caught butterflies can be placed in display cases.


Door overhaul: Added much larger doors/gates, as well as wood-typed doors, and door animations

 

Sign block overhaul: Can now change font size, improved writing experience and added metal plaques

Angled beams system: A wholly different placement system for wooden beams


Improved chiseling: Glass is now fully chiselable and seamless. There is now also a chiselable "creativegrass" block in creative mode.

Added treasure maps. The Treasure Hunter trader offers to help you find hidden treasure ... for a fee


Reworked most flower models


Improved reeds model


Visible fertilizer. You can now see how much fertilizer you applied to farmland


Reworked firewood and orientable firewood piles


Improved handbook: Now shows output quantities and other QOL changes
 

Overhauled the command system.  New Command Block functionality. Command blocks can open and close doors and operate certain other activatable blocks (for example a Mechanical Power clutch). There is also a new Conditional Block which detects nearby entities meeting specified conditions, and a Ticker Block to repeat actions automatically


Players in multiplayer can now download a copy of their own claimed land to their local computer. This should help players migrate to a new 1.18 world.


Added a tutorial mode (WIP)


Auto updater for Windows users


Added ability to swap textures, limited to clutter blocks only


Added wearable spectacles

Full visual rework of our music player - it is now called Resonator, and the media are called tuning cylinders



