Tyron

Literate Vintarians! Yet again an excessive list of updates since last version. Version 1.0.6 is now available for download in the account manager. Thanks to Nachtfalter we have a super pretty video to show this time, demonstrating merely one new feature of v1.0.4 (and in part v1.0.6): The chimney block. It also gives you a glimpse of our new Logo and new Youtube Channel. Updates Feature: Signs are now writeable and can also be placed on walls! Feature: Much improved performance when placing/removing blocks, in part due to a completely new localized sun relighting algorithm. Feature: Overall slight improved performance due to the removal of two rather slow code obfuscation methods. Feature: Added Stone Path Block. Gives a 15% movement bonus while walking on it. Feature: Added Frosted Grass Blocks. Gorgeous winter decoration <3 Feature: New Particle property "SelfPropelled": Particles can regain their velocity when collided, when freed again. (Smoke Signals!) Feature: Added block behaviors. This is an elegant solution for certain blocks that behave in several ways. This now allows for the chimney block auto-orient when placing. Surely will have many future applications. Feature: Readded Mechanical Power Blocks: Currently only useful for decorative purposes. Feature: Random Rotation for the Import Tool. Using /we imrrand [off or on] will randomly rotate the placed import file. Feature: New Flower: California Poppy Feature: Added 2 new commands to assist in long flyover cinematics /sendchunks [0 or 1] - stops standard chunk loading to reduce potential lag sources during recording /forceloadchunks x1 z1 x2 z1 [sendtoclient] - loads given area of chunk columns and forces the server to keep them in memory. If 'sendtoclient' is supplied, these chunks are also sent to client, unaffected by the /sendchunks command. Feature: Added 2 new server configurations to assist in underground cinematics (in serverconfig.json) SkipEveryChunkRow: 5 - will skip generating every 5th stripe of chunks SkipEveryChunkRowWidth: 2 - makes the skipped stripe 2 chunks wide Feature: Readded basic rails block. Can't be properly connected yet around curves and stuff. Also there is no minecarts yet. Tweak: Overall graphics quality improvement - godrays shader slightly more intensive, high bloom levels brightens the sky somewhat less, slightly increased color contrast, better bloom quality Tweak: New ice textures Fix: Item Textures now correct again Fix: Using several colored torches sometimes caused some blocks to have the wrong coloring Fix: Resolved an uncommon client side crash in certain cases when loading a world with dropped items Fix: Singleplayer Loading Screen should no longer scroll out of range on a large gui scale Fix: Chimneys continue smoking after the block is removed in certain cases Fix: Topsoil not showing grass coverage in the creative inventory Fix: .help now shows all commands with the correct '.' prefix Fix: One major source of network lag when dropping many items View full record

Vintarians! Version 1.0.4 is now available for download in the account manager We should have a video ready that demonstrates all the new features by this weekend. This update actually also contains a lot of new code for a potential client modding api and a block entitiy rendering system. Both parts are not ready yet but would be used for writable signs, mechanical power and every other block that is animated or has something drawn onto it, like text. Experimental: This community software actually includes a chat system for up to 20 people. I'll enable it for 1-2 weeks and see if there is any interest in it. If not, I will ditch it again. Updates Added multi-block highlighter. Used in WorldEdit when selecting an area for exporting/clearing or filling when using the Import tool: A preview when importing block data when using the Paint brush tool: Shows the paint brush size Added Ability to rotate blockdata (0, 90, 180 and 270 degree) (list of commands) Added long range block particle emitters (up to 128 blocks away), added chimney block that emits smoke particles using the long range emitter. Added a gamma slider to the graphics settings that let's you do gamma correction. Importing block data that contain light sources is now 10-20 times faster. Attempted some optimizations to improve overall performance. Should at least reduce choppy framerates. Added "New version available" Notification to the main menu Fixes Fixed mouse cursor invisible when being disconnected from a multiplayer server Fixed Pen and Cross icons overlapping the cell in multiplayer server list Fixed particles stuck in blocks where they shouldn't be stuck Fixed .fog client command not accepting decimal numbers. Fixed some client commands crashing on invalid arguments Fixed server crashing on some non-fatal errors (mod loading and chunk generation) Fixed a InvalidOperationException during chunk loading which likely prevented certain chunks (containing entities) from loading Fixed a crash in the singleplayer screen when 2 worlds had the exact same modification date View full record

