Tyron

Survivally Vintarians
During survival playtesting we discovered a bunch of gameplay bugs, so pushing a quick patch!  Version 1.2.5 is now available for download in the account manager.

Updates

• Tweak: Newly spawned/respawned player will not get immediately hungry
• Tweak: Peat bricks now can be used as fuel in the fire pit
• Tweak: Fire pit now burns 4 times longer when first constructed
• Fixed: Tallgrass not breaking when the block below is broken
• Fixed: Native copper ore not spawning at all
• Fixed: Eating mushrooms gave too little saturation
• Fixed: Player Saturation not reseting on respawn. Now the player always respawns at half saturation
• Fixed: Blocks not interactable (i.e. firepits, chests) when player was holding an item 
• Fixed: Itemstack Tooltip not disappearing when pressing ESC in a Firepit Dialog
• Fixed: Flame and Arrow Symbols in Firepit dialog not scaling correctly with different gui scales
• Fixed: One more fix to prevent backpack slots turning into normal storage slots
• Fixed: Peat bricks placing weird transparent blocks
• Fixed: Player not able to pick up still stackable items on full inventory
• Fixed: Player not able to shift+click items out of the crafting output slot in certain cases
• Fixed: Generall crafting wonkiness and wrong output numbers appearing
• Fixed: Some areas completely devoid of tall grass

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Yes, just temporary solution.

Metallurgic Vintarians
Version 1.2.4 is now available for download in the account manager.

Dearest Community, I hope you all had a great christmas! 
In the meantime we completed the basic smelting system as well as everything around it for it to make sense in a survival game world. Currently you can only make use of copper ingots. A lot of features were needed to support it in a meaningful way which took away most of the dev time, so it is not very feature rich just yet.

Updates

• Feature: Basic Smelting
  • Can now use Firepits and Stoves to turn fuel + ore into metal ingots. 
  • Can now craft copper tools from copper ingots (same recipes as for stone tools)
  • Can now construct firepits by shift+right clicking on the ground with 1 dry grass and 3 fire wood
  • Can now craft fire wood from log + axe (above in the crafting grid)
  • Can now gather dry grass from breaking tall grass with a knife
  • Can now craft a knife from stick + flint (above in the crafting grid)
  • Flint now spawn naturally on the ground amongst other patches of loose stone
• Feature: Better item and block tooltip
  • Added smelting and burn temperature information
  • Added nutrient information
  • Removed debug infos (can be made visible again using the command .edi)
• Feature: Game optimizations
  • Switched from Gzip to Deflate, saving on CRC calculations and memory. Saves ~2-4% CPU on server+client
  • Added a fast random generator to Deposit and Cave generation. Saves ~4-6% CPU on server
  • Cache a single value in terrain tesselation: Saves ~1% CPU on client
• Feature: Automatic World Save File Upgrader
  • The compression optimization broke compatibility with pre 1.2.4 world save file formats, but VintageStory will now automatically probe what version a world save file was created with and upgrade the save file format on world startup.
• Feature: Worldgen updates
  • Feature: Added single-block rivers to world generation. They generate on rocky faces over- and underground.
  • Tweak: Less dense patches of tallgrass
  • Tweak: No more grass under under lakes, should also allow gravel and sand in the right climates
• New Modding Features:
  • Items can now also have any kind of shape that can be created with the VSModelCreator (example: Firewood)
  • Custom Item Types are now possible (example: Firewood, Dry grass, Stones)
  • Crafting recipes can require a tool without consuming the tool completely (example: Firewood)
  • Blocks can now be made edible (example: Mushroom)
  • New Event for Blocks and Items: OnUseItem
  • MarkBlockDirty/MarkBlockEntityDirty/MarkBlockUpdated Methods in IBlockAccessor for more precise control on what kind of updates a block should receive.
• Feature: Added Item ID Remapper. Prevents adding/removing items to the game messing up your current items in old worlds.
• Feature: Can now place loose stones on the ground by Shift+Right click on the ground with a stone
• Feature: Mushrooms are now edible too (not very healthy, but might keep you from starving)
• Feature: Added bamboo hay block
• Feature: Added Ingots (item only at the moment)
• Graphics Tweaks:
  • Many item and block graphics improved
  • Added dithering to night sky (reduces color banding)
  • Night fog no longer weirdly purplish
  • Increased overal scene contracts
• Fixed: Dropped Items reappearing (but disappearing on collection) in certain cases
• Fixed: A bunch of crashes that I observed for the first time
• Fixed: Berry bushes not regrowing berries when placed by world generation

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Hungry Vintarians!
Version 1.2.3 is now available for download in the account manager.