Game updates

• Feature: The first main story event. A massive, highly detailed underground structure for you to adventure into, with many new features and blocks (not described nor pictured here, to avoid spoilers!)
• Feature: Improved world generation
  • Added Oceans system. Disabled by default but can be set up in the World Configuration screen.
  • Added vertical upheavel system. Very large scale mountainous regions, and flattened plains regions. Configurable.
  • Geologic activity system. Some areas now have underground lava rivers closer to the surface, as well as hot springs above underground lava pools. Configurable.
  • Overhauled polar regions. Instead of mountain ranges there now are glaciers devoid of structures. Added packed ice block.
  • Added 6 new landforms: Large islands, Realistic flatlands, Realistic mountains ledged, Realistic mountains quintuple-ledged, Stepped sinkholes and "Veryflat". Fine-tuned many of the existing landforms. Increase landform sizes by 20%
  • Feature: Cracked rock now spawns like quartz veins
  • Feature: Can now generate up to 8x8 million block worlds (Experimental. Previous max was 1x1mil) (Technical info: Fixed 2 issues with large worlds - entity movement jitter and chunks saved in the wrong locations)
  • Feature: Surface ruins are now rocktyped based on local rock strata.
  • Feature: Surface ruins and trees in wet&warm climates now have moss on their logs
  • Tweak: Improved support for large world heights
    • Reduce rivulet spam high in the mountains, most apparent on large world heights
    • Ore deposits now scale with world height (except surface copper)
    • Terrain detail now scales with world height setting. Previously terrain would become very low detail at large world heights.
  • Tweak: Increased ruined village size variability
  • Tweak: Reduced trees at the north/south pole
  • Tweak: Fewer floating islands (20 block size cull threshold -> 40 block size threshold)
  • Tweak: Added another soil layer
  • Tweak: Reduced spawn depth of treasure chests
  • Tweak: The grades of the deposits bismuthinite, galena, ilmenite, limonite, hematite, magnetite, malachite and sphalerite now increase, the deeper they spawn
  • Fixed: Water lily no longer generates in very deep water
  • Fixed: Loose patches of rusty gears not spawning underground
  • Fixed: Floating sand generating on water in cold areas
• Feature: Added Glider. Descend elegantly from tall mountains. Its crafting recipe is a potential reward from the main story event.
• Feature: Added Rafts. An innovative 1- or 2-seater watery transportation system. Requires crude oar in main hand.
• Feature: Added rift ward, reduces spawn of rifts by 95% in a 30 block radius around the ward. Consumes temporal gears.
• Feature: Added treasure maps. They add waypoints on your world map pointing towards treasures. Sold by traders.  Accuracy unknown(?)
• Feature: Writing system and Bookshelves
  • Can now write in books and parchments. Books can be signed to make then non-editable
  • Added ink and quill item, required for writing in books
  • Added fully interactable bookshelves, lets you store and remove up to 14 books in each one
• Feature: Added 160+ new types of butterflies. Butterflies can now be caught with a butterfly net & can be placed in display cases. Butterfly spawning behavior now depends on climate and elevation.
• Feature: Doors overhaul
  • Added 3m tall doors, as well as 2x2 gates and 2x4 gates, all of which can also be combined to double doors / double gates.
  • Doors crafted from boards are now wood-typed and no longer have a sleek look
  • The old sleek looking door can be purchased at the trader instead
  • The opening and closing sequence of doors is now animated
• Feature: Sign block overhaul
  • Signs and labeled chests text font size is now configurable and more easily moddable
  • Sign text editor text area more accurately represents how the actual text is displayed on the sign
  • Added writeable metal plaques that use a new medieval font
• Feature: Improved Handbook
  • Improved search result quality (prioritize full word over partial words, deprioritize ore blocks and items)
  • The handbook now displays output quantities for crafting and barrel recipes
  • Added growing properties of fruit trees to the handbook
  • New textures for diluted alum, cassiterite and chromite so one can tell apart the 3 liquids suitable to create mordanted cloth in the handbook
  • Lanterns are now grouped. Fixed Cider and Aqua vitae not listed. Fixed several links not working in the handbook
• Feature: Added angled beams system. Allows you to create long straight lines of wood in your constructions. Comes in wood variants and some aged metals. Note: beams are purely decorative
• Feature: Tutorial system. Can now start/stop a tutorial from the handbook. Multi-tutorial support. In pre.1, currently only has one starter guide tutorial.
• Feature: Visible fertilizer. Fertilizer applied to farmland is now visually shown on the farm land
• Feature: Added one new rotation option to the planks block, now acts like logs when placing (vertical, n-s and w-e)
• Feature: Can now download land claims using command /land claim download [index]
