February 2025 Development update: Forging ahead - version 1.21 and beyond

[Tyron]

Time for one of these again! Let's reflect a "little" and look into what the VS Team has been up to, while listening to awesome pixel remixes :D

1.20 post mortem
When you are knee deep in development it can be difficult to see the bigger picture, because oh boy did I not expect the amount of growth this update has created. On the day of release, the amount of purchases grew by 300%, consequently overloading every single server of ours one after the next over the course of 3 weeks. In addition to that some of our 3rd party providers had issues on their own causing further downtime. We had to optimize and up the specs on all the hardware we use to be able to deal with the additional load.
The downtime especially created massive amounts of new support tickets which our team was wholly unprepared for, so we had to quickly upscale the support team to overcome the flood of tickets.
Releasing the update on time itself came with quite a few sacrifices in terms of the content that we still wanted to add, but that has been the case for almost every update. Some of the rough edges have been ironed out in 1.20.3 and 1.20.4 with a few more things on the way, but more on that later.

Community and TOPS
Not only did we have an overheating help desk and servers, a growing community also means there are more points of contention and so we've had to adjust game content, processes and rules to ensure all our gathering spots remain friendly and welcoming places. Turns out, TOPS, our official public game server, is the perfect testing grounds to evaluate what tools are needed to provide just that. We have now added the capability for players to join in-game groups without invite (for language channels), prevent uncertainty when joining a full server with a join queue and we are in the works of adding a mod whitelist system so everyone playing there is on the same page. The additional game content of 1.20 also notably increased the hardware load on our game servers so that we had to lower the maximum player count on TOPS from 70 down to 55 and we are now optimizing various areas  of the server code to bring this back to 70 or 75 - to date we are already at 65 max players on TOPS. Furthermore, just very recently we've been hit by quite large DDoS attacks on TOPS and other player-run servers, which we are mitigating through optimization and blocking mechanisms, with a 1.20.5 coming out soon so other server owners can benefit from this mitigation as well.

The Mod Database also required urgent attention as we were lacking moderation tools there and we had to optimize the download bandwidth quickly, as it was bleeding money due to the peculiar cost structure of Amazon Web Services. In fairness, AWS even called me personally on their own initiative to offer their assistance with that. The VS ModDB is now serving 2.5 Terabytes of data daily.

On our Discord server we are currently testing a moderator support ticket system in order to simplify and streamline contact requests to moderators, which should come online very soon.

Moderation demands have also only grown and we have not yet kept pace with this increased demand. On that note, please be kind to our staff. We might not always get it right, but we try and we do listen to your feedback as much as possible.
 

Management overhead
At the same time, simply growing a company and all its related paperwork to satisfy all rules and regulations could be a full time job on its own. We are glad to have very good support for this from a local partner. Needing to keep an eye on all these aspects of this game project meant I am on a declining trend of availability to do the usual spearheading of game update programming and integration efforts. The demands on my time seem to grow quicker than my ability to delegate
That being said, I am optimistic that the right solutions will fall in place sooner or later and that I will be able to more strongly focus again on helping to get our next update built.
 

Continuing where we left off
As mentioned, the Team was left a bit dissatisfied with the current state of the 1.20 update. Consequently we initially planned to do a very very limited update with a much shortened development cycle, but the bar for this kept getting raised so we'll be doing it proper and make it a major release, ahead of our original plans for 1.21. However I will make sure to keep the scope limited to have this update released quicker than our previous ones.
Here's some of the points that we would like to address for 1.21. Disclaimer: Aspirational goal, some of it may get cut again.

• 2nd Boss fight improvements
• Bowtorn AI improvements
• Re-add Coral Reefs
• More direct ways to introduce the player to the game story
• Elk taming system: The elk should not be locked behind the lore content
• Better sailing system
• More work on some of the lore locations
• A rework of some of the existing animals and new wild life dangers for the warm climate zones, all very WIP still:
  
  
   
• We also got something smol in the works
  
   
• In parallel to that, we will more heavily focus on performance and RAM optimizations which will get added whenever the optimization is ready and tested. One of which is already in 1.20.4, another one will make it into 1.20.5 and more of them will come in future updates.
   

