Knapping, Spears, Creature Emotions States (v1.4.4)

[Tyron]

Knapping Vintarians
Version 1.4.4 is ready for download in the account manager.

I really wanted version 1.4.4 to be the first story elements update but since we have the GameOn Festival coming up this weekend I decided to work towards a more complete stone age experience and better game stability. Also the story features are somewhat tricky to get right. Aw. Never enough time.

Game Updates

• Feature: Knapping
  • Same as clay forming but can only remove voxels. Uses flint as ingredient.
  • Removed grip recipes for stone tools, these now require the flint knapping mechanic. Some tools are no longer available in stone form at all.
• Feature: Spears
  • New weapon that can be used as a thrown weapon or in hands 
  • Flint spears are crafted by knapping, metal spears through smithing
• Feature: Limited Attack ranges
  • Reduced default attack range of 4.5m down to 1.5 meters
  • Swords, Axes and Knifes and Spears increase this attack range again
• Feature: Creature Emotion States
  • Basic implementation of reaction based behaviors. Bighorn sheep now become aggressive or sometimes fearful when attacked and will react accordingly.
• Tweak: Reduced hunger drain by 40%, reduced damage taken from hunger by a factor of 4
• Tweak: A bunch of shader tweaks. Nighttimes is now a tad brighter, nighttime clouds are now darker, night skies are more intense and broad daylight is a bit brighter.
• Tweak: Bighorn sheeps now have double the health. Lowered health for chickens though.
• Tweak: Some attempts in improving attack animations of creatures
• Tweak: Rock and Logs can no longer be broken without a tool
• Tweak: Reduced drifter spawn count by half
• Tweak: Bows have durability now
• Tweak: Increase default render distance of clouds
• Tweak: Doubled search radius for dynamic lights (they no longer emit light after 60 blocks instead of 30 blocks distance)
• Tweak: Flints now 25% more common
• Tweak: Animals swim a bit more naturally now
• Tweak: Harvested berries now enter the players inventory directly
• Fixed: Spam stacking wood not working
• Fixed: Placing flower in flower pots not removing it from the inventory
• Fixed: Big Workaround for GUI going haywire when pouring metal that hopefully didn't break something else
• Fixed: Some Stair sides becoming transparent when a block is in front (was a fundamental issue in the engine, maybe finally fixed now)
• Fixed: Some minor render glitches with water
• Fixed: 2 crashes when near the map edge
• Fixed: Anvil mold craftable (not yet finished)
• Fixed: Snowlayer white pixels poking through bottom edge, seams between frosted grass and snow layer
• Fixed: Several issues preventing creatures from spawning in groups
• Fixed: Child creatures not following their parents
• Fixed: Snow layer step sound only hearable on left channel

View full record

[stefan]

hi,

the update looks cool, but when i try to run the game on linux (mint) i get the following error (from the terminal):

09:31:15 [Client Error] Couldn't write to log file, failed formatting 16.09.2017 09:31:15> Critical Error: Requested asset {game:shaderincludes/perlinnoise.vsh} could not be found
 (FormatException)

btw: is there a better way of submitting bugs? i was not able to add something to the tracker. or am i too retarded?

[Tyron]

Hi stefan,

aw, double bug. Probably a simple file name casing issue, does it fix the issue when you rename the file shaderincludes/perlinNoise.vsh to shaderincludes/perlinnoise.vsh? I'll rename this for the next release as well.

Currently bug reporting anywhere is okay, until we have a really good one-stop-shop for bugreporting.

Ah yes I see the issue with the tracker, I did not properly communicate that the tracker is only for verified owners of a game key. You didn't use the "Redeem Forum Title" feature in the account manager, so the system does not recognize you as account owner. I fixed that now by setting you rank to 'Vintarian' and will communicate this better!

Thanks for reporting!

[stefan]

thanks for the info. i will still report new problems here as they seem to be pretty insignificant and i do not want to spam the tracker.

a few other files had the same problem:

• the music file "night to day.ogg".
• the star textures in the enviroment directory (like "starsbk.png"). after 2 files caused a crash i just renamed them all.
• the flint texture.
• the painting textures like "acitasluna.png". agian, after 2 caused a chrash i renamed them all.

after fixing the file names i could start a game and run around. after picking up a stone the following error occurred:

22:06:41 [Client Fatal] 16.09.2017 22:06:41> Critical Error: Unable to read beyond the end of the stream.

i saw that other files had similar names to the ones i fixed, so this might still be related to the naming issue.

EDIT:

i managed to fix it.

i renamed all the .ogg music files and the fonts to lowercase. after that it still crashed so i ran the install.sh script. this did not really work as the files in the ApplicationData directory did not change (there was still an older version of the game), but it works nonetheless (maybe it has something to do with the .fonts directory that is created.).

the newest version of game is now in my downloads directory and i run it simply by calling "mono Vintagestory.exe".