• Feature: The game now attempts to download unsatisfied mod dependencies from the Vintage Story ModDB
• Feature: Added auto-updater for the Windows client (not available on Linux/Mac)
• Feature: Added experimental playstyle called "Homo sapiens" that intends to remove all lore content from the game. WIP.
• Feature: Dialogs and main menu now have a textured background
• Feature: Added 50 wearable butterfly pins (creative mode only currently)
• Feature: Added glasses face accessory for seraph
• Feature: Added ruined weapons. Unique models with fairly high damage, but very low durability. You'll have to choose whether to use them in a pinch or keep them on display somewhere.
• Feature: Full remake of the "music box". New model and new concept. The music player is now called "Resonator" previously "Echo Chamber", and the mediums are now called "Tuning cylinder" instead of "Resonance Archive".
• Feature: New (survival mode) construction options
  • Feature: Parchment can now be crafted
  • Feature: Added sod roofs and debarked logs, survival craftable
• Feature: Improved chiseling!
  • Feature: Chiseled glass is now seamless. Improved FPS in heavily chiseled areas by about 4% (thanks, Xytabich)
  • Feature: Chiseled blocks can now support climate/season colored blocks. Added "creativegrass" to the creative inventory as an example
  • Tweak: Modified how chiseling partial blocks behaves. in 1.17 it constrained the players within the original bounding boxes. In 1.18 it constrains the player within the original volume of each material.
• Feature: Improved world maps!
  • Improved shading to better visualize the steepness of the terrain
  • Waypoints are now more visible against the map background
  • Tweak: The Add Waypoint dialog now auto suggests a name based on the chosen icon and color
  • By default, a waypoint is now created where you last died. Only the most recent death waypoint is kept. Can be disabled server wide via worldconfig allowDeathwaypointing or per player via /waypoint deathwp false
• Tweak: Gameplay balancing changes
  • Feature: Bows now have accuracy modifiers. High end bows are now more accurate
  • Feature: Hunters now have 20% increased bow drawing strength
  • Tweak: Increased min charge time for bows from 0.35s to 0.65s
  • Tweak: Animal harvesting no longer yields bones, but breaking the carcass does
  • Tweak: For the standard survival playstyle, a respawn location set by a temporal gear is now limited to 20 uses.
  • Tweak: Prospecting pick node search mode is now enabled by default in standard survival (radius 6)
  • Tweak: Foxes, Wolves and Bears will now de-spawn after 14 in-game days
  • Tweak: Standing in lit firepits or on hot ingot/tool molds now damages players and creatures alike (though players can still handle hot ingots and tools with impunity)
  • Tweak: Player can no longer place blocks directly in Lava
  • Tweak: Lore items no longer disappear when discovering, and can be right-clicked to read directly.
  • Tweak: The sling now requires a 0.75 seconds charge time instead of 0.35s
  • Tweak: Wood chests now require 1/4th of a metal ingot to craft in the form of a new "metal nails and strips" item which can be smithed
  • Tweak: Shield blocking mechanic tweak - attacks from a steep angle (above or below the player beyond 65°) now require the player to be looking up/down to block the attack
  • Tweak: Increased steel chisel durability (5000 -> 6000)
  • Tweak: Breaking tallgrass with a knife no longer removes it but trims it. Trimmed grass no longer drops dry grass.
  • Tweak: Cassiterite, chromite, and lead now use the same quantity averaging as ilmenite, when crushed
  • Tweak: Nuggets of ilmenite, galena, chromite, and cassiterite can now be crushed in the Pulverizer. In order to maintain parity with regular ore, the yield of nuggets is less than 1.  You will generally, on average, get one crushed unit for every 3 nuggets.
  • Tweak: Animal harvesting speed bonus for higher tier knives (proportional to the knife's plant harvesting speed)
  • Tweak: Reduced Drifter max light spawn threshold from 9 to 7, to more easily Drifter-proof areas
  • Tweak: In single player, the game now fully pauses during character creation
  • Tweak: Alum deposits can now also spawn surface ores
  • Tweak: Reduced chance of calm rift weather
  • Tweak: Bighorn sheep hitbox and wander speed fine tuning
  • Fixed: Bears drowning in water
  • Fixed: Hunger exploit when eating a meal while full
• Tweak: Visual fine tuning
  • Feature: New 3d model for reeds
  • Feature: Reworked firewood model! Also affects firewood piles, firepits and pit kilns as well
  • Feature: Added underwater Sediment disturbance particle effect
  • Feature: Particles from held torches are now also affected by wind. Tweaked fire effects of torches and firepits to be more fire-like.
  • Tweak: Increased overall scene brightness on sunny days
  • Tweak: Desert storm fog no longer appears when it recently rained
  • Tweak: Cloud visuals fine tuning. Now a bit more fluffy looking. Mitigate jarring cloud edges.