I've had little to no time for most of the week due to real life errands, but I did manage to cram in a few tasty new features in the 2 extra days of delayed release. I've also aquired a few more talented hands for drawing item textures and illustrations for our first story page that we can release to the public still this year I hope.

Updates

• Feature: New Blocks
  • Added carpets with 6 variants
  • Added new 3 new variants for linen cloth
• Feature: New Items
  • Bread, various Berries and Vegetables. Can be eaten.
  • Flint, Flax, Feather, Arrow and Twine. Currently no use yet.
• Feature: Hunger! 
  • The green status bar now acts as a saturation indicator. Once your saturation runs out, you will receive damage every few seconds until you die. 
  • Can now eat items to regain saturation and health. All new food items can be eaten
  • Can now harvest berries from the berry bushes that spawn naturally in the world
  • Berry Bushes now slowly regrow berries (every 40mins)
• Feature: Added new "Fast graphics" option that turns off drawing various parts of the leave blocks
• Tweak: More messing around with distant tree and transparent rendering. Should now hopefully look right.
• Tweak: Command issued from console are now also Logged
• Tweak: More flexible handling of BlockEntities, can now be individually configured per block instead of being bound to the Block class.
• Fixed: Client crashing instead of displaying error when attempting to connect to a server with a different version.
• Fixed: Fixed last severe bug known to me: Black chunks after reloading a world
• Fixed: Visible seams between snow layer and frosted grass
• Fixed: Yet another attempt of fixing invisible mouse pointer bug in the menu. Maybe now for the last time.
• Fixed: API call to SetBlock should now also generates any associated BlockEntity

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Fidelitous Vintarians!
We've continued refining the game.  Version 1.2.2 is now available for download in the account manager.

Despite all my efforts in trying to push survival gameplay I somehow inadvertently ended up doing more of a graphics and detailing update. Le Sigh. Nonetheless we do have some survival updates. Loose stone now generate all over the world to make it easier to collect stones in early survival, peat and clay deposits now generate the surface, the latter being essential for smelting and required for various recipes. I've also continued working on the smelting system, which is now coming close to completion.