Survivally Vintarians! One more important step towards survival mode done! Version 1.0.3 is now available for download in the account manager So much happened this week. Our internal slack channels have significantly picked up in activity with Nachtfalter reworking the Logo and Ingame Menus, Ivan getting accomodated to the new build tools, Saraty churning out one flawless textures after another and everyone providing feedback to all the updates. Although responding to all this takes away quite some of my time I still managed to complete some large updates on the game. Most importantly chest inventories - this required 2 massive refactors in the game code, but now the game has a very flexible system for handling special blocks and guis. This also means writable signs is just around the corner. \o/ Updates Ivan has joined the team as builder! He will demonstrate what the games creative mode is capable of! Chest Inventory! Chests can now be opened and hold up to 12 items at the moment. Might still have a glitch or two. A lot of new blocks Epic Quartz: Plain, Ornate, Stairs, Slabs and Vertical/Horizontal Pillars (finally I can make my ruined greek temple \o/) 15 beautifully crafted Metal Sheets each with 5 random textures, can be attached to any solid block side Linen and 3 Wool Carpet style blocks, can be attached to any solid block side Leather Block Clay shingle slabs One new mushroom type Added a new hud element: Player friendly coordinate display. Toggles on 'C' Key. Shows the distance to the players spawn position in blocks. Adjusted /tp command to teleport relative to player spawn pos (so /tp 0 0 0 will always bring you back to spawn), can still tele to absolute position using /tp =x =y =z, relative movement via /tp ~x ~y ~z remains unchanged. New player skin: Finally we have our own pretty and fitting skin. Drawn by Nachtfalter. Improved NPC Tool: Can now spawn named and permanent NPCs. They don't move or can be interacted with yet though. (via /npc add name) Added basic Linux server run script server.sh Includes all updates from previous news article: New Theme Track that plays in the main menu Remake of all ore textures (also enabled display of all ore blocks in creative inventory for now) Load music on demand, resulting in the game taking 8 seconds less to start Etc. Other features Added ability to perform direct network communication between client and server block entities. Added ability to export the item and block texture atlas the game generates using the command .exptexatlas Added ability to debug/fix incorrect block mappings if a bug in the mappings should ever occur using the new command /bir Added Multiplayer Version checks. Client now properly reports if the server runs on an incompatible game version Tweaks / Fixes Tweaked: Music tracks should now play more often Tweaked: Godrays no longer on by default. Fixed a crash when using the macro editor. Also now autofills the macro name if none is supplied. Fixed tick profiler not staying attached to the right side of the screen Fixed sideways logs textures not being sideways Fixed Name tags no longer visible in multiplayer Fixed 1-2 rare crashes Fixed door not in a closed state when placing Fixed stuck connecting screen on different server version Pictures View full record

Numerous Vintarians Fancy Stuff from Saraty and Hayden. Boring technical stuff from Tyron. No new release at the moment. Updates Nachtfalter joined the team \o/ He will hopefully provide us with much fancier logos+icons and improve our presence on various sites and communities. Hayden made a new Theme Track that plays in the main menu. It sounds awesome and mysterious. Saraty remade many of the ore textures and included 3 different variants for each. Bitmiunous coal and Gold-In-Quartz look especially juicy Tyrons Tweaks, Refactors, Fixes Load Music on Demand: When starting the game, instead of 10 seconds loading sounds it should now only take 2 seconds \o/ Large Refactor - GUI Dialog Handling: In preparation for chest inventories I have added another layer of abstraction between the running game instance and all the dialog systems. This allows me to open any number of inventory simultaneously, even multiple chests. Could surely come in handy when organizing chest contents. This also improved code cleanliness. I still have to fully connect the dots before the actual chest inventory works. Large Refactor - Block Texture Handling: Added yet another layer of abstraction for block texture definitions. Instead of a single filename, a block texture now may have several other properties, which are currently any amounts of overlays or alternate versions. These features were available before but were limited in certain ways which are now gone. This enables: combining any amount of textures based on block/item type. Examples: Stone Texture + Ore Overlay + Erosion Overlay Stick + Pickaxe Head + Flax Binding using overlays in combination with alternate versions. Only with this we ware able to add 3 random variants for every ore overlay Worked towards Linux compatiblity: Changed several places in the code to allow playing the game under Linux. Probably still some more steps needed to make it work fully. Cleaned up some of the shader code to not use outdated features. Maybe improve compabtility for some graphics cards. Also for ATI cards the game should now print to the log files if something is running in software mode. Fixed serverconfig.json and servermagicnumbers.json containing obfuscated names Fixed some wrong/missing block names View full record

