Testing 191: Balance, Fixes and Polish!

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.

Release Notes:

  • Crafting + Resources + Equipment:

    • Allow blocks to placed where a creature has died as long as the client placing the block has collected drops from the creature (for other people watching who have not yet collected the drops, the creature will be forced to move out of the way the way block drops already do when placing blocks).
    • Standalone sign pieces (the smaller, non-combining ones) will now act like torches, and longer remain in place when the block they were placed on-to is removed.
    • Open portal conduits now count towards a beacon’s prestige.
    • Crafting can now preserve input items (for example buckets of water are now outputted as empty buckets).
    • Fix for crafting input items, output items and spark being lost if the machine output inventory is full.
    • Equipment wear:
      • Tools now only take wear damage if they impact something.
      • Spanners now only take wear damage if they do any amount of repairing.
      • Buckets now take wear damage each time they are used as a crafting input.
    • Fix an issue that would cause 2 blocks to be placed for one mouse click at high block placement speeds.
    • Another fix for portals that wont close when one side of the portal has somehow become dormant.
    • Fix for grapples staying connected (to mid air) when looting creatures.
    • Fix for crafting elemental shielding recipes using furnace if they require more than two ingredients.
    • Beacon footfall is now affected by and additional two factors:
      • The prestige of the beacon itself in addition to settlement prestige. The settlement prestige sets the maximum potential footfall you can receive. The footfall you receive scales with your beacon prestige. After a threshold prestige you gain the full reward. Currently this threshold is 5000. This is designed to ensure players have to build something to gain footfall.
      • You will receive less footfall the longer you are away from your beacon. We allow 7 days in which your reward will not be reduced. After this time the footfall reward will reduce daily linearly. Your beacon will be classed as visited if you have entered the beacon or the settlement it is in.
    • Recipe Balance Pass:
      • Spark and Power:
        • Reviewed and tweaked spark costs for all recipes.
        • Reviewed and tweaked power costs for all recipes.
        • Rounded Spark costs to make calculations easier.
      • Brews:
        • Reduced some input requirements and doubled output for brews to make them more affordable.
        • Added missing oil input to luminous brews.
        • Increased effects of all healing brews.
        • Increased effects of all recovery brews.
      • Food:
        • Rebalanced food energy recovered to make sure cooking higher level foods is more worthwhile.
        • Fixed the elemental shielding food recipes.
      • Augments:
        • Reduced input requirements for level 1 and 2 augments to make them more affordable.
        • Increased the input requirements for level 3 augments, and made them more powerful.
      • Engines:
        • Made advanced engines more expensive so that instead of being a cheaper way to get additional power, they are used to unlock higher level recipes and get better efficiency out of the machines at the high end.
      • Furnaces:
        • Added flint as an ingredient of furnace bases and crucibles.
        • Made the iron furnace take half the time and half the fuel of the stone furnace, and the titanium furnace take half the time and half the fuel of the iron furnace.
        • Gave each furnace recipe a value for how much fuel it needs rather than a flat cost for everything.
        • Increased some higher end furnace recipe times to take into account the faster furnaces.
        • Rebalanced fuel values to make higher level and compacted fuels more worthwhile.
      • Drops:
        • Increased the drop chance of orbs from surface resources.
        • Decreased the drop chance of flint, opal and rock salt from surface resources and rocks.
        • Increased the number of drops and drop chance from rarer surface resources.
      • Wear:
        • Rebalanced the amount of durability that each machine and engine has to be lower for the early game and higher for the later game.
        • Rebalanced the amount of durability that spanners fix to give more contrast between the different materials.
        • Rebalanced the amount of durability removed by recipes to be higher for longer duration recipes.
        • Made Engines, which always have more durability, wear down over the same amount of time as the machine they are attached to.
        • Removed the need to use the right type of spanner on engines. All spanners work, but the matching gem type spanner is more effective.
      • Misc Recipes:
        • Rebalanced Fresh Vital Essence recipes from creature drops.
        • Reduced the copper needed to make copper weapons and tools.
        • Reduced the input requirements for Starberry pie.
        • Reduced input requirements for glue.
        • Added missing Fresh Vital Essence recipe for Wildstock Trophy
      • Misc Other
        • Increased the drop rate of seeds from grass, and made Luck have an effect of the chance of dropping.
        • Increased the max stack size to 100 from 99.
  • Creatures + Combat + Characters:

    • Creature projectiles (that are not homing projectiles) will feel the full force of gravity once touching water so that spitter projectiles shot from within the water will not just continue moving in a straight line slowly once they leave the water…
    • Fix for charging slingbows not charging if the mouse is clicked before the previous fire action is complete.
    • Removed knock-back from player healing and cleansing bombs.
    • Fix for still playing fuse audio when the player started throwing a bomb but changed items before throwing it.
    • Fix for fuse burn showing on bombs after the player started throwing a bomb but changed items before throwing it.
    • Fix ruby slingbow bolts turning backwards when fired in water.
    • Fix for bombs not showing damage/healing numbers if they explode more than a second after being thrown.
    • Fix for all status effect damage/healing (poison or drowning damage) being shown for other entities.
    • Fix for bomb damage to creatures not displaying if the player is looking at a damaged block.
    • Fix for damage not showing on creatures as they die.
    • Fix grapple reel-in not working after being revived.
    • Fixing various issues with creature animations and rotations with respect to beam and projectile attacks across varying latencies to the server:
      • Fixing projectiles to always come out of the “mouth” of the creature correctly between normal and lobbed shots.
      • Fixing the beam to allows come exactly out of the “mouth” of the cuttletrunk also.
      • Fixing the projectiles to always fire (ignoring pitch) exactly along the direction that the creature is facing, so projectiles will never shoot out from behind/the side of the creatures.
      • Fixing the beam to always be firing exactly in the direction the cuttletrunk is facing.
      • Fixing an issue where projectiles and beams could fire from “mid-air” when the creatures moved too quickly after finishing the attack.
      • Fixing an issue with the animation rates not being applied correctly in all cases for the clients animation of the creatures for various attack, and many issues to do with synchronisation of the animations with the attacks client-side or animations being finished too quickly during projectile attacks.
      • Fixing issues with ribbons from projectiles often rendering suddenly back all the way to the creature when the projectile is destroyed.
      • Fix issues with rapid-fire attacks from spitters that shoot projectiles one after another in an arc, so that the creature visually rotates for each of the distinct shots.
      • Prediction of damage from creature attacks fixed (not sure when broken…)
    • Augment loading improvements.
      • Smart stacks of augments can now be dragged onto a slingbow/totem. The first augment in the stack will be loaded as if you had dragged it directly.
      • Augments held in your hand can be loaded into the slingbow/totem in your other hand by using them.
  • Sanctum + Tutorial + Objectives + Progression:

    • Feats around travelling through portals have been disabled as players were using slides to grind them. New feats will be added at a later date.
    • Fixed not being able to warp to the temporary home you get during the tutorial before you place your first campfire.
    • Moved Core objectives to the top of the Journal.
    • Added an objective in the tutorial to teach players about consuming food to restore stamina.
  • GUI + HUD:

    • Added a wear bar that replaces the health bar of machines, furnace, spark core and forge power coil blocks if they are on full heath.
    • Fix for character briefly adopts first-person pose when opening a GUI menu just after exiting the Sanctum.
    • Fix for occasional client crash when opening a GUI menu just after exiting the Sanctum.
    • Fix for occasionally showing massive stamina numbers after walking through a portal.
    • Fixed details in places GUI for temporary home locations.
    • Fix an issue that could cause inputs to sometimes get stuck when moving from error screens / loading screens to the main game view.
    • Removing the ALL filter from the Journal and it now defaults to available.
    • The Beacon Console screen will now give a proper reason for why there is no settlement, rather than assuming it is due to lack of prestige. In addition the settlement algorithm has been adjusted to require a chunk to have a certain number of plots rather than a certain number of plot columns which caused towers to be biased against treating them as roads. There is likely to be further iteration here in future, but this should improve the feel for players.
    • All dialog windows now use a dynamic layout ready for changing text sizes with localisation.
    • Removed the trade complete dialog (the next screen now has trade status “Completed” instead).
    • Various clean up of the trading screen.
    • Fixes for incorrect spacing on some GUI screens.
    • Added support for the delete key in text boxes.
    • Improved the movement key input in text boxes.
    • Fix for showing ingredient recipes in the knowledge screen.
    • Fix for missing beacon fuel text.
    • Smart stacks are now accessible in shops.
    • Parental controls have been added, these setting include:
      • Added an optional prototype profanity filter. Filter can be disabled in the options.
      • Option to limit if a player can see all, friend only, or no in game chat.
      • Option to limit if a player can see all, friend only, or no names and sign text.
      • Option to limit if a player can add friends.
      • Option to limit if a player can trade.
    • Added a new report screen for reporting other players or locations:
      • In the game menu to report players, beacons, locations and other issues.
      • The report player dialog will autofill character name with the last player you looked at (it can still be edited).
      • The chat report button now uses the new report dialog.
      • All dialogs have an optional additional details to fill in.
      • Players and signs can now be reported by interacting with them.
  • SFX + Music:

    • Added elemental slingbow and charging effects.
    • Lowered the grappling volume.
    • Additional item sounds.
    • Make first person running footsteps faster than walking.
  • Engine:

    • Updated network connection initialisation to avoid a potential stall when a user has poor responses from name servers.
    • In cases where the client is unable to spawn correctly through a portal or warp (The only times this can really happen is with a flat portal where there is no space available on the other side to be able to stand), the client will now be kicked and sent back to the source side of the portal via the sanctum, instead of allowing the spawn to jump somewhere else… eg into lava or possibly very far away.
    • Fix a case where the world nearby would not load a quickly as it should.
    • Fix lava looking inconstant across different level of detail.
    • Optimisations:
      • Improve performance when many other players are around.
      • Improve performance around machines.
      • Avoid rendering reflections when water is not actually visible.
      • Added a dynamic occlusion system. Mainly helps around build up areas, usually > 10%, sometimes significantly more.
      • Decreased server to client network load by only sending damage data required by the client.
      • Decreased server to client network load by only sending region and settlement data when they change.
      • Decreased server to client network load by not sending entity hitboxes or scales.
      • Improve performance when there are many campfires/beacons in view for their particle systems to be shared.
  • Server:

    • Universe server re-written in C++ for much better scalability and ability to optimise even further in future.
  • World Builder:

    • Fixed an issue in the world builder when manipulating a prefab that is connected to the root of the graph that would cause the client to teleport into the middle and get stuck unable to move.
    • Fixing cross-platform issues in world builder, all folders/file paths within the config folder must now be lowercase, and a migration that will run the first time you open a file will ensure this including moving files/folders within the config folder on your computer, so be warned! from now on, the worldbuilder will not allow you to save files unless the path within the config folder is only lowercase.
    • Improve the way gradients work in the world builder to prevent areas on the side of extremely steep cliffs being classified as low-gradient.
    • Fix an issue in world builder computing the smoothed depths of surface elements which will have a minor effect on instance spawns that limited themselves to certain depths (depths were over-estimated somewhat before this fix)

Resolved Known Issues:

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

  • ‘Supply & Demand’ Trader feats are not working.
  • Friends list is not sorted into alphabetical order.
  • Grapple tools not working correctly when winding grapple up or down after grappling block drops.
  • 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.
  • Left hand sometimes constantly triggers input when inside the sanctum.
  • Minus/negative XP may sometimes appear on screen.
  • Natural crystal base doesn’t have a mesh and can stick out from storage.
  • Other players sometimes appear to not be have any items in their hands.
  • Request Baskets may indicate that there is not enough coin when the total value of sale is just less then the Request Basket Budget due to tax.
  • Shift-clicking any inventory item on the Furnace GUI when ingredient slots are full will cause that item to disappear. To retrieve that item, break the Furnace.
  • Signs float after destroying blocks they have been placed on, although only the modular signs should fall in this instance.
  • Sometimes it’s not possible to return to the sanctum after losing all health.
  • Speech bubbles may still be displayed above players after going through portals.
  • Terrain Detail on lava is inconsistent depending on the setting used.
43 Likes

Wow. Y’all are dedicated, dropping an update at midnight.

9 Likes

Awesome, thank you devs for all that you do!

7 Likes

Wow, ton of awesome fixes and tweaks in this one!

7 Likes

I could be eloquent with my praise, or I could just do this.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! <3

Thank you, developers.

10 Likes

It’s been a long time since I tried Testing. How does one access the testing servers again?

1 Like

nice and… nice; little details do make ones experience sometime:sunglasses:

4 Likes

I think this is the way

Thank you!

Testing doesn’t affect anything at all in the main game, correct?

You get to play updates, such as this one, sooner. But you’re also more prone to crashes and other bugs. That’s about it.

It’s a separate server though, right? Anything you do in Testing is just for testing purposes and doesn’t affect your main game and things you gain in it, no?

Its a separate server. Nothing change on live server.

1 Like

Thanks for the colored arrow :slight_smile:

20180425032937_1

12 Likes

Is the forge available to try out on the testing server?

I still have so much to read and I am super happy already!!!

Oh yeah! :smiley: No more stucking

2 Likes

no forge - no new big features - this is just balancing and polishing of existing content

1 Like

This is an awesome update. Thanks devs :heart_eyes:

4 Likes

?!!!

What are you talking about? This is amazing!
Not to mention…

8 Likes