Updates

• Feature: New blocks
  • Grass Covered Clay and Peat
  • Raw and Burned Vessel for holding up to 4 items
  • Loose Stones
• Feature: New items
  • Pile of Blue/Fire Clay
  • Peat Brick
• Feature: Several graphics updates
  • Much more elegant block selection highlight. Now perfectly placed on top of the block and anti aliased.
  • Can now define how block sides should be merged and ambient occluded for each block face. This allows for better rendering of glass, ice, leaves, slabs and similar blocks
  • Can now define what blocks should always be drawn on top of others, allowing for e.g. leaves always be drawn on top of any adjacent blocks. Makes leaves look way better when adjacent to solid blocks, as those sides can now be drawn as well. Also eliminates several sources of Z-Fighting (flickering of textures)
  • The Weighted Blended Order Independent Transparency system should now more correctly mix together half transparent blocks, particles and clouds 
• Feature: More Worldgen updates
  • Added Clay and Peat deposits to the surface. Added ability to place deposits depending on climate.
  • Ice lakes now generate naturally
  • Very tall grass now varies in height randomly 
  • Loose stones now spawn all over the surface, making it easier to gather stones in early survival. Added ability for the block patch generator to place blocks based upon the underlying rock type.
  • The tall pillar landforms are now not as tall and stepped, making look like the pillar mountains in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park
  • The humongous mountains landform now sometimes have very large caverns in them
  • Slightly cooled down the planet ;-)
  • Fixed: Sand and Gravel longer mixing vertically in strange ways
  • Other minor tweaks to some landforms
• Feature: Can now place lanterns and torches on top of fences
• Feature: 3 more crafting recipes for cobble stone, cobble stairs and cobble slabs (requires stones and clay as ingredients)
• Feature: Added GearTwos updated server.sh script with 2 new features: backup and update
• Tweak: Water source blocks now also flows into several direction if several downward paths of the same length are found
• Tweak: Several block tweaks
  • Lantern survival breaking speed reduced to 1 second
  • Can now place attachable blocks like torches and wool/leather/linen layers on top of upside down slabs and stairs
  • Added ability for blocks to have random shapes which are randomly selected based on where they are placed in the world
  • Added new blocktype properties:
    • glowLevelByType: Same as glowLevel but typed for the selected block
    • SideAo and SideAoByType: If blocks around it should be ambient occluded
    • RenderFlags (8-bit value, lowest 3 bits used for offseting the render depth, the hights bit used for reducing alpha transparency loss over distance)
    • SnowCoverage: true/false, determines if snow layers can stay on the block
    • FaceCullMode: 
      • Default: Default behavior
      • NeverCull: All block faces are always rendered
      • Merge: Removes any block face that is opaque and adjacent to an opaque block face or block with same blockid
      • MergeMaterial: Same as merge but checks for equal material instead of equal blockid
      • Collapse: Same as merge, but removes only 1 of 2 faces if adjacent to blocks with same blockid
      • CollapseMaterial: Same as collapse but checks for equal material instead of equal blockid
      • Liquid: Removes any block face that is adjacent to an opaque block face or adjacent to a block of the same material
• Fixed: Some block sides becoming transparent when placing stairs or slabs
• Fixed: Active slot item info box popping up whenever an item got damaged
• Fixed: Another attempt to fix mouse cursor not visible when disconnected from multiplayer
• Fixed: /welcome and /announce only allowing 1 word
• Fixed: Pre v1.2 worlds no longer openable
• Fixed: Crafting planks from logs only ever returning birch planks
• Fixed: Shift+Left click from the crafting output slot duplicating the item
• Fixed: Client crashing when a half broken block in survival is instantly broken in creative mode
• Fixed: Client crashing in certain situations in multiplayer when using inventory
• Fixed: Client rarely crashing in multiplayer when server is shutting down
• Fixed: Client crashing when window is resized to 0 height
• Fixed: Server rarely crashing when a player connects
• Fixed: Server crashing when a mod crashes in a certain way
• Fixed: Players rarely not able to pick up items
• Fixed: A world edit undo via /we undo after /we mmby x y z being applied incorrectly
• Fixed: Covering/Uncovering light sources not correctly relighting neighbour chunks
• Fixed: Stairs on top of stairs causing the lower stairs to be wrongly darkened

Pictures

Improved Block Selection Highlighter

Prettier ice, ice lakes generating naturally
 

Loose stones now generate on the surface
 

Large Caverns now naturally generate in the humongous mountains landform

New wooden path block

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Social Vintarians
Vintage Story v1.2.1 should make the multiplayer experience significantly more pleasent. In addition, from now on I'll release the game also as a simple .tar.gz archive for download in the account manager, which should make it a lot easier to install and update linux game servers.

It should also eliminate the need to install the game via wine for Linux users (you still need to manually install mono though). Furthermore one could even go ahead and build a small auto updater script by checking the version url!

Updates

• Feature: Added a more Linux compatible release of the game to the account manager - a .tar.gz archive.
• Feature: Re-added New Version notification (was lost during the gui redesign)
• Feature: Add a client mod api call for rendering items/blocks into gui
• Feature: Made chunk-generator-thread ticktime configurable to boost chunk generation speed on powerful servers (servermagicnumbers.json)
• Tweak: Some minor aesthetic corrections on the main menu screen
• Fixed: Setting other players gamemode did not inform the client causing weird behavior for that client
• Fixed: Server shutting down after 6 hours
• Fixed: Not able to place/remove blocks with default privilege group level in multiplayer 
• Fixed: Player Models not visible
• Fixed: Several issues with custom chat groups (the /group command)
• Fixed: Seeing other players with flymode on constantly falling down in multiplayer
• Fixed: Game crash when doing anything with inventory in multiplayer
• Fixed: Game crash when trying to save a sign block text
• Fixed: Game Crash when typing "/time set"

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Adventury Vintarians
We might just have invented ectasy in voxel form. See for yourself by downloading 1.2.0 in the acccount manager

I've also started to migrate some of the first mechanical power back bone from vintagecraft to vintage story. No visible progress to show on that front just yet.

Please note block entities, like Chests and Signs now use a new method of saving their data to the savegame. It will cause old signs and chests to loose their data and will log an error. Sorry about that. I did this update to make those blocks more resilient against future updates. 

Up next we will probably try to get some of the most essential survival features done so you can actually make use of the new prettier terrain.

