Release 225: Farming!

[james]

Release Overview:

The release overview is linked below.

The Harvest Era Comes to Boundless - Farming is here!

[Harvest%20Era%20Key%20Art%20-%201080p] Greetings, Citizens The day we’ve all been waiting for is here - the Harvest Era is upon us! This is by some distance our most significant single update to Boundless since release, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with you all. Some of you will have been experimenting with the features in our public testing build, but for those who aren’t familiar with what the Harvest Era brings, let’s recap… Farming Farming is, on a very reduced level, ab…

Release Overview Video:

Farming, Place-able Fluids, and More | Testing 224 Overview | Boundless

Release Notes:

This Live release collects together all the changes from Testing 224. The details are linked below.

Testing 224: Farming!

This update is accessible via the “Testing” release of Boundless on Steam. Please restart Steam to make sure you get the latest version of Boundless. If the update happens whilst Steam is open it’s unlikely you’ll get the latest version. Please report all issues discovered to new posts in the #support category. The following release notes are not final and should not be considered complete or exhaustive. Overview: Overview Video: Testing 224: Farming: Farming has come to Boundless! …

Testing 224: Farming! (continued)

These release notes are a continuation from Testing 224: Overview Video: Testing 224.1: This update includes changes to the balance that are not final and should not be considered complete or exhaustive. Feedback about the balance is welcomed and helpful. The update doesn’t include any changes to the wild crop spawning and distributions as these require the resources to be regenerated on the worlds. This will be iterated in a future testing update. Crafting + Resources + Equipment: Ear…

---

The release contained some lighting issues that are ongoing. These are listed below.

Lighting in Release 225 Status

Hey Everyone. Thanks for all your feedback about the lighting in the Release 255. There are quite a few post talking about it - so I wanted to make a list of the items and what we’re doing about them. Night time darkness balance - the darkness balance is very display dependent. Different displays can present a different range of dark colours. We balanced the lighting against our displays, laptops, and TVs. But there will definitely be displays where the game appears too dark (and too bright…

For tracking purposed they’re also inlined:

@james

1. Night time darkness balance - the darkness balance is very display dependent. Different displays can present a different range of dark colours. We balanced the lighting against our displays, laptops, and TVs. But there will definitely be displays where the game appears too dark (and too bright). Given the variation in display the best solution is to expose a slider for players to find a balance that matches their display.

   RESOLVED - with Release 225.2: add an option for all players to balance their own darkness balance.

2. Others have raised the issue of nyctalopia . We’ll need to investigate what options there are for making sure the game is playable with anyone who is affected by this. Can anyone point to other games that offer good solutions?

   TODO - learn about how best to help players with nyctalopia - assuming #1 isn’t enough.

3. Shiny blocks no longer whiten the block colour - previously shiny or polished blocks would be presented with a whitening over their base colour. This made it impossible to have a dark shiny block. For example, the decorative blocks would all be noticeably whiter. The whitening also made dark shiny blocks appear much brighter when lit with gleam and torches. So a marble or decorative dark floor could appear quite bright when lit.

   With the rendering update the shiny blocks now retain their natural colour. Dark remains dark, and black stays black. This does mean that if you have built with dark shiny blocks then the environment will be darker - as the whitening has been removed. All material variations (wood, stone, brick, etc) should retain their colour much more consistently. We don’t plan to change this. Blocks should present the correct colour independent of the shininess.

   If you still find that you’re unhappy with your build and actually want the shiny blocks to be brighter then the easiest solution would be to use the new Goo farming system to create some lighter spray colours and redecorate your build. The advantage of this is that there is no need to rebuild. Just spray the blocks and the colours will change.

4. Gleam lights the environment proportional to the gleam colour: previously gleam blocks, independent of their colour, would emit the same brightness as white gleam. So a black gleam would light the environment the same as white gleam. There are many builds that used darker gleam blocks that will now appear much darker.

   The advantage is that you now have much more control over the brightness of your build. If you want subtle red lighting, you can now get it from a darker gleam block. Where as previously it was impossible.

   The disadvantage is that if you’ve built with darker gleam blocks then your builds will be lit darker.

   So it gives you much more building control, but it will leave a legacy of darker builds.