  • Tweak: More shader fine tuning (fixed horizon not same color as fog with godrays enabled, flat fog extending slightly further into the horizon, mitigate heavy smudge on the sun with godrays enabled,
  • Tweak: Snowfall is now more dense
  • Tweak: Harvesting berries now spawns some particles
  • Tweak: The "protect eyes" seraph pose during strong winds now no longer triggers if you are indoors or not looking into the wind direction
  • Tweak: Seraph now also adjusts its torso when looking around
  • Feature: Seraph now plays one of 4 random animations after being idle for 20 seconds, at a 1% chance per tick
  • Feature: Seraph can now wear spectacles
  • Tweak: Text on sign blocks is now a bit sharper
  • Tweak: Reduced see-through effect of water near the player
  • Tweak: Made rain drip particles wind affected
  • Tweak: Creature step pitching visual fine tuning
  • Tweak: Reduced shiny effect for blocks that are in shade
  • Tweak: Temporal stability twitching now disabled when not in survival mode
  • Tweak: Replaced weak block reflectivity mode with a pixelated version, the old smooth one was also broken on Nvidia cards
• Tweak: Performance optimizations
  • New "ChunkUploadRateLimiter" graphics settings that can help you reduce potential lag spikes during chunk loading (Detail: on PCs with fast CPUs and slow GPUs, new chunks may be rendered so quickly that a slow GPU chokes up, causing intermittent frame rate drops on affected systems, when moving into new map areas)
  • Supercharged chunk generation on CPUs that have at least 8 logical processors, e.g. 4 core, 8 thread CPUs. (Technical info: Chunk generation thread no longer goes to sleep while generating at 8+ logical processors)
  • Eliminated lag spikes in some areas of the game, most specifically when searching for buckets in the creative inventory (4s lag spike -> no lag spike)
  • Improve world startup speed by ~2.5 seconds. (Technical info: Make Lang system lock-free, creation of texture atlas mipmaps now done off-thread)
  • Further improved startup performance on worlds that are using many modded blocks (or were using many! even if a mod is removed, it can have some lasting effect on block data storage in a saved game)
  • Much improved overall FPS when dropping thousands of items. (Technical info: If there is over 1500 entities loaded, dropped items will enter a physics dormancy state after a couple of seconds if there is no player in a 7 block range, where they will tick their physics 20 times slower)
  • Slightly optimize dropped item despawn behavior as well
  • Slightly increased overall FPS (Technical info: Tighter frustum culling check + do not draw moss and lichen, or loose stones at LOD2, additional face culling on less-visible distant leaves at LOD2)
  • Slightly increased overall FPS #2 (Technical info: cave art and stone, gravel overlays not rendered at LOD2; partial blocks which are fully dark (0 sunlight, 0 blocklight) are rendered only at LOD0 distance, will only affect underground as world surface blocks have sunlight values)
  • Tweak: Improve FPS by up to 23% when at max view distance. (Technical info: Clamp lod bias beyond 640 view distance, resulted in 13 FPS => 16 FPS / 17mil tris => 12 mil tris at max view distance in a heavily forested area)
  • Fixed: Client side slow memory leak (Technical info: map regions were never unloaded on the client)
• Feature: Full rewrite of the command system to be more powerful, more flexible, self-documenting and more everything.
  • Disclaimer: WIP. Thousands of lines of code were rewritten, but not all current commands are updated to the new Command API syntax.
  • Many commands now allow for complex selectors and can operate on multiple targets at once. Full documentation will be made available by us by the time of a stable release.  For now, please use the in-game /help command, it should be able to provide full help for the commands which use the new Command API.  For example, /help tp
  • Improved /ban command. Now must supply a time span and reason before banning a user. For a reasonless permaban, added command /hardban. More informative banned screen for the banned player when attempting to join. More informative output on "/list banned" and no longer prints expired bans. Expired bans are now deleted on server startup. Bans/Unbans are now logged to server-audit.txt
  • /tp now uses the new entity and target location selector systems. Examples:
    • /tp 0 150 0           - Teleport yourself to 0 150 0
    • /tp s[] Saraty        - Teleport yourself to saraty
    • /tp Tyron Saraty   - Teleport tyron to saraty
    • /tp p[] Saraty        - Teleport all players to saraty
    • /tp p[range=12] ~ ~10 ~      - Teleport all players within a 12 block range 10 blocks in the air
    • /tp l[] Tyron           - Teleport the currently looked at entity/player to Tyron
    • /tp Tyron l[]           - Teleport Tyron to the currently looked at entity/player
  • When typing a wrong command, the command system now tries to find a similar one and suggests it as a clickable link
  • Feature: New command /setblock <code> <position>
  • Feature: New command /executeas <entityselector> <command>
