Testing 171: Multiple Characters and Compass Update!

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This update is accessible via the “Testing” release of Boundless on Steam.

Please report all issues discovered with the update to this support thread.

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.

Overview:

Initial support for Multiple Characters or Alts. Be careful deleting your characters as the beacons will be instantly removed and anything left behind can be claimed by active players or regen.

Important:

Testing is for testing, Live is for playing. The Testing worlds will be reset without warning. We will often copy worlds from Live onto Testing to test against real world data.

Release Notes:

  • Crafting + Resources + Equipment:
    • Can equip specific items from within a Smart Stack.
    • Moving held items in backpack should leave them still held.
  • Creatures + Combat + Characters:
    • Creature names now display their level and if they are elemental.
    • Elemental creatures now spawn, with different meshes, and applying status effects when they attack.
    • Fixed the selection of meshes for creatures.
    • Large refactor of the server and client to support users having multiple characters, gui to enable this functionality coming soon. This change required a reset of the testing universe (updated to a new snapshot of the live us east servers), it will not however require a reset on the live universe when promoted to live.
    • Rebalanced creature variants that are spawned on each world to show more interesting variation.
  • Sanctum + Tutorial + Objectives + Progression:
    • Exploration: Light Source skill now produces a continuous dull light around the player. Be warned that it currently can’t be disabled without unlearning the skill.
    • For every 500000 xp earned beyond level 50 players will be awarded an extra 40 beacon plots. This can be repeated infinitely.
    • Swapped endurance and abilities skill groups around.
    • XP rewards for machine crafting are given to the person who started the crafting (previously all crafting rewards went to the beacon owner)
  • GUI + HUD:
    • Improvements on the hud’s compass:
      • Adding new compass entries: portals and settlements.
      • Removing beacon entries.
      • Improved the visualisation of enemy entries.
      • Changed the compass entries scaling based on distance.
    • Initial GUI for multiple character support.
  • Bug fixes:
    • Fixed crash walking out of the sanctum to a location at the top of the world.
    • Fixed a rendering issues in the sanctum where sometimes the portal would only show the sky depending on where it exits into the world.
    • Fixed an issue where you could overextend a grapple by running along the ground, and also now allow you to reel yourself in much more easily when standing on the ground without needing to jump into the air first. Running along the ground will still allow you to reel-out the grapple though, only that you will eventually hit the max length before being forced to stop.

Resolved Known Issues:

The following items were known issues in previous releases and have now been resolved.

  • Beacons which are greater than 100 metres from the centre may not function correctly.
  • Placing an item into the Crafting Table will somehow miss the intended slot and will drop instead.
  • Some creatures may disappear instantly and drop items before their bodies hit the ground.
  • World Builder currently does not work on Mac.

Known Issues:

The following items are known issues in this release.

  • [new] Choosing Return to Sanctum option briefly displays ‘wrap error’ text on screen.
  • [new] Clicking the Craft button very quickly may close the active recipe.
  • [new] If the Furnace does not have enough fuel, the game will state that basic crafting recipes are missing.
  • [new] Number of available feats is incorrect.
  • [new] Portal UI text overflows when the portal token name is very long.
  • [new] Region names may not be displayed correctly after discovering one.
  • [new] When Beacon fuel is nearly full, adding extra fuel will display a message saying that there are no consumable fuel items.
  • [new] When expanding a smart stack offered by another player during trading, it will be empty.
  • Breaking the Campfire during the initial tutorial will reset some objectives and display the ‘Build a Temporary Campfire’ objective again.
  • Cannot close Inventory when Chat is used.
  • Changing the Chunk Cache Size in fullscreen mode will disable game functionality.
  • Entity rendering will not always work correctly when there are multiple warps very close together, or where a warp opens up to a location very near where the entrance is.
  • Game displays welcome message for a world through a portal without going through it.
  • GUI rendered incorrectly on Intel HD graphics (and some AMD / GTX laptop GPUs) on Windows.
  • If the game (loader) fails to start on Windows 7 and 8 you may need to install https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2999226/update-for-universal-c-runtime-in-windows
  • If you spend a skill point before the tutorial asks you to, you will be required to unlearn and relearn the skill again.
  • Illegal protocol message sometimes appears after going through a portal.
  • Item placed into Request Basket will disappear when placing the same item into storage.
  • Item wanted is completely different to what was placed there before on the Request Basket.
  • Items will occasionally be unable to smart stack with other items that belong in the same smart stack category.
  • Menus may constantly reappear on screen after closing them.
  • Objectives & Feats - Some tasks are not being tracked correctly.
  • Opening or closing doors and trapdoors when standing too close to them will restrict player movement. To get out of the situation, interact with the door or trapdoor again.
  • Request Baskets (previously Buying plinths) that had wanted items set before v151 have unset them. Sorry. Going forward they will be fine.
  • Skill descriptions are not final.
  • Some feats are not shown on the GUI
  • 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.
  • Speech bubbles may still be displayed above players after going through portals.
  • The recipes are not final.
  • Using D3DGear http://www.d3dgear.com/ crashes the game on start up.
  • Z-fighting with some items (workbench and other machines) when placed underwater.

