Testing 224: Farming! (continued)

Vurtadelic · July 3, 2019, 3:47pm

Ahhh, I was hoping for it to go live this week

fidach · July 3, 2019, 4:49pm

Me too, but looks as though it will go in to its 4th week of testing!

james · July 3, 2019, 7:26pm

Testing is available - release notes to follow.

Stretchious · July 3, 2019, 7:28pm

I’m already there 5 minutes ago

… Oh, and I really like the changes to the crops!

KalisaFox · July 3, 2019, 7:44pm

James would it be possible to give us another permission option to beacons to allow fluids to pass between beacons with them both set up to allow it?
So I would go to my main beacon on my main character, there would be another permission tab on the options for characters, so i can select my alt and enable fluid pass through to their beacon, then log onto my alt, go to their main beacon, and do the same, allowing my main characters fluid pass through for this beacon?

Not great at explaining it, but i hope this made sense

C0ND1T10NR3D · July 3, 2019, 7:48pm

The reason it cannot be done has been explained already. But, if you make the beacons guild controlled, it can be done.

james:

Same account but owned by different characters is not part of the permission system. Alts don’t automatically get permissions. They’re given.

The issue is that fluids flow. And a flowing fluid doesn’t really know who placed it, or who unblocked it, or who opened the door that allowed it to flow. Should the player who caused this action even be able to allow fluids to pass between 2 beacons??

Ok - so it’s more about the 2 beacons themselves and not whoever triggered the flow.

So do we need to check that the character who owns the source beacon would have been able to place fluids in the target beacon?

But then it could become an inherited permission - where the beacon owner could do this - but then someone else is causing it.

I obviously understand why you want it - but in the nitty-gritty it’s a little bit more complicated.

Especially with Lava we wanted to make sure that it was a safety first solution.

james · July 3, 2019, 9:17pm

Updated OP with details of Testing 224.8. Mainly including details of a large client lighting update to make server-side farming lighting and client-side visual lighting match identically. We’ve also make it respect doors and turbo charged it - so that world meshing does feel faster especially on lava worlds which have huge numbers of lights (from the lava). (And all the bling-bling gleam tastic builds!)

james:

Testing 224.8:

Crafting + Resources + Equipment:

Hand Tiller will now harvest crops and remove grass before tilling.

Withered prestige crops drop seeds.

Experimental balance pass to yam and starberry crops so that:

they can be conditioned to increase seed or crop yield, and

the seed yield can be increase to = 1, and even > 1 with the right configuration.

GUI + HUD:

Goo and Decorative Prestige crops (not available in the update) show their tint in the HUD.

Goo shows its atmosphere driven target tint in the HUD on worlds which can modify it.

Item links in the Knowledge now work regardless of filtering settings. Filtering will be automatically disabled if you click on an item link that is not visible under the current filtered view.

Mesh count warning messages will appear in the action log (on the right hand side of the HUD) more regularly as you approach the build limit.

Update to the seed knowledge entry so that seed and crop yield conditions can be presented independently.

Engine:

Reworking of client voxel block lights:

Block lighting will flood taking the maximum value of r,g,b seperately instaad of attempting to add lights together, and falloff is driven entirely by the component light intensities. This allows block lighting to be done all at once instead of having to evaluate each light one at a time making it a huge performance win on block-lighting, and allows us to lift the effective radius of block lights greatly in cases like lava that had previously been forced to have really small radius for performance. Block lights will also adjust their intensity with the colour of the light source in cases of gleam lighting that are not a single fixed colour meaning that white gleam will literally be brighter than black gleam, though we set the intensity range so that black gleam is not just entirely black for lighting still.

This change also allows the new server-side lighting for farming to be exactly in-sync with the client, with the client also performing the additional calculations as part of block-lighting for “gleamlight” allowing the hud information on crops to now take into account the lighting conditions that the crop is in and report its ability to grow accurately; matching the server exactly. This means that for gleam light sources, the “gleamlight” for crops will roughly match the visual light provided by the block, so even without hud information on the crops should be easier to work with.

This change also introduces some smaller optimisations for the sunlight flooding in the client and hopefully even though all block lights now have larger radiuses (sometimes much larger), the performance of meshing has actually gotten better.

Gleam poles/beams/door will now be able to provide “gleamlight” for crops too.

NOTE: Lighting intensities are still under review. They have been roughly set, but are subject to change still. Feedback is always helpful.

The Forge Glow boon, as well as the Luminous brews, and the skill-based permanent light are also now, in consistency with block lighting, not radius based, but purely intensity based, and as such will not display information about radius in the GUI, but about increased light intensity. The intensities here are also subject to more change, but are roughly set to get a progression of “effective” radius again.

Known Issue: block-lights will not flood “above” the top of the world any more, so if you build a wall right up to the top of the chunk, and put a block light at the top of the wall on one side, the light will not flood around the top of the wall (above the world) to reach the other side any more.

Gleam doors/trap-doors will now emit light equal to that of gleam poles/beams.

Doors (that don’t have holes in them) will now block lighting propagation. Note the door mesh itself is lit via the entity-lighting system which is not incredibly precise, and so the door itself may be influenced still by lighting on the other side, but the voxel world will fully respect the blocking of light by the door, as will the lighting conditions of crops so that doors can be used to block sunlight from reaching inorganic crops more easily.

World lighting will update automatically when doors are opened and closed.

Gorillastomp · July 3, 2019, 9:36pm

i didn’t test the skill based light, but i am in love with the current lighting intensities so far.

boundmore · July 3, 2019, 9:46pm

big thumb up for very natural looking colors in nature - I like changes, especially after this last patch where we have much better light intensity for sure, during night and mining underground (raw/refined gleam shown in screenshots below; note slightly brighter refined gleam light), although darker blocks still don’t show texture well enough even from very close (notice rock floor in screenshots 3 and 4):

indoors - finally bright enough underground staircase

for comparison, one spot before and after changes (notice bad circle effect on gleam blocks is less prominent); it’s a mix of daylight from the entrance on the left and gleam light; you can see easily that storage units and the tinter look brighter, even though I removed some gleam comparing to the time before last patch:

Gorillastomp · July 3, 2019, 9:53pm

@james Could you respawn the exos on test server.

Stretchious · July 3, 2019, 9:56pm

Try opening and closing your door and see the difference

boundmore · July 3, 2019, 10:01pm

no door in there I’m afraid lol - it’s a wider open entrance; it was the point of these shots anyway, to show mixed light; it’s when the ugly circle on gleam blocks appears

here difference between raw gleam, refined gleam and light source epic skill:

Gorillastomp · July 3, 2019, 10:02pm

try gleam door now

almund · July 3, 2019, 10:05pm

Nice, this helps me keeping build farm better together

Has any other player problem when collecting berry vines from distance (on wild)?
I keep targeting often vines instead of berries, could there be some sort of aim assist that it wouldn’t require hitting (certain face of) block?

Below short video of how gleam refrigerator light affects goo growing time.

boundmore · July 3, 2019, 10:07pm

in complete darkness here - plain, stylish and ornate (2 pieces placed in a roughly 5x5 room underground); plain seem to emit most light forward:

Gorillastomp · July 3, 2019, 10:08pm

hum something not working here

this is the kind of light i get and it looks like you get none

Edit : did you get the black one ?

Xaldafax · July 3, 2019, 10:09pm

@James does this mean my suggestion to add a new dimmer type asset to the game is technically possible with more work and coding? The one where users can set the exact light level so that we could have rooms that are intentionally dim versus always at normal luminance? Note: I’m still primarily only focused on Lanterns being the only thing that can change but open to gleam adjustment with more steps involved.