  • Feature: New command /activate <position> [arguments]. For supported blocks, it should be similar to a player right-clicking or activating the block.  Currently supported: opening/closing doors, trapdoors and gates; executing a Command Block; operating a mechanical power Clutch
  • Feature: New command /entity setattr command to set attributes on an entity
  • Tweak: Removed /clearentities, replaced with /entity wipeall <entityselector>
  • Tweak: /entity count and /entity countg now accept an entity selector argument
  • Tweak: /entity remove now requires an entity selector, e.g. e[type=drifter*]
  • Tweak: Commands /cit and /chunkunload are now respectively /chunk cit and /chunk unload
  • Tweak: Command /debug cr is now /debug chunk relight
  • Tweak: Command /debug delplr is now /player [playername] wipedata
  • Tweak: Command /debug clrplrinv is now /player [playername] clearinv
  • Tweak: Command /debug setgen is now /entity setgen
  • Tweak: Command /debug setlact is now /entity setlact
  • Tweak: Changed syntax of /giveitem and /giveblock:
    • Before: /giveitem type quantity toplayername {attributes}
    • Now: /giveitem type{attributes} quantity entityselector
  • /weather command tweaks
  • Fixed /setblock not respecting block attributes argument
  • Tweak: /we mark now requires '=' prefix for absolute positions
  • Tweak: The /kill command now requires the "selfkill" privilege, granted by default, so that server admins can choose to remove it.
  • Tweak: Disable .debug commands for non-admins in multiplayer
• Feature: More creative mode content
  • Feature: Added Conditional Block and Ticker Block as first steps to better support adventure map making
  • Feature: More Clutter.  Clutter has its own Creative tab. Added aged and rotten ebony planks, improved clutter crates, ruined small crate, more ruined tables and bed variants, ruined scroll racks, empty ruined tool racks, ruined lanterns, heavy doors, banners, pipes. aged armor stands, dirty gravel, long tables, aged polish rock, carved acacia log, ruined trunks, ruined translocator etc..
  • Feature: Can now place omok pieces on a remodeled Omok table top. Pieces can be bought at the trader.
  • Feature: Added various new block decor overlays to creative mode, such as mold, rust, spotty moss, wet gravel
  • Feature: New Aged bricks block
  • Feature: Added a texture flipper tool. Allows you to change the wood type on a number of clutter blocks.
  • Feature: Added "measuring rope" creative mode block to help with relative coordinates needed by various commands
  • Feature: new Worldgen Hook block to support generation of additional worldgen structures when this block is placed by worldgen, (see technical info in API changelog below)
  • Tweak: Added veryaged and veryaged-rotten variants of debarked logs and support beams
  • Tweak: Added several more features to the Spawner meta block
  • Tweak: Can now find all decor blocks by searching for "layer" or "decor" in the creative inventory
• Tweak: WorldEdit changes
  • Feature: Worldedit: Added ability to gen trees with vines via "/wgen tvines 0..1"
  • Feature: Flood fill tool: Can now separately ignore water or plants
  • Feature: New chisel brush world edit tool paint in voxels
  • Feature: Added /we mpacifywater. Pacifies water in selected area - i.e. turns all flowing water into still water
  • Feature: Added /we mdeletewater. Deletes all water in selected area
  • Tweak: Added "ignore water and plants" switch for the flood fill tool
  • Tweak: Added chiselable collider meta block
  • Tweak: World edit selection tools now have a more intuitive selection behavior
  • Tweak: Air brush mode has a new "replace only selected block" mode
  • Tweak: Added /we cx, /we cy and /we cz to change the selection in x,y and z axis
  • Fixed: Imported and placed Schematics now place Decor blocks correctly
  • Fixed: Worldedit Undo/Redo not working with decor blocks
  • Fixed: Worldedit Undo/Redo borked with liquids
  • Fixed: /wgen regen sometimes not sending chunks properly
• Feature: Textareas now support word automatic wrapping
• Tweak: Game now starts at year 0
• Tweak: Can now use wrench to rotate clutter blocks (also hold sneak to turn turn a block around the looked at block face)
• Tweak: All wrench-rotatable blocks now show this in their block interaction help
• Tweak: Disabled ram optimization setting "Do not optimize". Tends to make things worse, performance wise
• Tweak: Reduced max resolution slider value to 100% (was 200%). Can be still increased with .clientconfig
• Tweak: Made butterflies not flee from you when you sneak
• Tweak: Flower visuals rework. Several flowers now use a richer model. Reworked woad texture, (still to add: reworked cow parsley, reworked california poppy)
• Tweak: New texture for golden poppy and woad flowers. Increased golden poppy spawn chance 5-fold
• Tweak: Firestarter can be used in claimed lands with the use permision (required build/break permission previously)
• Tweak: Ground stored items can now be placed/removed in claimed lands with the use permission (required build/break permission previously)
• Tweak: Fish AI fine tuning
• Tweak: Nails and strips can now also be used for block reinforcement
