Testing 204: Atlases++ and Signs++!

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 Community Support category.

The following release notes are not final and should not be considered complete or exhaustive.

Overview:

  • Equipped Atlases will now update a loaded resource map instantly when the world changes.
  • Wood, Metal and Gleam Signs.
  • Mid-game Silver-Gold-Titanium balance pass to create a smoother progression from Iron via alloys to Gem. Please give us feedback on this proposed balance pass whilst its on Testing and before it hits Live. Thanks!

Overview by @Jiivita - Thanks!


Testing 204:

Art + Animation + Assets:

  • Additional Sign types - Wood, Metal, Gleam.
  • Metal and Gleam sign text is emissive.
  • Sign text will automatically switch to lighter if the sign tint is too dark.
  • Signs within a beacon owned by a Gleam Club members can now have coloured text.

Crafting + Resources + Equipment:

  • A button has been added to recipes being crafted, allowing the player to bump the recipe to the top of the queue.
  • Atlases and planets-in-the-sky:
    • Resolve issues with atlases or planets-in-the-sky getting stuck in a black state when background http requests were failing so that the system will always retry until the assets are available.
    • Improve behaviour of resource-drop planet-asset processing so that they are more visually up-to-date when the resource-maps the resource-drop map is built from are in a mixed state of some being cached in the chunk-cache and some requiring updated data published by the game servers… without excessive details, it was previously possible for the resource-drop map to be more out-of-date than it should have been and that is now resolved.
    • Fix a bug where resource-drop map textures were cached with an incorrect timestamp leading to resource-drop maps in the cache being used in preference to new data published by the game servers even when far out-of-date.
    • When equipping an atlas in your hand in first-person view, and that atlas is synced to the current world, the underlying system for planet assets will allow the assets used to be forcibly downloaded again when new data is published by the game-servers automatically in the background, replacing the in-use textures. The planet textures themselves will update once per-hour, whilst resource-drop maps and beacon-maps (when using the warp augment in the atlas) will update every 5 minutes! This should hopefully be more than fast enough so that you will no longer be misled by the atlases and go hunting for resources where they have long been stripped away by other players. To balance the extra bandwidth this produces, the planet-assets for non-equipped-active-world atlases and the planets in the sky will have new data published at a slower interval of 1 day instead; these assets will also continue as before to not update automatically unless evicted from the run-time cache.
    • In addition to the every 5 minutes full-world update of resource-drop maps on active-world-equipped atlases, when equipping resource-drops into the atlas of the active-world, there will now also be a localised 110m radius update of the resource-drop map once every 5 seconds! This means that as resources are mined nearby you will see them be removed from the heat-map at near real-time, and that you can hunt down individual surface-resources seeing them blip out of the heat-map as you go.
    • All planet data has now been moved to be delivered via CDN matching the way chunk data works to reduce bandwidth on our servers in light of the much more frequent publishing of data (the CDN requests data from the server as necessary from client requests, rather than the server pushing data out to universe server the way it worked before).
  • Knowledge:
    • Clicking on an item in the knowledge screen will scroll to the selected item.
    • Items in the knowledge screen now displays the recipes they are used in.
    • Items in the knowledge screen will now display what creatures they drop from.
    • Items in the knowledge screen have improved drop information, displaying the world levels they are available from and drop chance.
    • Tool base stats have been added the knowledge screen.
    • Recipes will now unlock in the knowledge section at certain levels in addition to the current system by which they are unlocked once you gain access to recipes through skills.
  • Balance changes to mid game equipment:
    • Based on community and developer feedback we felt that mid game progression of tools was rather lacking. Reviewing the game’s analytics we saw many players were jumping from Iron tools straight to Gem tools, skipping Gold and Silver and somewhat Titanium Tools.
    • The aim of this balance change is to smooth progression through the metal and alloy tools up to the gem variations.
    • We have heavily increased the output and durability of Silver and Gold equipment so they are clearly better than Iron.
    • Titanium is now closer to Gem Tools, but still lacks any elemental damage.
    • Within Gem tools, we have normalised the range a little, so that Amethyst and Topaz are much more competitive compared to Gem tools like Diamond.
    • No weapon or tool has been nerfed with these changes.
    • Tool attribute changes:
      • Silver Tools:
        • Was 800 Durability now 1200
        • Was 600 Damage now 650
      • Gold Tools:
        • Was 600 Durability now 1100
        • Was 600 Damage now 700
      • Titanium Tools:
        • Was 900 Damage now 1000
      • Amethyst Tools:
        • Was 750 Damage now 1000
        • Was Action Speed 40 now 38
        • Overall roughly 20% increase to Damage per Second
        • Was 2000 Durability now 2400
      • Topaz Tools:
        • Was 800 Damage now 1100
        • Was Action Speed 40 now 38
        • Overall roughly 20% increase Damage per Second
        • Was 2000 Durability now 2400
      • Ruby Tools:
        • Was 1300 Damage now 1400
        • Was 2000 Durability now 2200
      • Sapphire Tools:
        • Was 1200 Damage now 1300
        • Was 2000 Durability now 2200
    • Slingbow attribute changes:
      • Silver Alloy Slingbow:
        • Was 800 Durability now 1000
      • Gold Alloy Slingbow:
        • Was 600 Durability now 950
      • Titanium Alloy Slingbow:
        • Was 750 Damage now 800
      • Amethyst Slingbow:
        • Was 600 Damage now 650
        • Was 1500 Durability now 2000
      • Topaz Slingbow:
        • Was 600 Damage now 650
        • Was 1500 Durability now 2000
      • Ruby Slingbow:
        • Was 1500 Durability now 1800
      • Sapphire Slingbow:
        • Was 1500 Durability now 1800
    • Bomb attribute changes:
      • Silver Alloy Bag Of Bombs:
        • Was 1200 Damage now 1350
      • Titanium Alloy Bag Of Bombs:
        • Was 1600 Damage now 2000
    • Grapple attribute changes:
      • Silver Alloy Grapple:
        • Was 500 Durability now 1000
        • Was 15 Max Length now 18
      • Gold Alloy Grapple:
        • Was 800 Durability now 1000
      • Titanium Alloy Grapple:
        • Was 1000 Durability now 1500
    • Spanner attribute changes:
      • Silver Alloy Spanner:
        • Was 800 Durability now 1100
      • Gold Alloy Spanner:
        • Was 600 Durability now 1000

