v1.18.8-rc.1 - The plunge to net7

Dear Extraordinary Survivalists
v1.18.8-rc.1, an unstable release, can now be downloaded through the account manager (section "Other Goodies").

As mentioned in the previous devlog we've decided to push forward the .net7 migration of our game. To recap, .net (also written .NET but we think lowercase looks nicer!) is the software framework that we use to create the game and its latest incarnation, .net7, brings wide ranging performance optimizations that we are looking to capitalize on. This update 1.18.8 is functionally nearly identical to game version 1.18.7 except we have upgraded from net4 to net7.  Players running this have been reporting large performance boosts... Note that it may require a download of the latest .net from Microsoft (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/7.0) if you do not have that already. Vintagehosting (our server hosting service) does not yet support 1.18.8 but we hope to get that ready in a day or two. Vintagehosting support for 1.18.8 is also in testing phase. If you run into issues please downgrade to 1.18.7.

This .net7 project had its roots in a proof-of-concept made in a couple of days by some of our community members. One of them now works for Anego Studios overseeing the net7 migration! I estimate it took us roughly 450 man hours to fully support it. One software library the modding community depended on wasn't even available for net7 until late this spring. As always, the devil is in the detail
You would not believe how many issues we ran into when preparing this for public release. Glad to have this mostly complete now - let's squeeze out every last bit of performance from this engine!


Screenshot by -=Kai=- (Conquest of Blocks), shared in #screenshots on Discord
 

Game updates

• Feature: VS now runs under the .net7 framework, improving overall performance
• Feature: added option to set the window to be always on top (useful for multi-monitor setups with the net7 versions of the game)
• Tweak: server.sh for Linux servers: Fixed check for requirements and use the net7 dotnet binary to not require DOTNET_ROOT to be set to start the server
• Fixed: RiftWard stuck in off state when turned off and the world was reloaded (thanks Eugene [Discord] and korobya [PR #21])