• Tweak: Echo chamber is now renamed to Resonator
• Tweak: Added our moderators to the credits screen
• Tweak: Better auto-guessing for the right window size and GUI scale on first startup
• Tweak: The game is now more robust against removing/re-adding mods or blocktypes (Technical info: Block entity data on missing blocks was lost upon save&reload, it's now preserved in case the block is later re-added)
• Tweak: Various dejanks / Quality-of-live changes
  • Tweak: Fine tuned camera position time step, might reduce frame jitter
  • Tweak: Vintagebeef now has a 3d model, tweaked pear on tree texture, fine tune roof corner 3d models
  • Tweak: Fixed minor UI issues in the settings dialog. Added "Framerate issues" link to the wiki
  • Tweak: 3rd person camera now looks through glass instead of zooming onto the seraph
  • Tweak: Vines no longer drop "end" sections
  • Tweak: Hide reticle in spectator mode
  • Tweak: Snappier plate armor step sound
  • Tweak/Fixed: The torchholder now also has a tight attachment area for chiseling
  • Tweak: Prevent creatures from stepping on stalagmites/ctites
  • Tweak: Breaking soil under ferns now removes the fern
  • Tweak: Lit torches now write when they burn out in held tooltip and burn out in 48 hours as its written on the extinct torch.
  • Tweak: The hotkeys to toggle the coordinate hud, block info hud and block interaction help (V, B, N) now require Ctrl to pressed by default (CTRL+V, CTRL+B, CTRL+N).  Our intention is to save new players from accidentally switching off this useful help
  • Tweak: Torches are no longer "Material: Other"
  • Tweak: Removed butter from creative menu & handbook. Removed unused "Crank" item from the game
  • Tweak: Parchment and books are now groundstorable
• Tweak: Renamed 'Cooper's Reed' to 'Cattails'. Reed baskets renamed to Reed chests, to avoid confusion with reed handbaskets
• Tweak: Added mod name to held item info if it's not a vanilla block
• Tweak: Removed "Stove" block from creative inventory (you can still get it via /giveblock stove-unlit-north)
• Tweak: The creative only rhodium items are now nickel
• Removed: Instanced grass/flower rendering. Fixes flower rendering bugs.
• Fixed: Changing sound output device broke many sounds
• Fixed: Game crashing on world load when the installation path contained curly braces
• Fixed: Game crashing with StackOverflowException when the VintageStoryLib.dll was not found. Now crashes with a more useful error.
• Fixed: Game crashing in multiple locations when the survival mod assets were not loaded
• Fixed: Sun rising in the evening when the survival mod was disabled
• Fixed: Using wrench in creative mode consumed durability
• Fixed: Tapestry in GUI mirrored, fixed wrong textures on the sides of tapestry
• Fixed: Link text alignment issues with centered fonts
• Fixed: Hacked locusts were despawning when out of player range
• Fixed: Lighting flashes in the cloud were not removed in some cases, causing permanent bright spots
• Fixed: Gui derp when right clicking a clay form twice
• Fixed: Potential crashes when knapping with stones that were also suitable for cave art
• Fixed: "Meta (Spawner)" gui creature selection derps
• Fixed: z-fighting on seraph hand when holding a forlon estoc
• Fixed: Group invite notification not received by players
• Fixed: A crash related to cloth sim
• Fixed: Wrong texture on part-baked and charred sunflower bread
• Fixed: No linebreak made by the text editor if there were no spaces to linebreak at
• Fixed: Wrong texture on the aged basket, added ruined basket as well
• Fixed: Able to overfill troughs using chutes
• Fixed: Should fix a server-side exception when a client crashes during connect
• Fixed: Game crashing when removing a cinematic camera point when there is no points, then re-adding a point
• Fixed: Incorrect particle collisions with clutter blocks
• Fixed: One occasional source of "Tried to get block outside generating chunks!" error in logs
• Fixed: Vintagehosting: Able to select a server version not compatible with vintagehosting
• Fixed: Issues with saving macros
• Fixed: Multiple issues with the move tool, amongst others clutter blocks not updating correctly as well as an issue when loading block entities client side
• Fixed: Chest animations borked
• Fixed: Animated blocks such as chests glowing if something else animated in camera view is glowing
• Fixed: Unknown decor blocks (e.g. from removed mods) were invisible. Now they display an unknown texture.
• Fixed: New world not starting if it can't find a suitable spawn location
• Fixed: Multiple issues when importing a schematic from a previously modded world
• Fixed: Prevent a very old bug where some chunks become completely black (=unlit) after reopening a savegame
• Fixed: Armorstands not having their items when placed from story schematics
• Fixed: Rare errors in logs reported by BETransient, on snow-covered Reeds blocks
• Fixed: Multiple usability issues with display cases.
  • Added a line on its purpose in the handbook
  • Fixed interaction help not displayed
  • Instead of executing the default interaction when right clicking with a unsuitable item/block it now displays an error to the player