Mountainous Vintarians! We continued chasing our distant dream. v1.0.2 is now available for download in your favorite game account manager Updates Added ability to configure the world height directly from the singleplayer screen. (it was always configurable but only through editing the serversettings.json) Two new music tracks: Mirror and Groove. World Edit Updates Added undo/redo capabilities. Can now perform /we undo up to 20 times Added santity checks to every operation. These prevent you from doing stuff that can potentially crash the server, such as placing large amount of light sources or more than 8 million blocks. Can be disabled via /we sovp 0 Singleplayer List Items now a bit more informative, now shows: Cheats On/Off and World height Total Real-World play time Added new blocks Hardened Clay (4 variants) Unlit and Lit Stove Cobblestone Stairs Added frame tick profiler (CTRL+F10) to help track down performance issues The installer is finally properly code signed! You now get a pretty blue shield instead of a yellow one when installing the game. I hope this will also resolve any issues with AntiVirus when downloading the game. Fixed Server Crash using Mono: The Server should now run under Linux! Added proper music system that selects tracks according to the daytime and playstyle Improved Brick Textures Tweaked world gen to generate significantly less rock strata View full record

Artistic Vintarians Creativity knows no boundary. v1.0.1 is now available for download on the game account manager. Updates Large World Edit update Added 3 new tools, improved paint brush tool New RaiseLower Tool: To raise or lower terrain using 4 different modes New Airbrush Tool: Scatter blocks randomly on the terrains surface using various distribution methods New Erode Tool: Erodes the terrain by averaging the height of the terrain New Import Tool: Import one or many exported files randomly at the selected position New Paint Brush Mode: Replace selected block The mod now handles tools in a very generic way, which should make it quite easy to make the mod moddable in itself O_O All commands are now fully documented on their own page Improved Mod API Documentation, uploaded reference documentation at apidocs.vintagestory.at View full record

Cinematic Vintarians The game is officially up for sale! \o/ v1.0.0 is available for download on the game account manager. Updates Added more world edit tools Added ability to set block selection range Added ball brush/eraser to place or remove larger amounts of blocks at once Added 3 brush modes (fill, replace solid, replace air, replace toplayer) Added ability to export and import areas of the world Improved AutoCamera tools for recording smooth cinematic flyovers. Now shows a path preview, Can delete the latest path point Camera should now move smoothly and correctly Improved performance of multi-block operations Fixed block breaking animation wrongly positioned for some blocks Fixed block breaking particles wrong color for most blocks View full record

Vintarians-To-Be Nothing significant happened game dev wise as expected My ongoing period of low activity will continue for another 5 days, I can hardly await to finally be able to binge type some game code again. I did solve a some administrative and interopability issues though, which means the release should only be days away now. The online shop is pretty much done and configured to automatically generate a game key on successful purchase. There will be also a VIP Addon which will give a perk or two, but it's mostly there for anyone who wants to support the game beyond buying a normal game account. There is one more thing I would like to have before the release - which is a code signed installer, at is it might eliminate some issues with downloading or installing the game. If Comodo is quick enough to deliver my code signing certificate, I will include it in the official release. In any case, I will probably put the game up for sale within the coming 7 days. Updates New high-res app icon for the game as well as the model creator Topsoil blocks are now displayed more correctly in the inventory (still not quite right though) Added some code to worldgen to allow for sub-landforms, which should help create a greater variety of biomes in the future. View full record

Crepuscular Vintarians! Another epic graphics update v0.9 Pre-Release 7 is now online for all owners of a game key If you see no big news from Vintage Story in the coming two weeks, don't worry, I'm probably still alive ;-) I will be having a voluntary period of low activity and instead spend some more time with my family. In any case, here are todays... Updates / Tweaks Added a god rays shader pass to create beautiful light shafts during daytime. Elegantly attenuates when looking away from the sun and with some extra intensity boost during dawn and dusk. I would actually like to see them also when looking away from the sun, during the nights and have it more constrained to very bright light sources, but it would require more shader tech and tweaking, so that'll be for another time. Added a rather hackish solution so that the grassy sides of the topsoil blocks are only climate tinted. This restores the classic brown on dirt blocks - something our lead artist has been impatiently awaiting for months ;-) Allow jump while sneaking Bloom tweaks: Lava and ember blocks now glow as well. Added a block-wide glow level. Glowing elements no longer so intensely bright during daytime. Added some more documentation to the server API Mushrooms, Torches and Firepits a bit larger in the inventory. Torch glow particles decrease in size over time. Bugfixes The 4 backpack slots can no longer non-backpack items (backpacks don't exist yet though) Fixed clouds no longer visible Fixed game speed not saved with world Fixed several issues with shaders for certain players which resulted in a black screen when a game was running View full record