Updates

• World Generation Updates:
  • Remade all Landforms: The world should now look significantly more varied and unique. Also way more traversable with big flat building grounds.
  • Improved forest generation: The terrain is no longer covered in trees. There are also large patches with only light or no forestation. Added a tree generator to produce massive redwood trees. Tweaked several of the tree generators. 
  • Wider range of colors: Brown wintery forests and yellow Savannahs galore!
  • Larger Biomes: Double the size of climate areas
  • Much more deco: Worldgen now also generates frosted tall grass, berry bushes, ferns, lily pads and very large patches of heathers/western gorse to imitate heathlands.
  • And many many other tweaks
• New Blocks
  • Berry Bushes: Red Currant, Black Currant, White Currant, Blueberry and Cranberry. Can't harvest them yet :<
  • Lily Pads: Basic version of lily pads on the water, will receive some more love in a future update
  • Tall Ferns: 2+ block high ferns for a perfect addition to the jungle underbrush
• API Updates
  • Feature: Network API that let's modders set up custom network channels and network message for arbitrary communication between client and server
  • Feature: Shader API let's modders define and load their own GLSL shaders and use them during rendering
• Feature: The client now supports basic video recording with the command .rec. The big advantage of that is it should be absolutely lag free video recording, no matter how laggy your game is. Unfortunately it does not yet support audio or compressed video recording yet.
• Feature: Added 2 server side tools to quickly prototype worldgen configurations. There is now also a mod api property that let's you disable auto generation of chunks (api.WorldManager.AutoGenerateChunks = false) 
  • /wgen del [radius]   - deletes given radius of chunks near the world center
  • /wgen regen [radius]  - also deletes, but also reloads all worldgen config files and regenerates those chunks.
• Feature: Remade all tree leaves textures. They now look more consistent with the rest of the art style.
• Tweak: Potential lag reduction on slower machines (uploading of mesh data now happens less often and in bigger batches)
• Tweak: Updated several other textures
• Fixed: 2-3 Crashes when trying to play on a standalone server
• Fixed: Crash when trying to rename a world 
• Fixed: /stop not exiting standalone server without hitting enter key
• Fixed: Server<->Client Player Position Desync in Multiplayer, causing the player to teleport weirdly in certain cases
• Fixed: Chests instantly breaking

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Blocky Vintarians!
This update is a blocky one. And some pretty candy for modders. Since major changes happened in the Mod API, I'm bumping the game version to 1.1.0, which is now available for download in the account manager.

[Edit:] I've released version 1.1.1 which fixes the wrong worldedit tools numbering

Updates

• Feature: New blocks
  • Added bed, altar, echo chamber, book shelves, omok table top and about 80 new blocks of various colors for creative mode only
• Feature: New graphics option: Sepia Slider
• Feature: WorldEdit Updates
  • Feature: New tool for generating trees using the engines tree generator.
  • Feature: New tool for simple lake generation that performs a 1 deep flood fill within a limited range
• Feature: Mod API Updates
  • Several updates to make modding much more convenient. The Visual Studio Project of the official sample mods now let's you start the game directly within the IDE, you can break the game and use edit&continue!
  • Added several features for mods to become moddable. First example: The game content mod now adds a new tool brush to the world edit mod if it is loaded.
  • Added new events, can now register listeners for LogEntry events and player gamemode changes
  • More convenient access to the files assets through a new IAssetManager interface
  • Large rewrite on how player related data is accessed, should now be much easier to use
• Tweak: Updated textures for blocks for crafting table, improved model for the flower pot and new graphics for all potted flowers, updated 2 leaves textures, 
• Tweak: Added ability to use a wildcard for a blocks texture, this automatically adds the textures it finds in the given path as random textures.
• Tweak: Reduced memory usage by 170 MB
• Fixed: Player unable to place certain blocks very close to him
• Fixed: Respawning not giving back full health when clicked too quickly
• Fixed: WorldEdit mod and movespeed carrying over to survival mode when switching gamemods
• Fixed: Blocks nearby lava transparent
• Fixed: Low level water sometimes overwriting higher level water
• Fixed: Lighting glitch where sunlight would not spread into neighbouring chunks
• Fixed: Properly shutdown server when an exception happened during startup
• Fixed: Disconnected screen showing black background and menu on the left
• Fixed: Major sources of lag when using /we blu or block data imports with light sources multiple times
• Fixed: Shift + Left mouse click not working to get items from the creative inventory
• Other: Updated entity model format to use json in preparation for the entity animation system
• Other: Added combustible options to blocks and items in preparation for smeltable and burnable items/blocks. Added tree attributes to blocks and items to hold any custom data.

