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Comment:
This is the Live release of Testing 29, which in turn was a testing release of the Boundless PS4 PlayStation Experience demo.
The Sanctum is the most significant new feature. It acts as the starting point for each play session. For new users the Sanctum offers an initial tutorial that allows players to create and transit a Warp in their first session. For returning players the Sanctum gives players control over how they want to re-enter the online universe. The Sanctum also acts as the recovery point when killed in combat.
The Worlds and player progression have all been retained.
Please note the major known issue about Entity Blocks within beacons and the current work around - details below.
Release Notes:
- Art + Animation + Assets:
- Added support for multiple weather effects simultaneously.
- Lowered lava light radius to reduce speed impact of large lava pools.
- More emotes:
- /point now supports optional directions. You can /point up, down, left, right, and back. Just /point without a direction to point forwards.
- /beckon to encourage others to join you.
- New meshes for different tiers of creatures, including multiple tiers of Hopper, Roadrunner and Cuttletrunk.
- New textures and FX for Warp Conduit block.
- New visual effects for the wooden and gem torches.
- Ribbon trails added for projectiles.
- Crafting + Resources + Equipment:
- Added gem weapons an tools.
- Added Starberry, Cooked Starberry, Healing Brew and Dark Blood items.
- Balanced durability of tools and weapons so higher tiers last longer.
- Balanced healing amounts for Starberry, Cooked Starberry, Cooked Meat and Healing Brew.
- Beacon plotter is now two separate items.
- Chisel can now chisel any edge allowing more shapes to be constructed.
- Made eating consumables slower.
- Slingbow overhaul:
- New models added for stone, metal, alloy, and gem based slingbows.
- All slingbows have infinite bolts. Arrows have been removed.
- The basic ammo does the same damage as arrows.
- Slingbows can be loaded with powerup gems which will buff the slingbow’s damage for 20 shots.
- Any stacks of arrows in your inventory or loaded in your slingbows will be replaced with a 20 charge gem, regardless of its original size.
- Steps / Slabs and Walls are now crafted on either the Crafting Table or the Workbench.
- Stopped creature drops, plant drops and raw / cooked meat stacking with each other.
- Totem planet selection changes:
- Now need to target the planet before charging the item.
- New effects.
- Warp mechanics updated to support different sized warps with new visuals and a more involved mechanic by smashing the warp open to reveal the portal inside.
- Xp reward when the player discover a new region
- Creatures:
- Added knockback to Hoppers and Wildstock.
- Can now grapple to creatures and block drops, the creatures will be able to resist your movements and the grapple to creatures is not a rigid rope like when grappling to the world, but it is functional enough to be able to drag entities around. Multiple players cannot grapple to the same entity and players cannot grapple other players.
- Creatures can now play particle effects.
- Fixed NPC’s spawning stuck inside blocks.
- New creatures:
- Cuttletrunks: A tough aerial opponent with ranged attacks. Remember to pack your slingbow!
- Hoppers: Keep your distance or you’ll make them angry. You wouldn’t like them when they’re angry.
- Support for different NPC types on different worlds.
- GUI + HUD:
- Added objective system with fifty initial objectives defined.
- Added new information in the Hud:
- Added damage direction indicators.
- Added warp location picking.
- Added break block information.
- Added crafting machine information.
- Added GUI new elements:
- In-game entity portal information
- Warp to location info
- Small selection planet info
- Contextual Button prompt
- Added News Flash when:
- Discovering a new region
- Player level up
- Objective completed
- GUI performance optimisation
- Updated GUI elements:
- Held item
- Chat bubbles
- In-game entity information
- SFX + Music:
- Fixed 3d audio positioning on surround sound systems.
- Engine:
- First person items are in the same location irrespective of chosen field of view.
- Fixed game sometimes hanging when traveling through a portal.
- Fixed lighting issue on breaking decals causing strange coloured cracks.
- Improved initial load / portal load so that draw-distance and fog are smoothly interpolated out to show only as much of the world as is available to render.
- Massively improved the feeling of steps/slabs so that camera/entity motion is no longer snapped to the tops/bottoms of steps but nicely smoothed.
- Particle systems that leave trails will now appear smoother at lower framerates for inter-frame emission of particles.
- Portal transitions are now much smoother.
- Refactoring of the internals of the Boundless client’s networking to try and ensure that low, high or variable frame rates have a much lower impact on the latency of the client’s communication with the servers.
- Specularity in shaders overhauled to not be overblown and to generally be much more consistent through different lighting settings and to retain better colour information, especcialy for metallic materials like gold which are now fully dialectric in specular calculations keeping gold looking gold even even strong white lighting.
- Sanctum:
- Players now start in the Sanctum when running the game, with a tutorial for the first time they play the game. If rejoining the game, they will be provided a warp to the location they left the game at, or they can choose to open a different warp to another location or world in their saved locations.
- Players will also return to the Sanctum when they die, and the ‘Emergency Warp’ button has been replaced with a ‘Return to Sanctum’ button instead.
- World Builder:
- Fix connecting client to a prefab from within a Custom Instance config file.
- Fixed DELETECHUNK having disappeared from item selection in prefabs for World Builder
- Bug fixes:
- Fixed crash scrolling locations list when interacting with the warp.
- Fixed not being able to interact with beacons after server reboot.
- … and much more.
Resolved Known Issues:
- HP and SP bars are briefly stretched when opening settings or inventory menus.
- Occasional crash after choosing to join client from World Builder.
- Scrolling up and down the Warp Locations menu may cause a crash.
- Smart stacking does not update recipe information from with the compactor without closing and reopening the menu.
- Some items in player hands in 3rd person view are huge (e.g. Power Core).
- Sometimes the animation for left handed tools do not swing continuously.
Known Issues:
- Cannot smart stack walls.
- [NEW] Hard to tell bottles apart (glue, dark blood, healing brew).
- Shift-clicking an item from the selling plinth will show odd numbers and will not always go in the shopping basket.
- Shift-clicking and dragging on the coin icons from within the trading menus may cause a crash.
- [NEW] Some interactive blocks (crafting table, machine, beacon control) have become corrupted during the migration. This will result in at best those blocks not being able to be interacted with, at worst the game crashing when interacting with those blocks. To fix the issue the block(s) in question need to be re-placed. In the case of anything other than a beacon control the block can simply be broken, picked up, and then re-placed. In the case of a beacon control this will work, although it would result in all the plots having to be re-placed one at a time and during that process the contents being unprotected. A better workaround for a beacon control is to craft a new beacon control, place that, and then break the old one, which will keep the beacon’s plots placed throughout the process.
- Some of the items are not positioned in the hand correctly when the players are seen in 3rd person view.
- Some of the items displayed in the inventory screen are not positioned correctly.
- The recipes are not final.
- Z-fighting with some items (workbench and other machines) when placed underwater.
Release Notes 149.1:
- Fixed an issue with players with negative money walking through Warps causing the client and server to crash.
Release Notes 149.2:
- Fixed authentication issue when there was a case mismatch on the username or world name. This could result in the Totem failing to create locations.
Release Notes 149.3:
- Fixed an intermittent server crash when interacting with warp conduit blocks
- Fixed a bug swapping out ammo on an already loaded slingbow that sometimes destroyed both ammo crystals
Known Issues:
- Smart stacked items can become bugged, causing the client to crash when interacting with machines.
A few things we forgot:
- Visually updated some of the weather effects.
- Added a new set of colour palettes per world.
- Integrated a refactoring of the internals of the Boundless client’s networking to try and ensure that low, high or variable frame rates have a much lower impact on the latency of the client’s communication with the servers.
- … and more.
