Great citizens of the earth,
it's been nearly a month since the last update. This is whats up.
We've been hard at work on the next release, which will become version 1.9 - the world generation update. I suspect it will still take another 3 to 6 weeks until the first pre-releases.
With this version we want to focus on 2 major aspects: Get as many planned worldgen updates in as possible and getting the game (more) ready for a major marketing push. Once v1.9 is released and stable enough we will contact media and influencers.
Part of the road to v1.9 included building a web-based story & asset management tool for the vintage story gamedev team, as we've been struggling for 2 years to find a suitable tool for the task. As with everything, we don't wait for the right circumstances, we create them. Here's a screenshot of it:
The VSDB. Coded from scratch, in the hopes of being our salvation to the documentation chaos we had before
But back to the game itself. I'm very happy how it turning out, so much in fact that I start to quite dislike the current v1.8 release and that makes me really eager to release v1.9 as soon as possible.
Here's a sneak peek of the upcoming features.
Some parts that are completed for v1.9
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Lot's and lots of user interface polishing, for example the improved hotbar:
There are also vastly improved screens when connecting to a server or loading a game world.
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Improved shadow quality (at the cost of somewhat shorter ranges), improved game performance due to optimizations in the occlusion culling system and god rays shader. Caveat: Chunk generation may become a tad slower, but should not be very noticeable.
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Improved cave systems: Greater variety, sometimes generates narrow or very low passages. Rarely generates large dome like or ravine like caves, now much less uniform, likes to generate large lava caves, lava now generates with basalt on top
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Trader Outposts: Caravans and small Settlements of Traders ready to outbargain you on your goods and hard earned money. They talk and act with 3 unique personalities.
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Many new worldedit gui additions, making it easier than ever to import and export structures, for example, the magic wand:
Still Planned for v1.9
Disclaimer: No guarantees on how much we actually can get done.
- New and improved rock layer generator that will allow us to have much more dynamic rock layers
- 6-10 new rock types (and maybe a few new tree types)
- Locust nests
- New ores and more varied deposit generation
- Milky quartz crystals in geodes
- Two-Way Teleporters in Survival mode, which can be activated at high cost and then can be used to teleport to fixed locations in the world
- More ruins, maybe ruined villages and piles of metal scraps that can be scavenged for useful stuff
- Configurable world generation
- Climate bands, in preparation for seasons in v1.10
- some more plant and animal life
- more ingame guidance to make the game more intuitive to play
- ...and a bunch more
So I think there's plenty to be excited about, at least I am! Until the next post!
Edited by Tyron