Edited September 17, 2017 by stefan
new info

[Tyron]

Aw sorry about the troubles, I actually don't have a linux machine available to me to test the client, thats probably why. I think I've now corrected all the uppercase/lowercase issues, but I'm not very fluent in bash scripting. If you know any way to fix the install.sh script I'd be happy to incorporate into the next release! We could evey try make a .dpkg if I can somehow generate it on windows.

[stefan]

i already wanted to give further feedback on the whole install script thing so i might as well do it here now. i find it very odd how some things are done and as i don't know how familiar you are with linux i will give further explanations on how things are usually done. linux users are very "special" in the sense that they get annoyed by seemingly insignificant shit, but i know them very well, as i am one of them :-D.

i would just scrap the install.sh file, but would still like to know how it came to be as it does some very unusual things:

• in my home directory 2 directories are created:
  • ApplicationData: the game files are moved here. it might sound like a typical directory where application data is stored, but i have never seen it before and only after checking the script i knew the game could be found there. games are usually stored in /usr/games  or /usr/share/games.
  • .fonts: contains some fonts. directories that start with a dot "." and placed in the home directory usually contain user specific data for an application. like .firefox or .thunderbird. if i would backup by files by hand i would go through them and pick the ones where i would like to keep my settings and so on. like the bookmarks in firefox.
    now if i would go through the home directory and stumble upon one called ".fonts" with no indication to where they belong i would have no idea what to do with them. this is really odd as the fonts are not needed to run the game. at least in my case.
• it creates a desktop icon what is very unusual for linux.
• the script itself cannot be run as the line termination used is not the linux ones.

i wouldn't create any .dpkg as this would only make things more complicated (also i haven't seen those in ages. .deb is used now). if you would offer a .deb then some will ask for a .rpm and then for a .got-knows-what. there are a lot of different package formats for different linux distributions. just offer the .tar.gz and be done with it.

i think the best solution is to just offer the game in a .tar.gz and allow the game to be run from there without any installation. this is normal for games in development and simplifies the whole thing. just place a script there with a name that suggests that the user has to run it like "run.sh" or "VintageStory.sh". in this file you only need the line: "mono VintageStory.exe". you could also store that in a binary, but linux users should be accustomed to running script files to start games. also a file called "README" would not hurt that tells the user to run the .sh file and not the .exe one.

EDIT:

i just noticed, that the fonts are actually used. if they are not present the font looks slightly different. maybe it would be possible to include them in way a separate .fonts directory is not needed.

Edited September 19, 2017 by stefan
more info

[Tyron]

8 hours ago, stefan said:

i already wanted to give further feedback on the whole install script thing so i might as well do it here now. i find it very odd how some things are done and as i don't know how familiar you are with linux i will give further explanations on how things are usually done. linux users are very "special" in the sense that they get annoyed by seemingly insignificant shit, but i know them very well, as i am one of them :-D.

i would just scrap the install.sh file, but would still like to know how it came to be as it does some very unusual things:

• in my home directory 2 directories are created:
  • ApplicationData: the game files are moved here. it might sound like a typical directory where application data is stored, but i have never seen it before and only after checking the script i knew the game could be found there. games are usually stored in /usr/games  or /usr/share/games.
  • .fonts: contains some fonts. directories that start with a dot "." and placed in the home directory usually contain user specific data for an application. like .firefox or .thunderbird. if i would backup by files by hand i would go through them and pick the ones where i would like to keep my settings and so on. like the bookmarks in firefox.
    now if i would go through the home directory and stumble upon one called ".fonts" with no indication to where they belong i would have no idea what to do with them. this is really odd as the fonts are not needed to run the game. at least in my case.
• it creates a desktop icon what is very unusual for linux.
• the script itself cannot be run as the line termination used is not the linux ones.

i wouldn't create any .dpkg as this would only make things more complicated (also i haven't seen those in ages. .deb is used now). if you would offer a .deb then some will ask for a .rpm and then for a .got-knows-what. there are a lot of different package formats for different linux distributions. just offer the .tar.gz and be done with it.

i think the best solution is to just offer the game in a .tar.gz and allow the game to be run from there without any installation. this is normal for games in development and simplifies the whole thing. just place a script there with a name that suggests that the user has to run it like "run.sh" or "VintageStory.sh". in this file you only need the line: "mono VintageStory.exe". you could also store that in a binary, but linux users should be accustomed to running script files to start games. also a file called "README" would not hurt that tells the user to run the .sh file and not the .exe one.

EDIT:

i just noticed, that the fonts are actually used. if they are not present the font looks slightly different. maybe it would be possible to include them in way a separate .fonts directory is not needed.

 

The install script was made by a community member, quite likely that it was distribution specific. And yes, the main issue is the font installation. I'd love to just be supply the Cairo Graphics Library with a path to the desired font, but it's "toy font api" doesn't allow this, or i haven't found any way to do this. Instead you're supposed to use 5 other dependencies that are dedicated to font rendering - which I'd really like to avoid using though, as I want to have as few dependencies as possible. Also setting up those extra libs is not too easy.