API Changes

The most significant change is a full command system rewrite. The old way of registering commands still works but is now marked obsolete. The new command system allows you to define commands using the Fluent interface design pattern, as well as have prebuilt argument parsers for you to choose from. The new syntax also allows us to automatically generate command syntax documentation \o/
I've continued my efforts towards more behavior-based programming of blocks and items. There is a new BlockGeneric and StrongBlockBehavior base class which forward more method calls. Where possible, I tried to add or rewrite code to use block behaviors or block entity behaviors - such as the new door code. Support for multiblock structures is also improved, evident by the new large multiblock doors. The player mounting system should also be significantly more robust and flexible, see also raft code. Adding Worldmap waypoint icons is now dead simple - just drop in an svg file in the right folder.
When a game world has loaded up, it will now print an error summary, so you no longer need to go searching trough the log files for errors. It looks like this when there are no errors:

14.2.2023 12:22:23 [Client Notification] ===============================================================
14.2.2023 12:22:23 [Client Notification] (^_^) No issues captured during startup
14.2.2023 12:22:23 [Client Notification] ===============================================================

Beyond that, there is the usual myriad of minor changes. Have a look:

• Feature: New "StrongBlockBehavior" base class. Has a greater range of callbacks.
• Feature: Block/Item Texture overlays now allows you to define a blend mode in json. For an example see assets\survival\blocktypes\wood\woodtyped\door.json. Available Modes: Normal, Darken, Lighten, Multiply, Screen, ColorDodge, ColorBurn, Overlay
• Feature: All waypoint icons are now loaded from svg files
• Feature: Story structure generation system. Allows generation of a very large schematic, once per world
• Feature: New side-agnostic api subsystem: api.ChatCommands
• Feature: NPC dialogue system
  • Can now add dialogue to any NPC with pure JSON
  • Supports multiple response options, setting/reading of variables, giving and requesting items, playing sounds, and more
• Tweak: Conversable behavior should now allow for customized conversations based on character class and npc personality. If will now try to load the conversation file in the following order:
  • 1. convo-{charclass}-{personality}.json
  • 2. convo-{charclass}.json
  • 3. convo.json
• Feature: Added BlockEntity.OnExchanged() callback for block entities where blockAccessor.ExchangeBlock() was called on
• Feature: New Block.Activate() method. To be used for automation. Currently available for doors, trapdoors, fence gates and clutches, and Command blocks and Conditional blocks
• Feature: Added method ForceLandformAt() to GenMaps.cs. Allows one to override the landform in a given area.
• Feature: Added sapi.WorldManager.TestMapChunkExists and sapi.WorldManager.TestMapRegionExists
• Feature: Added new OnTestBlockAccess event to override land claiming behavior
• Feature: Added client side events MapRegionLoaded and MapRegionUnloaded
• Feature: BehaviorCanIgnite now will search for a IIgnitable interface in the block, block behavior, block entity and block entity behavior
• Feature: Added OnGetTemporalStability event to mod system "SystemTemporalStability"
• Feature: WorldgenHook block, triggers the specified worldgen hook (set by command /dev worldgenhook) when this block is placed by a schematic during worldgen
• Feature: Event.WorldgenHook and Event.TriggerWorldgenHook to run custom worldgen code at a particular position, triggered by something else for example placement of a specific block
• The default Worldgen hook is "genHookStructure <assetname>" which generates structure elements from schematics according to rules specified in the named file found in folder assets\survival\worldgen\hookgeneratedstructures
• Tweak: Added BlockEntity.OnPlacementBySchematic() method
• Tweak: Added IServerPlayer.InWorldAction event
• Tweak: The interfaces IMultiBlockMonolithicSmall, IMultiBlockMonolithic, IMultiBlockModular for multiblock behaviors can now also be implemented inside a BlockBehavior (previously only able to implement them in a Block class)
• Tweak: Added ability to supply a different crop model when grown on farmland, attribute onFarmlandShape (of type compositeshape)
• Tweak: Json patches now can be disabled via `enabled` property
• Tweak: Added helper method Block.GetBEBehavior()
• Tweak: Added helper method IBlockAccessor.GetInterface<T>()
• Tweak: Non-json files in blocktypes, entities and itemtypes are now ignored by the loader
• Refactor: "api.BlockTextureAtlas.AtlasTextureIds[0]" is now "api.BlockTextureAtlas.AtlasTexture[0].TextureId"
• Refactor: Moved away several methods from the Block class
  • Method Block.WildCardReplace now moved to extension method AssetLocation.WildCardReplace
  • Methods Block.OnTryIgniteBlock and Block.OnTryIgniteBlockOver now moved to IIgnitable interface (make your class inherit from this interface and remove the override keyword to make it compatible again)