Beyond 1.21
Version 1.22 would then become what we originally planned for with v1.21 - dejank a number of mechanics and systems, mechanical power upgrades and likely one or 2 new or reworked crafting mechanics.
Version 1.23 will be the next major lore update where we will make more extensive use of the new dimension mechanics.

 

In Summary
Old plan:
1.21  Large update focusing on dejank and Mechanical power

New plan:
1.21  Small update to finish 1.20 content and fill in a few game content gaps
1.22  Large update focusing on dejank and Mechanical power
1.23  Large Lore update

One more thing
Wait you thought that's all? We wouldn't be called Anego Studios if we wouldn't be doing a hundred different things at once
We have also hired a fulltime & fullstack game developer that will work on a brand new secret game project completely unrelated to Vintage Story, but also a lot smaller in scope. Work on this project will be fully in parallel to the development of Vintage Story, so there will be no change in pace of updates for VS itself. I do have to say, its quite exciting to see it progressing already, I believe it has lots of potential.

That's most of whats happening around Anego Studios that I can think of right now. Next devlog in a month or two + 1.20.5 with fixes soon. Thank you for tuning in and keep being excellent!
 

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[NyeteyN]

I've seen a rise of videos talking about vintage story, I wouldn't be surprised if the purchases keep slowly increasing as it seems like the game is getting more popular by the day. Curious on the secret game project, I wonder if it's the same one you talked about during a recent interview. 

[Brady_The]

I can't wait to see what the future holds.

[Apollo10499]

I'm one of those new purchases! Bought the game for myself and then subsequently bought keys for family and friends and a server too! Very excited for whats to come and I hope this game sees the growth and attention it deserves! Thanks Tyron and everyone at Anego, we're having a blast!

[Stejer]

Some ideas for the future would be for domesticated animals to change shape after generations.

Lets say theyr are completely domesticated by gen 10, then by gen 15 or so some start to be born differently like the boars are born pink like pigs, the sheep become fluffier and stuff like that. Maybe even providing more materials (sheep produce more wool and give milk for longer times, pig have larger litters and take less time to be ready to reproduce etc)

It would also be nice if the domestic animals also started to fight the drifters or other hostile creatures (Depending on their size of course, can't expect the chickens to do much) but in a way to show that they are now in your side.

A few other sugestions would be collar bells for animals like pigs when sheep when they are domesticated, helping you do diferentiate domesticated ones to wild ones, or to help them find them easier in case you lose them. (or maybe those animal earings people have nowadays to tell them apart or mark ownership).

Also giving a few extra skills to fully domesticated animals, like pigs start being able to find stuff like truffles (or some other type of mushroom that would only spawn near those extra domesticated pigs) or having a "follow the leader" behavior for sheep to help with herding them etc idk

 

Something else I would love to be added would be the following:

A water type drifter (one that spawns in and nearby water) being a threat for your ships.

I would like for there to be  a way to know exactly what is draining your sanity (sometimes I stablish myself in a place but start losing sanity only to discover that I am above some ruins, it would be nice if that didn't happen imo), essentially improving and explaining better what influences sanity.

It would be nice if you were to add animals that can activelly help you  (obviousily horses but also) cows that historically helped humans with plowing the fields (maybe adding a "deep tiled" type of dirt that has some bonuses to nutrients or similar) and also bull carts as a slower alternative to the elk that allows you to bring with you more items and even small animals.

I think making trade with NPCs more beneficial would be good as well. Since you hardly need them, they almost never sell stuff that you really need (much less in enough quantities) so making trade a bit more useful would be nice.

 

those are just some ideas tho

[Michael Gates]

This forum software needs an equivalent for the old <blink/> tag so I can put up "CROC-O-DILES!!!" in big flashing letters.

I might actually have to go south, for once.

Yeah, I'm mildly interested now.

[StCatharines]

6 hours ago, Tyron said:

On the day of release, the amount of purchases grew by 300%

That is substantially more than I thought it spiked, I'm amazed anything held together well enough for any of us to play on update day. That's wild!

 

4 hours ago, Stejer said:

Lets say theyr are completely domesticated by gen 10, then by gen 15 or so some start to be born differently like the boars are born pink like pigs, the sheep become fluffier and stuff like that.