Testing 171.1:

  • Crafting + Resources + Equipment:
    • Rebalanced slingbows
      • Added multishot variants.
      • Removed cooldown to make repeaters better.
      • Changed gravity effects for different types.
      • Balanced damage, and speeds etc.
      • Tweaked names.
    • Removed gravity from grapples.
  • Creatures + Combat + Characters:
    • Higher level wildstock have a random chance of being aggressive.
    • Made high level hoppers be smaller.
    • Rebalanced creature health and damage.
    • Wildstock charge now only does repeated damage after half a second.
    • Creature Threat
      • The creature threat system has been overhauled.
      • Creatures now detect players that are a certain range from them in all directions and act aggressive towards the player for a period of time before they start attacking.
      • Players need to run away from the creature when it is in threatening mode if they want to avoid combat.
      • Creatures now detect players if they use any projectile weapon near the creature.
      • Certain creatures will start attacking players if they are too close to the creature.
      • Certain creatures will not attack the player unless they are attacked first.
      • Certain creatures will flee from the player is they are too close.
    • Creature Aggro
      • The creature targeting system has been overhauled.
      • Players now accumulate aggro by performing certain actions like: hitting a creature or healing a player.
      • Creatures will now attack the nearest player with the highest current aggro rating.
      • A player’s current aggro is decreased the further away they are from the creature.
      • Aggro decreases over time if a player is outside of combat for certain period of time.
    • Wildstock combat behaviour has been adjusted
      • Hit range for a Wildstock charge has been widened from 0.5 to 1.8.
      • The number of Wildstock charges in a row with a break has been reduced from 3 to 1.
      • The speed of the Wildstock charge has been increased from 6 m/s to 12 m/s.
      • The range of the Wildstock charge has been widened from 10 meters to 15 meters.
  • Sanctum + Tutorial + Objectives + Progression:
    • Rebalanced tool damage to make progression feel more pacy, and mining feel less grindy.
    • Fixed the application of mastery to action time.
    • Taken out the bonus for having more mastery than needed.
    • Updated skill text to explain what recipes are in each recipe pack, as well as saying which features are not yet implemented.
  • GUI + HUD:
    • Updated the debug screen:
      • Removed the debug screen from the DOT key. This now uses F1 and brings up a debug menu bar at the top of your window.
      • Press F1 again or click on the close option to go back to playing the game.
      • Added a latency graph showing the clients current server network latency.
      • Added a frame time graph for debugging long frames.
      • Added a debug information window with all of the old debug information.
      • Added a “Copy Debug Information” menu option which copies all debug information.
  • SFX + Music:
    • New audio events in the GUI.
12 Likes
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Really looking forward to giving this a try tonight!

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You forgot to mention that wildstocks aren’t aggressive anymore! Woo! And the level 1 wildstocks are really cute :smile:. This multiple character support is also great! I really enjoy the feeling of puniness and the faster progression on lower levels.

By the way, do campfires consume 2 plots by design? I just noticed it now because if not, I will raise this as a bug.

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Campfire are two plots yes. They ‘consume’ and reserve two plots.

2 Likes
5

The next testing update will not happen until early next week, maybe Monday or Tuesday.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Testing 171 - Report issues here

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I did get assaulted twice already, so I don’t think wildstocks aren’t agressive…

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They will attack if you shoot near them.

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I haven’t swung or shot anything yet, I’m trying to find my home (which I might have forgotten to fuel)

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Actually, that’s not entirely true, as a wrote the last message a spitter started attacking me, so I took care of that. But before that…

…but then again, upon examining their behaviour they are semi-aggressive. If you stay too close for too long they’ll aggro. The first time I got attacked I was actually close to one for a while, but the second time, I was just running around, or so I precieved it.

While I could have been unlucky and didn’t notice the wildstock the second time, the first occurance is the AI working as intended?

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Updated original post with details of Testing 171.1 release.