Creatures + Combat + Characters:

  • Character screen now displays information concerning active status effects.
  • Character animation in 3rd person now plays the correct hand grip shape when re-equipping a grapple. Before it wasn’t holding the grapple correctly.

Sanctum + Tutorial + Objectives + Progression:

  • Objectives now display all tasks required to complete in the journal.
  • Crafting skill tool tips will now display the recipes that will be unlocked by taking the skill.

GUI + HUD:

  • The Beacon GUI now contains all the information also available in the Places GUI.
  • The Atlas hover tool tip now displays the world name.
  • Added default controls for GUI next/previous tab (“A” and “D”) and next/previous filter (“Z” and “C”) on PC.
  • Changed backpack radial back to green.

SFX + Music:

  • Deciduous biome ambient improvements.

Engine:

  • Added a new option in the Support menu for submitting game logs directly in game, this allows both PC and PlayStation 4 users an easy way to submit a game log and additional comments to help us diagnose issues. No more searching for details on the forum.
  • Optimisation of chunk destruction.
  • Fix chunks being requested more than once in some cases if a portal closes and quickly reopens.
  • Added a memory graph to the debugging menu.
  • Increased the PlayStation 4 chunk cache to reduce download bandwidth.

Bug fixes:

  • Fix an issue at the top of the world, where the beacon plot remover could cause a server crash if the beacon had a plot reserved at the bottom of the world as well.
  • Fix elemental colouring on non elemental worlds.
  • Fix elemental creature spawning on starter worlds.
  • Fix for “Illegal Protocol Message” error when pressing holster tools (d-pad down or z) with nothing equipped if nothing had ever been equipped.
  • Fix for back button not working on the world screen for new characters.
  • Fix for names sometimes appearing above dead creatures heads.
  • Fix for pressing the N key displaying an alternative camera view for a split second.
  • Fix for rare crash when other players were using grapples.
  • Fix for server crash when plotting beacons.
  • Fix for tooltips not working on the sign up screen.
  • Fix in the places->beacons screen on remote worlds where a beacon would display the wrong fuel time if the mayor is currently a Gleam Club member.
  • Fix spooky seed resource drops being displayed in the world resource list tab outside of Halloween.
  • Fix surround sound audio sounding incorrectly located for player generated audio (e.g. your footsteps) in first person mode.
  • Fix the server auto shutting down after a long up time when many entities are created.
  • Fix to Feats text. They no longer say “Basic”, this was a hangover from a design for an older Feats system no longer intended.
  • Fix to Healing Bombs causing knock-back and being a cause of griefing. The Healing Boon will now set knock-back to 0.
  • Fix to placed resource blocks giving XP again if re-dug up.
  • Fixed a bug that would sometimes not update the item move tool tip when using a d-pad (so it would incorrectly display INVALID ITEM since the slot it was previously on was invalid).
  • Fixed an issue where Wear was missing from crafting recipes.
  • Fixed another issue (hopefully the final one) that could cause client crashes in very particular circumstances involving moving quickly or through portal transitions to an overlapping broadcast area, whilst an entity also moved over specific world boundaries, that would cause that entity to be added and removed multiple times across successive frames, during large system lag spikes on the client that caused it all to resolve in the same client frame… This was an underlying cause of the 3 most common client crashes over the last few releases!
  • Fixed bug with forged items with infinity durability.
  • Fixed crafting timers displaying “instant” instead of 0 when crafting completes.
  • Fixed GPU crash on PlayStation 4 which could occur if you lost connection to PSN if you had your inventory open and it had atlases in it
  • Fixed grapple reel-in not working after being revived.
  • Fixed grouped drop block names in the knowledge. Example: we used to display “Ancient Wood Trunk” instead of displaying just “Trunks” as a source for bark.
  • Fixed issue where signs would no longer smart stack above 100.
  • Fixing crash on the machine screen when the help panel is displayed.
  • Fixing crashes in the skill tree screen.
  • Fixing errors in the information of some item description messages.
  • Fixing forge inconsistencies when selecting random traits.
  • Fixing the bug about the expanded beacon option closing by itself on Warp Conduit GUI.