I swear that was a mod at one point... Hide & Fabric, I think?

Edited February 21, 2025 by StCatharines

[KingViruZ]

I'm very excited to see what the future brings for this game.

[Maelstrom]

1 hour ago, KingViruZ said:

I'm very excited to see what the future brings for this game.

Given the increase in content I've seen since I started playing at 1.14, you'll be very pleasantly satisfied.

[LadyWYT]

The hippo scares me. Something tells me the tropics might no longer be the safest climate zone to settle in!

Loving the progress so far though!

[ifoz]

I wonder if the croc means we will be getting pelts corresponding to animals, or at least to these scaly fellas. 
Since you can't exactly make a fur coat out of crocodile skin. 

[LadyWYT]

38 minutes ago, ifoz said:

I wonder if the croc means we will be getting pelts corresponding to animals, or at least to these scaly fellas. 
Since you can't exactly make a fur coat out of crocodile skin. 

Very true. And if you could turn those scaly pelts into shoes, that means you can have a comfy pair of crocs to wear!

[Gorfinhofin]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The hippo scares me. Something tells me the tropics might no longer be the safest climate zone to settle in!

I was thinking the same thing. I'd already kind of sworn off the tropics because of how much trouble I had traversing bamboo forests, but now there are going to be hippos that could crunch my head like a watermelon? You know, winter isn't so bad once you get used to it!

[Michael Gates]

We need tropical sandworms, to keep people from just standing in the desert all day.

[DUCATISLO]

Speaking for the Croc, imagine trying and failing to simulate limb movement with this when Blockbench has inverse kinematics. Tyron uses some different program, but it's more about animator skill being  lacking here I guess or maybe its just still wip idk. Why not use Blender to model it tho or blender dosent work well for VS?

Edited February 22, 2025 by DUCATISLO

[DUCATISLO]

overall always good to see new stuff. but
>Also we are throwing money from VS into another side project game instead of scaling team for needs given minor success.
idk hope the future of VS won't be bleak

Edited February 22, 2025 by DUCATISLO

[DUCATISLO]

9 hours ago, Michael Gates said:

We need tropical sandworms, to keep people from just standing in the desert all day.

sandworms are more of a myth n legends type of animal i don't see any in vintage story yet best we could have is a heat stroke mechanic but eh

[Vanny21]

On 2/21/2025 at 5:10 PM, Tyron said:

We have also hired a fulltime & fullstack game developer that will work on a brand new secret game project completely unrelated to Vintage Story, but also a lot smaller in scope.

 

I think it’s a bad idea to start on a new game when the main one isn’t finished and still in pretty rough shape. It feels like it needs more time to "cook" — there are still a lot of bugs and issues. Every update from 1.19 to 1.20 seems to bring more problems instead of fixing them. We really need to focus on getting this one right first.

[Vanny21]

5 hours ago, DUCATISLO said:

overall always good to see new stuff. but
>Also we are throwing money from VS into another side project game instead of scaling team for needs given minor success.
idk hope the future of VS won't be bleak

Just look at the companies that said the same thing and did side projects - how did they perform with their main project

Edited February 22, 2025 by MyBrotherAccToPlay

[Seven-D]

15 hours ago, DUCATISLO said:

Speaking for the Croc, imagine trying and failing to simulate limb movement with this when Blockbench has inverse kinematics. Tyron uses some different program, but it's more about animator skill being  lacking here I guess or maybe its just still wip idk. Why not use Blender to model it tho or blender dosent work well for VS?

There are Plugins for both Blender and Blockbench to produce models and animations for Vintage Story. I tested both and they work fine. Especially inverse kinematics is a huge plus for animating.

Edited February 23, 2025 by Seven-D

[Pus]

I finaly find my little robinson crusoe island and settled down. And now I have to become crocodile dundee to save villagers. I love it!

[wagon man]

hope we can get a wagon so the elk can pull them!

[Tyron]

On 2/23/2025 at 12:26 AM, MyBrotherAccToPlay said:

I think it’s a bad idea to start on a new game when the main one isn’t finished and still in pretty rough shape. It feels like it needs more time to "cook" — there are still a lot of bugs and issues. Every update from 1.19 to 1.20 seems to bring more problems instead of fixing them. We really need to focus on getting this one right first.