7 Likes
12

The slingbow and creature update will be a welcome change to testing! It will be 8 hours until I can get online to give proper feedback, but so far that was my biggest gripe

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Just testing out the new patch’s mining and I’m still not feeling the joy here. I’ll likely be mining on starter planets only to be efficient after this - and still using Copper as my most efficient tool :frowning:

For this rebalance to work I need to be able to farm just as effectively on Munteen with the gem tools and max skills as I could before the patch. With this balance change farming 2 soft coal with a Copper Hammer on Solum will be faster than farming 2 soft coal with a Diamond Hammer on Vulpto. The absolute only reason any person will have to farm on Vulpto will be for rubies (and even then their price should at least double to compensate for the much less efficient use of time). Gem tools also have much less relative power now than before the patch as they end up not doubling efficiency vs copper as they used to (due to the relative strength on planets factoring in). Am I missing something here? Why would I @ level 50 want to farm on Vulpto instead of Solum?

Stats on right click:
Copper Hammer (400 damage)
Iron Hammer (700 damage)
Diamond Hammer (650 damage)
My skills are maxed (max power, max hammer mastery, all attribute bonus maxed, max agility for crit)

Solum Rock:
Copper Hammer - 2 hits
Iron Hammer - 1-2 hits
Diamond Hammer - 1-2 hits

Solum Ore:
Copper Hammer - 4 hits
Iron Hammer - 3 hits
Diamond Hammer - 2-3 hits

Epsilo Rock:
Copper Hammer - 3 hits
Iron Hammer - 2 hits
Diamond Hammer - 2 hits

Epsilo Ores:
Copper Hammer - 6 hits
Iron Hammer - 4 hits
Diamond Hammer - 3 hits

Vulpto Rocks:
Copper Hammer - 4 hits
Iron Hammer - 2 to 3 hits
Diamond Hammer - 2 hits

Vulpto Ores:
Copper Hammer - 8 hits
Iron Hammer - 4 hits
Diamond Hammer - 4-5 hits

2 Likes
14

Well, and red stuff.

1 Like
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Um… well, I can think of a few other reasons why players would want to farm on Vulpto …

  1. Vulpto blocks are classed as “exotic”, and y’know, they’re a completely different colour to the blocks on Solum.

  2. There’s absolutely no reason why harder blocks need to have the same XP as easy ones…! Harder worlds may well grant more XP than starter worlds.

  3. Harder planets should also hold more exotic fuels like medium & hard coal.

  4. As for other metals… The plan was to have resource distribution tweakable per planet, so I’m guessing that there will a tweak to allow resources to be clustered into slightly bigger seams than on starter worlds, so mining them will be more lucrative - less searching more mining.

  5. Harder creatures, more XP, better drops … Oortstone.

  6. Blink, Rift and Oortstone seams are also yet to make an appearance… I can’t see them being obtainable on starter worlds.

  7. Prestige hunters may also want to carve out a capital city for themselves on a harsher world (as I’d imagine control of the starter planets will already be pretty hard fought for!).

5 Likes
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So here’s a question, and I mean this in all seriousness: If you aren’t after any Vulpto-specific materials (or other benefits as listed by @Stretchious), should you want to farm on Vulpto instead of Solum?

More fundamentally, and this one is for the devs (holla @james @luke-turbulenz @olliepurkiss) what role are high-level worlds meant to play? Right now (on Live) there’s not terribly much difference between Solum and Vulpto in terms of gameplay. But perhaps the intent is to make Vulpto an inhospitable pit of red stormy death with occasional rubies – I personally think that would be pretty cool – and not a place for happy farming or settling without any struggle.

2 Likes
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Dangerous creatures with drops not found on easier worlds
Rarer ores and drops not found on easier worlds
Atmospheres that poison and make things more challenging
Biomes and cave formations you won’t find on easier worlds

2 Likes
18

I don’t feel like I’m getting my message through.

With the current implementation on testing, the incentive to farm on starter worlds (200% increased farm speed vs ring worlds) will be so large that you will see a radical shift in where players spend the vast majority of their farming time to the starter planets.

If this is your intention, fine. I just find it a very odd choice since most of your players will figure this out quickly and ignore higher level planets in favor of 2x loot on starter planets. I believe this will be good in the short term as it will consolidate the player base a bit, but it will inevitably hurt the game a lot. You will see even more complaints and bad reviews arise from this move as players discover that the progression they crave is not there and they could just stick to the starter planets and be better off.

Anyway, I’ve said my piece and won’t bring this up again. Just a very odd and disappointing move IMO :cry:

3 Likes
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Naw dude KEEP BRINGING this up this is my worry as well we must keep talking about this so that this game can survive past alpha and such

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Nah, I only asked out of curiosity, really! I don’t do much farming myself, so I don’t have any sense of what makes “farming progression” good.

From an explorer/builder standpoint, I’d still go to Vulpto because I want the different colors. If it had a toxic atmosphere I’d be even more likely to build there, just to see if I could…

Also caveat: I haven’t played on testing since this balancing update!

1 Like