  • Methods Block.SetWindFlag, Block.ClearWindFlags and Block.ToggleWindModeSetWindData are now extension methods of MeshData
• Refactor: Refactored meshing/transformation mechanism of BlockEntityDisplay class. Now caches content meshes amongst all blocks of the same class, instead of keeping a copy of every mesh for every block.
• Refactor: Added Tesselator.GetTextureSource() and marked GetTexSource() as obsolete
• Refactor: Gui Methods .AddButton() and .AddSmallButton() with orientation argument are now marked obsolete (simply remove the orientation arg from your code to fix)
• Refactor: Extracted AnimationUtil class out of BEBehaviorAnimatable to be used in more universal ways.
• Refactor: BEBehaviorAnimatable.InitializeAnimator() method reordered args
• Refactor: Clean up survival textures folder: moved several out of place textures into various folders
• Refactor: Removed last row in the elementTransforms uniform matrices for entity shape rendering, as its always 0 0 0 1, reduces upload overhead by 25%
• Refactor: BlockEntityShapeFromAttributes is now a block entity behavior. The block entities "Clutter" and "ClutterBookshelf" are thus no longer necessary and were removed
• Refactor: OnEntityDespawn event, renamed class of 2nd argument "EntityDespawnReason" to "EntityDespawnData" and uppercased its field
• Refactor: Breaking changes to IMountable interfaces. MountPosition property now needs to return a EntityPos instead of Vec3d, removed MountYaw property (set pos.Yaw instead). Added new property EnumMountAngleMode AngleMode. Added LocalEyePos property for a sitting entity you'd likely want to return something akin to "new Vec3f(0,1,0);"
• Refactor: Move snow cover related code from BEMicroBlock into BEBehaviorMicroblockSnowCover
• Refactor: Deleted SyncedEntityPos class. Moved the only useful field in there (LastReceivedClientPosition) to ServerPlayer.cs
• Refactor: GetClimateAt(), argument EnumGetClimateMode now defaults to NowValues instead of WorldGenValues
• Refactor: If you have meat-like items in your mod or use inFirePitProps, you'll have to readjust your transforms, as the firepit spit is now diagonally placed. Sorry.
• Refactor: ITreeGenerator interface: Moved most parameters into a new TreeGenParams class
• Refactor: Renamed IBlockEntityRotatable to IRotatable
• Tweak: New entity callback OnAsyncParticleTick(). Lets you spawn per-+entity particles in a separate thread.
• Tweak: IBlockAccessor.WalkBlocks() now calls the callback method twice for the same position if there is a liquid in the fluids layer
• Tweak: Player head control rework. Now simplified code.
• Tweak: BlockWater now has json configurable ice block code and freezing point
• Tweak: Firewood piles now also use the new ground storable system. Fixed ground storable issues with TransferQuantity > 1
• Tweak: The game now logs a warning/error summary after startup
• Tweak: Ground storage json property TessQuantityElements is now marked obsolete, use property ModelItemsToStackSizeRatio instead
• Tweak: IMountable interface now requires 2 more properties CanControl and MountedBy
• Tweak: IMountableSupplier interface now requires property MountPoints
• Tweak: Massive flower assets overhaul. Moved all flower shape files from block/basic to block/plant/flower and removed redundant shapes.
• Tweak: Sign block: Writable width, amount of lines, font size, font style and text positioning is now json configurable
• Tweak: Transform editor now allows X-axis flipping
• Tweak: Added ICustomHandbookPageContent interface for blocks and items if they want to modify handbook text in code
• Tweak: New properties maxQuantityByGroup and spawnCapPlayerScaling for entity runtime spawn conditions
• Tweak: Less hardcoded sleeping system. Can now remove the tiredness behavior from players to disable sleeping mechanic.
• Tweak: If a block defines block entity behaviors in json but did not define a entity class, then it will now default to "BlockEntityGeneric"
• Tweak: Prevent the game crashing from invalid blocks
• Tweak: api.Event.MapRegionGeneration event, added argument "ITreeAttribute chunkGenParams = null"
• Tweak: New argument for "/wgen regen" to generate only one type of landform, e.g. "/wgen regen 3 veryflat"
• Tweak: Added chattype:// link protocol to add text to the clients chatbox
• Tweak: Handbook pages on items/blocks now show their page code if extended debug info is enabled (.edi)
• Internal: The ServerRedirect packet should correctly redirect the client now, untested and not available through the API yet
• Fixed: Not able to make grid recipes with 2 liquids
• Fixed: "shelvable: false" showed up as shelvable in the handbook
• Fixed: Default value arg in player.GetModData() was ignored
• Fixed: MeshData.Clone() set incorrect values for VerticesMax and IndicesMax, potentially causing any future operations on the mesh to crash due to being out of bounds.
• Fixed: Entities imported from schematics sometimes had a wrong offset on them
• Fixed: Fixed StackOverflow in mapregion.SetModData<T>()
• Fixed: structures.json, Schematics property not respecting mod domains
• Fixed: ~150 XML Doc warnings. Moved method BehaviorArtPigment.BlockSelectionToSubPosition() to BlockSel.ToDecorSubPosition()
• Removed: "Modular" multiblock type. Was never implemented and not really useful either. Saves 150 block ids.