Pictures
 

If you have old worlds that are important, copy&paste this into your chat bar - it will fix the broken flowers. Close and open the world to see the changes.

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Crafty Vintarians!
Presenting today: New Survival, Creative and Modding Features

As always we continue to add new features at breakneck speed.  Version 1.0.10 is now available for download in the account manager.
The world edit documentation is updated to reflect the latest additions.

Updates

• Feature: Basic Survival Crafting is now complete! The first recipes are added too (Planks, Torch, Stone Pickaxe, Stone Axe, Stone Shovel, Planks Stairs, Planks Slab, Door, Fence, Fence Gate, Chest, Ladder, Sign)
• Feature: Massive WorldEdit Additions
  • New Tool: Grow/Shrink - allows for three dimensional growing or shrinking of an area, layer by layer. Has 2 modes: Grow/Shrink any blocks or only selected blcoks
  • New Tool: Eraser - formerly integrated in the paint brush tool now separate to allow for greater functionality. Basically does the inverse as the paint brush tool.
  • New Tool: Line - draws lines between points. Has 2 modes: Line strip or single origin
  • Paint Brush Overhaul: Can now select width/height and length of a brush shape. Added 8 new shapes: Cuboid, Cylinder, Half ball up/down/north/east/south/west
  • Air Brush Overhaul: Now behaves more like an traditional air brush. Has 2 draw modes and 2 apply modes.
  • New Brush Positioning mode: Can now select between Centering or Attaching the brushes shape to the selected block)Added replace modes to the import tool: The Import tool now no longer places blocks with a higher replacable value than the existing blocks. Can change this behavior with place modes 0 (replacable check),1 (only replace air) or 2 (replace everything)
  • Added Ability to (vertically) flip block data (for the import command, the paste command or the import tool)
  • Added Ability to copy and paste a selected area (previously required an extra step with export then import) 
  • All tools that allow defining a radius now have 2 additional commands to grow/shrink the radius by +1 or -1
• Feature: The game now also supports client side mods! Any mod can now define if it should be loaded on the server side, the client side or both. A fairly extensive Client API is also already available (including full world access and a render api)
• Feature: Flowing Water now does basic path finding within a 3 blocks radius to search for a single downward path instead of spreading everywhere.
• Feature: Added ColorByBlock property to block particles to take on the color of the blocks texture (from a random position)
• Tweak: Much improved rendering of held items (finally fixed misaligned faces + added shadings)
• Tweak: Increased client block ticking scanning range and speed (e.g. causes blocks to emit particles from 8 blocks further away)
• Tweak: Doubled mining speeds for all tools
• Tweak: Flowers and Mushrooms now break instantly in survival
• Tweak: Improved offline mode experience: 'Offline Mode' Text no longer clipped and added second counter while trying to validate session
• Tweak: Itemstack quantities now more visible
• Tweak: Active Slot Info Text now also shows whenever the active slot is modified
• Fixed: Maybe fixed the IndexOutOfRangeException-Crash that randomly occurs
• Fixed: Water in some cases removing blocks that it shouldn't
• Fixed: Several rendering glitches with water
• Fixed: All held items were mirrored
• Fixed: Game no longer crashes without internet access
• Fixed: Player picking up items in survival despite full inventory

Screenshots

New Brush Positioning mode

New Paint Brush Shapes

New Grow/Shrink Tool (adds/removes layers of blocks)

New Line Tool


Overhauled Air Brush Tool

The first house ever built entirely in Survival mode \o/

Improved Held Item Rendering

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Watered Vintarians
We've completed our first version of water physics, which means water can flow and spread now.
Version 1.0.9 is now available for download in the account manager.