   One idea would be to allow the Transformation Chisels to change the brightness of Gleam, Refined Gleam, and Gleam Lanterns. In the same way that you can use the chisel to program the LED blocks, we could use the chisel to brighten the gleam blocks. They could go from “dark gleam” where they emit almost no light, through the current config, up to a bright version. This would allow players to rebalance their own builds. This would also give players much more variation when building. The advantage of using the chisel is that there would be no need to rebuild - instead blocks could be brightened by simply chiselling them.

   TODO - explore the idea of using Transformation Chisels on Gleam to change their brightness.

5. Mesh lighting broken - the mesh lighting is definitely broken - sorry! The meshes are much darker than they should be when lit by the world light (instead of sun light). So for everyone who has shared images of their builds with under powered lighting we’ll get this fixed asap.(Reminder that dark meshes, for example black storage - will remain black - see #3. But machines and plinth will all recover their correct brightness.)

   RESOLVED with Release 225.1 and 225.2: fix the mesh rendering.

6. Bloom balance - we’re still working on the bloom balance. It’s not quite doing what we want. It’s basically making too much of the scene a little blurry, rather than just making the bright areas glow.

   RESOLVED - with Release 225.2: get the bloom working as desired.

7. Day/Night Cycles and Fog - the new day/night cycles normalise the scene brightness. This basically means that the scene has the correct brightness throughout the different times of day.

   • Day should be dominated by the sun brightness which overwhelm the gleam / torch light.
   • Night should be dominated by the gleam / torch light and supported by the moon / sky lighting.

   I think this balance is pretty good, but we will continue to tweak it. There are still a few parts of the scene that are unbalanced. For example, the planets in the sky are too bright during the night and will make the landscape darker whilst you look at them. (They’re too bright, because we tried to make them bright enough to be seen during the day!)

   The fog helps add a sense of depth to the landscape, it’s a little strong at the moment and also needs more balancing.

   TODO - continue to normalise and polish the day/night cycles and fog.

---

Release 225.1

Crafting + Resources + Equipment:

• Crops can now be targeted directly for harvesting / fertilising / HUD display rather than having to target only the block face the crop is attached to. Hitboxes will correctly account for the sloping shapes of the blocks the crops are attached to splitting/shearing hitboxes.
• Hitboxes for meshes will now account for mesh rotations better.

Bug fixes:

• Fix the tiller tools not accounting for permissions properly.
• Fix entities (player included) getting trapped in the terrain if stood inside liquid being turned into stone due to lava<>liquid reactions. The entity will be pushed out to an adjacent or nearby suitable empty space.
• Fix crops that can be planted on Grass, only being plantable on Grass embedded in Silty Soil, and not Grass embedded in Clay or Peaty Soil too.
• Fixed occasional client crash when standing near another player as they gained or lost a status effect.

---

Release 225.2:

Engine:

• Exposed a Darkness setting allowing players to define their own darkness level.
  • This isn’t a gamma control, which would have brightened the entire screen. But rather a control over the darkness that the game will increase exposure for. Basically making things at night easier to see.
  • If you test this when surrounded by very dark terrain it will have a limited effect. But if balanced with normal green grass and yellow sand then it should make things much more visible.
  • We’ve exposed this because different displays can present different levels of darkness - it’s not possible to have a single balance for all displays.
  • The option is found on PC via: [ESC] → Main Menu → Settings → Graphics → Display → Dark Balance
• Improvements to HDR auto-exposure adjustment to better account for darker levels of lighting; will help in some cases that were too dark even though HDR was able to adjust for it, for example in the sanctum.
• Additional refinements to the mesh & voxel lighting consistency to make them much closer. The aim is to make the lighting for the same material mesh objects (for example stone storage) and voxels (for example stone) match.
• Adjusted the bloom algorithm and balance to only bloom bright things. Technically these thresholds shouldn’t be required, but without them the presentation can feel a little blurry. This change attempts to isolate the brighter areas and only bloom these.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue with the synchronisation of attributes (mainly buffs) between the client and server that was causing a client crash.