Bloomy Vintarians! Fanciness increased to Level 2 v0.9 Pre-Release 6 is now online for all owners of a game key Yesterday I spent the major part of the day implementing a shader bloom effect and even got it all working by evening. What an impressive effect, it makes everything so pretty *_* However if bloom is not your cup of tea you can reduce or disable it easily in the graphics setttings. Let's have a look at the full list of... Updates Bloom Shader effect Added a glowiness level to particles and individual element faces of blocks to make them glow. Freely configurable for all blocks as always. Should allow for some epic Tron-Style Mods Updated the VS Model Creator to allow entering of glow levels for each block element face Added a switch in the graphics settings to enable/disable bloom calculations for performance. It's not very hard on the graphics card though. My cranky old GT 630M card gives me 53 FPS with bloom and 60 FPS without. Added a slider in the gfx settings to set the ambient bloom between 0% and 200% Worldgen Doubled the size of the climate map, which results in the emerging biomes now being twice the size We finally have Deserts. I found the bug that prevented them from generating. Saguaro Cacti are now generating in deserts. Also the cactus has an occasional flower now Fixed Trees generating in the wrong climate Added rotated logs Changing the GUI Scale in the graphics settings is now much faster The game installer now offers to uninstall the game in order to prevent old files messing up the game somehow Strafing while running now half as fast Changed grass blending (now more smooth over distance) Leaves and Branchy leaves blocks are now tinted by the climated. The branches are now a cross model inside the branchy leaves block. Bugfixes Fixed a client crash during game startup for some people Probably fixed an old and rare client crash (that showed the message "Chunk has no data?"). With that, all crashes known to me should be fixed \o/ Fixed massive gpu memory leak because I forgot to enable 3 lines of code after testing something >.< Probably fixed certain mouse wheels jumping 2 hotbar slots Probably fixed all scrollbars moving slower than the mouse for some people Fixed pressing inventory key not closing an opened inventory Fixed some flower stem graphics too dark Fixed some minor memory leaks in some of the GUI elements Multiplayer Fixed player no longer able to move around on the second time joining a multiplayer server Fixed Teleport not working in multiplayer Fixed one more instance of the game crashing instead of showing the disconnected screen View full record

Fellow Vintarians v0.9 Pre-Release 5 is online for all owners of a game key I have sent out the first few free game keys to a number of youtubers as well as a few other people. If you are a Youtuber with a decent subscriber count feel free to contact me and I'll probably send you a free game key. Since the game is officially in the hands of others now, I will change the format of my news articles to always include the version number and notable bugfixes. Updates The account manager is complete. It now also allows downloading of the game. \o/ The game now ships with XML Documentation for the Server Mod API Two example server mods are now available as open source project at https://github.com/tyronx/vsmodexamples Added cobblestone slabs Significantly improved readability/crispness of many texts in the game, especially when using a GUI Scale smaller than 8 Added player names above the players head for multiplayer. Fixes Fixed many collision and selectionboxes not being correctly applied to blocks. Fixed some networking weirdness that sometimes prevents the player to leave a multiplayer world Fixed some instances where the client crashes instead of showing a "disconnected from server" screen Adding npcs no longer crashes the game View full record

Fellow Vintarians! Could have worked some more on the game but my hands were not agreeing Updates Lo-Phi has joined our cause to make music! He already made two excellent first tracks and two days ago we've signed a contract that should ensure long term collaboration. This is going to take our game to a whole new level. Nearly completed the game account manager. The site now let's you log in securely, change your password and player name and sends you a password reset email if you've forgotten your password. Still missing is account creation from a given game key. I've also integrated a "Forgot Password?" and "Account" button in the game that redirect you to the account manager site. Sounds so simple but it actually required a lot of things: Had to buy and configure a Wildcard SSL Certificate - this is what creates the secure connection (https) for the account manager and now also for the game client, so nobody can steal your password especially over wifi Input validation: Need to ensure no duplicate playernames, correct lengths of playernames and passwords, etc. Anti Brute Force Login - Protection against people guessing your password with trying every possible combination: The account manager now shows a re-captcha after 3 failed logins and the game client login slows down the login attempts to once every 2 minutes if there were failed logins for 10 times. Setting up email sending, the webspace, the subdomains, etc. Saraty redid some of the last unlicensed textures we had and also made a fantastic new cobblestone texture. There is always room for improvement and more additions but texture wise the game is pretty much ready for a first release. View full record

Thanks for the suggestion, easing would surely be nice but i wouldn't know how I could make that work smoothly with the current lighting system. It would need to redraw 1-27 chunks (32x32x32 blocks) many times per second which would probably lag the game