Seasonal event:

The following items were in the previous release but not announced to leave something for players to discover.

  • Halloween seasonal event:
    • Created a timed event to celebrate Halloween.
    • The event will run between 25th Oct to 1st Nov.
    • Spooky Seeds will only drop during the event period. After the event is finished the seeds will stop dropping.
    • Added seasonal props crafted from the Spooky Seeds: Spooky Skull and Spooky Pumpkin Lantern. These can be crafted beyond the event duration.
    • Added seasonal Gourd mask. The mask is only available during the event.
    • Around the day of Halloween look out for some seasonal night time lighting: blood red moon and spooky orange mist.

Testing 204.1:

  • Fixed the world resource list showing “0.00%”. “<0.01%” will now be displayed.
  • Added anisotropic filtering to GUI textures. This helps reduce aliasing on oblique polygons, such as signs viewed at an angle.

Testing 204.2:

  • Added precious alloy sign recipes.
  • Added new sign names.
  • Increased the PlayStation 4 chunk cache to reduce download bandwidth.
  • Fix for occasional perpetual debuffs VFX reported when reviving. Guarded against being stuck with a constantly re-applying resurrection cooldown status effect.
  • Fix for chunk cache shrinking too much when full.

This version will be published to Live shortly.

56 Likes

first! awsome signs! too bad the compass directions is not fixed yet @james :slight_smile:

6 Likes

Quick question- would it be possible to remove resources that are impossible to mine due to beacons, from the atlas?

8 Likes

Awesome changes guys! Especially excited about the Siver/Gold Slingbows, don’t ask why, but they are my favourite! :smiley:

1 Like

Yes, looking for that Compass cardinal direction fix myself. Maybe next time?

1 Like

Some juicy stuff here.

3 Likes

It seems like you’ve all been very busy! This all looks excellent, really great job. Very much looking forward to the future of this game!

2 Likes

AAAH!

AAAH!

AAAH!

AAAAAAAAHHAHAHAHA

AAAH!

AAHAHAHAHASFDASFLKAJDS:LFKJAKL:DFJ :LAJSDF

Very good update, yo.

20 Likes

I had zero idea this existed!

Will get on and check stuff out, cheers.

Edit: At last! It’s back! :slight_smile:

Items in the knowledge screen now displays the recipes they are used in.

3 Likes

Well in theory, if someone has beaconed some resources, you’d expect them to mine them…and they won’t regen inside a beacon.
If that’s what you mean, I could be wrong if it’s not :smiley:

I think I’m more excited for the sign upgrades than anything else.

I’m such a dork.

6 Likes

Thanks for fixing my infinite durability bug. It’s not really my bug, per se, but I claimed it nevertheless. I’ll check it out later on the testing server to see how it works now.

Btw, this could be construed as a “nerf” in a sense… JK!

3 Likes

Omg yessss. Awesome list of bugs fixes, Signs =amazing, balance on metal=awesome. everything a huge thumbs up!

3 Likes

One of those bugs you’d be happy to find. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Another great update! Listening to the community, staying true to the game and making things better and better :slight_smile: so exciting! Thanks guys!~`

3 Likes

Wow. You guys are on it lol. Lots of good stuff here. You even added small stuff the community suggested (being able to move a craft up in the que). i’m especially hype about the buff to alloy tools :clap: very nice.

Oh yes and new signs right before i made new ones :joy:. Procrastination pays off sometimes

6 Likes

@james I just thought of a good question. What about the existing healing bombs that have knockback on them, will the update take the K.B. off?

1 Like

Nice, I hope no animals are harmed during testing.

2 Likes

Unfortunately it’s not the case. There are many large areas that contain resources that can’t be mined.