Updates

• Feature: Water now spreads, can have different height levels and has a flowing animation
• Feature: New command .liquidselectable - toggles whether liquid blocks should be selectable like normal blocks
• Feature: Added WorldEdit move commands to move around selected areas
  • /mmu [length]: Move selected area by length blocks (if length is not supplied length will be 1)
  • /mmd [length]: Same for down
  • /mmn, /mme, /mms, /mmw: Same for north/east/south/west
  • /mmby x y z: Move in by given x/y/z length
• Feature: Fly Axis Lock: Allows locking the X, Y or Z axis to e.g. allow hovering over a landscape in a fixed height.
  • .lockfly [0-3]: 0 = no lock, 1 = x-axis lock, 2 = y-axis lock, 3 = z-axis lock
• Tweak: Improved Font rendering quality (now correctly overlaid with premultiplied alpha masks)
• Tweak: Drastically improved performance when selecting large areas using /we ms and /we me
• Tweak: Worldgen generates some more caves
• Tweak: Breaking cacti blocks breaks any cacti blocks above
• Tweak: Lanterns now can also be attached to ceilings
• Tweak: Added california poppy to world generation
• Tweak: Reduced walking speed by 25%
• Tweak: Cloud Layer position is now relative to the total world height
• Fixed: Worldedit Airbrush tool not allowing large brush sizes
• Fixed: Flying not possible in spectator mode
• Fixed: Game not remembering the last active hotbar slot 
• Fixed: Player not able to pick up multiple itemstacks from the ground
• Fixed: .cam load crashing the game when no points supplied
• Fixed: Rendering glitches with FPS graph (didn't show at all on some machines)
• Fixed: Hopefully somewhat reduced the unknown blocks appearing for a single frame when building/breaking
• Fixed: Several rendering glitches with water
• Fixed: Day/Night transitions speed 0 on new worlds
• Fixed: Topsoil block underside showing grass
• Fixed: Some blocks dropping white particles instead of their block colors
• Fixed: Added all missing block translations

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Few and far between Vintarians!
An early release as I discovered an unusual amount of bugs. Also one more milestone towards Survival complete: Blocks may now drop any combination of items.
Version 1.0.8 is now available for download in the account manager.

Updates

• Feature: Ladders are now climbable
• Feature: Added universal block drop system. Allows a block to drop any combination of block or item stacks with a selectable random quantity
• Feature: Add new item: Stick
• Feature: Added skols Linux Installer scripts and files. If you install the game with vine and run the install.sh you should hopefully have the game working under linux. Skol also wrote some instructions about it.
• Feature: Leaves and Branchy Leaves now drop Sticks and Saplings. Rock now drops Stones
• Feature: A singleplayer worlds file name can now be renamed within the game
• Feature: Added command .cam tp [off or on] to prevent the cinematic camera teleporting the player back to the original position on path end
• Tweak: Improved version updating experience - removed 2 unecessary message boxes, create desktop icon is always checked and the player is informed that his worlds won't be lost
• Tweak: Many adjustments to the new ui style (colors, sizes, font, etc.)
• Tweak: Updated API Documentation (apidocs.vintagestory.at)
• Tweak: Raised max world height selected from within the game from 1024 to 1536 (survival) or 2048 blocks (creative). Raised the warning value for creative worlds to 1024 blocks. 
• Tweak: Clean up some parts of the rendering code to reduce some opengl state switches for minor performance gains (< 1%)
• Fixed: Changing Gui Scale broken after joining and leaving a world
• Fixed: Tooltips clipping outside the game window 
• Fixed: Mouse captured in a small rectangle when starting a single player world in windows mode and unfocusing the game window
• Fixed: Itemstack Quantities not shown at the right coordinate on small or large gui scales
• Fixed: Dropping items into a slot using right mouse click not updating itemstack quantity
• Fixed: All Paintings having the same texture in the inventory
• Fixed: The server log in the single player starting screen should display correctly again on different gui scales
• Fixed: Player name tag box wrongly sized on small or large gui scales
• Fixed: .cam start not putting the player in flymod causing massive jerkiness
• Fixed: Itemstack info not disappearing when closing the chest inventory using the Escape key
• Fixed: Shift + Left click on an item to move away an itemstack not working
• Fixed: Vintage Story Logo on the main menu now longer in bad quality from resizing

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Stylish Vintarians!
Version 1.0.7 is now available for download in the account manager.

By the concept of Nachtfalter the game now has an all new Logo and menu/in-game-dialog layouts. It looks super pretty \o/
Thats what we've worked on for pretty much most of the week since last update.

Updates

• New Logo for the game, website and account manger
• From the ground up redesigned menu screens
• All in game dialogs are alsjo adjusted to fit the style

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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 

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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

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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
     

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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

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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

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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
  
   

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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

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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.

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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
   

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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

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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

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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. 
  
   

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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