We are focusing on Vintage Story. This new hire works solo on his own game project within the company, and will remain solo for the foreseeable future. There is little in common between both projects - with different skillset requirments. The VS Team is about 20 people by now with more to come.
 

On 2/23/2025 at 12:29 AM, MyBrotherAccToPlay said:

Just look at the companies that said the same thing and did side projects - how did they perform with their main project

We are not those companies.

[DrEngine]

hi Tyron, I highly appreciate your and team work. The game is unique and I love it. I've bought my second license and supporter addon for my both license just to praise your great work.

So far so good. BUT we terribly suffer better support for multiplayer server. We hit some missing features again and again.

1. Claim in claim. We'd like to claim CITY area to protect public space and buldings in CITY. But We'd like to place another ("embedded") claims in CITY claim to allow players to get their own claim in CITY for their building. Doing this without claim in claim (nested claims) is NIGHTMARE !!! PLEASE, bring some solution for it in new version !!! This is most important and the main issue we do have => if you'll make decision to develop only one of our wishes listed here, pick this one please!
(Sub-problem: land claiming is very complicated. It'd be great to have some simple method like placing two corner stones to claim simple area from bedrock to sky limit.)

2. The map is getting bigger and bigger. Backups of map get more and more space. What about some "cleaning" operation that deletes all untouched chunks in map database (for example with less then 10 changes to original/generated state) except chunks that are in claimed land. This would: 1st - makes our backuping easier, and 2nd - bring new game features to newly generated land (after their cleaning). Cleaning operation could be started during real night (2 am for exaple) and it's acceptable for us that server will be inaccessible during operation.
Most of the generated land is untouched cos it's generated during traveling and this land doesn't have anything what should be kept. 

3. We get a lot of new players. We want to assign player some group (Novice, Player, Skilled player, Expert, Veteran). We want every group has its own spawn point, salary, etc.... We want for example the novice is kept in closed area with some test of his knowledge/server rules. And as soon as he proves rules knowledge he's automatically moved to category Player and spawn point, salary etc change. We haven't found any way how to do it now.

 

I firmly hope you consider these wishes ... THANK YOU !!!

 

[Thorfinn]

10 hours ago, Tyron said:

This new hire works solo on his own game project within the company, and will remain solo for the foreseeable future. There is little in common between both projects - with different skillset requirments.

Excellent. Now you just need to hire Pinky, and they can do what they do every night -- try to take over the world.

 

6 hours ago, DrEngine said:

1. Claim in claim.

Likely should be a mod at this point in development. Completely useless in SP, and nearly so for the distributed settlement style most servers IME adopt. And trivial to exploit, requiring an admin to come in and fix.

How do you see this working? Details, please.

What I could envision is an admin setting aside a region for his city, then have some process for the city to approve building permits. Say the basic permit covers 4 16x32x16 contiguous boxes. This is intentional -- 8 maximum-size rooms with a block to spare in any direction where there is a shared wall. Filing that as a 2x2, you have a spare block for outside decorations on the side facing the street, even on a corner lot. Then put in place a process where the city approves variances, additional claims on open adjacent property, again, in 16x32x16 blocks. Or maybe variances are only 16x16x16.

So the guy who wants to build a cathedral files for a building permit and a couple dozen variances. The guy who just wants a rowhouse might need no more than his basic building permit.

 

6 hours ago, DrEngine said:

...from bedrock to sky limit.

OK, that  should be a hard, "No." For the exact same reason it became unworkable IRL.

 

Quote

What about some "cleaning" operation that deletes all untouched chunks in map database (for example with less then 10 changes to original/generated state) except chunks that are in claimed land.

Already doable with commands. From the 1.19 release:

Quote

/db prune 5 confirm (delete all chunks with less than 5 edits)

Bear in mind that pruning will cause those blocks to be regenerated when they come into view distance, the immediate effect being things like surface nuggets being regenerated. Might be good for a largish server that constantly runs out of flint, for example. Go a few hundred blocks outside of town and everything is virgin territory again.

Edited February 24, 2025 by Thorfinn