---

Release 225.3:

• Lava to work as a light-source when held in the player’s hand.
• Shortened localised versions of View Full Release Notes to fit text box.
• Fix for forge sometimes showing the an item from the previously viewed forge in its queue.
• Fix for attributes not being set up correctly on the forge possibly causing client misprediction of the applied boons.
• Fixing goo crop rendering in some tighter sloped environments rendering the crop again inverted 1 block below.
• Fixed not getting XP/progression for harvesting crops after change to allow targeting crops directly for interaction.
• Edited sort to sought in Juicy Starberry Seed description.
• Fixed a server crash caused by using an undo-chisel on grass blocks in certain configurations; these cases will now correctly either remove the long-grass part or convert the grass to soil as appropriate based on the rules for where grass is valid to exist.

[james]

Updated OP with details of 225.1. The main changes were fixing the mesh lighting and introducing direct crop collision meaning that you can harvest crops by targeting them directly rather then the block they’re planted in.

@james

Release 225.1

Crafting + Resources + Equipment:

• Crops can now be targeted directly for harvesting / fertilising / HUD display rather than having to target only the block face the crop is attached to. Hitboxes will correctly account for the sloping shapes of the blocks the crops are attached to splitting/shearing hitboxes.
• Hitboxes for meshes will now account for mesh rotations better.

Bug fixes:

• Fix the tiller tools not accounting for permissions properly.
• Fix entities (player included) getting trapped in the terrain if stood inside liquid being turned into stone due to lava<>liquid reactions. The entity will be pushed out to an adjacent or nearby suitable empty space.
• Fix crops that can be planted on Grass, only being plantable on Grass embedded in Silty Soil, and not Grass embedded in Clay or Peaty Soil too.
• Fixed occasional client crash when standing near another player as they gained or lost a status effect.

[Stretchious]

@james

introducing direct crop collision meaning that you can harvest crops by targeting them directly rather then the block they’re planted in

Oh wow… I went seed hunting this evening and I just thought my aim was getting better (apparently it’s not )

[XaniMatriX]

Brightness/Gamma settings would probably help with night blindness, nyctalopia. Most PC users should be able to change that on their PC, not in game but settings in the graphics driver.

[lucadeltodecso]

gamma is unlikely to be a problem for anyone not using a really old (read, ■■■■) monitor, we are going to be adding a “dark balance” option (not a general brightness option) which will change how much the “eyes” adjust to darkness in the game allowing you to make nights/dark-environments brighter without changing how anything works in bright environments.

[Heureka]

I see the ordinary torches emits very bright white light, should not a more yellow/ red look better?

[lucadeltodecso]

ordinary torch light is color #f2e1bd

[Heureka]

Ok, but to strong for me i think.
I start to replace them with something softer.

[james]

Looking at the torches is on my todo list.

But that brightness will depend on the block it is placed on.

[hAmSTeR86]

If I switch in the options between bloom on and off, it’s like putting glasses on. With bloom off, everything looks wonderfully clear. bloom on is not playable for me for long. Thanks for the option

[Heureka]

Yes, but overall they are to bright and whitish for me.
I got the opposite problem to others here, i can not find dark enough light sources.
I have to try some beams and poles with dark gleams.
Btw, the gemtourches look great now.

Overall the patch is a big jump to better lightning.
The only thing i not so found of is the color of water, think the natural water should be more neutral in color.
In my base on Circarpous i got my little pony turquoise, that sometimes looks a little bit silly.

And the night haze is a bit over saturated too, i think.

Else it looks very good
Happy to see the strange sidelight at night are gone. It is a delight to walk around in the night now. (In the daytime to ofc.)

[catfud]

okay, finally found something that mildly annoys me about this release

“A side-effect change for consistency is that you cannot use Grass-seeds on Grass Blocks that already have long-Grass foliage unless the type and colour are the same”.

used to be able to lay down cheap grass up to stage 3 growth then use my limited supply of exo seed to reach full growth.

I’ll get over it, but it might require a strong cup of tea first…

[Xaldafax]

Has anyone confirmed how LUCK helps or doesn’t help with farming returns? @Stretchious or someone else did you do any tests? Does it help to max luck to maybe get more return of yield or seeds in the process of harvesting? Or is it not related at all? thanks…

[Stretchious]

I don’t think it’s related for grown crops (not 100% sure though). It may affect wild ones though.

[Gorillastomp]

Does affect Wild drops not the farmed crops.

[Xaldafax]

Probably should change your name to EncyclopediaStomp… I figured you probably knew.

[AeneaGames]

Ah sjeesh that sucks big time actually