Performance & Clouds Update

So after many months of hard work the Beta has Finally made its way onto the main branch! I've done this slightly earlier than I would like but for good reason and I'm hoping the benefits of this build make up for its flaws.

I'm doing this because there could be an influx of new players soon and there are a few too many major fixes in the Beta that I would prefer to be live. Also since world generation has updated slightly I would rather new players are on stable worlds instead of starting a world only for it to be slightly corrupted after a few days.

Lighting

What I focused on this week was fixing the last of the visuals bugs with lighting so it should be back on par with the live build. I did find some scenarios that I improved as well so hopefully things are looking nice and smooth again. As a note there is a currently open bug about seeing light whilst exploring caves. I'm going to try and get that sorted as soon as I can but its a bit of an involved fix so I don't want to rush it out.

Shadows

Another big change I've made is how light is updated to avoid seeing flickering shadows in caves and I can't describe how annoyed I am that I've had to make this change. What I had to do is change from a smooth update to one that jumps in very small intervals, which prevents seeing the flicker. I've had to do this because I think its fair to say that Unity as a company need to be named and shamed for being utterly terrible. For context, here is a bug report that I submitted to them, SIX YEARS AGO.

https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/shadow-length-is-reverting-back-every-few-frames-when-updating-directional-lights-eulerangles-if-its-y-rotation-is-close-to-0

There are a lot of politics and such at play here and to be fair to Unity this is a really complex issue. But rather than get into it all its quicker to search "Unity flickering shadows" and see just how prevalent this issue is and how its still not fixed. Anyway... this issue has been in Aiyana since the beginning but its more noticeable for various reasons which is why I've finally succumbed to this really primitive hack to work around it.

Roadmap

Well now that this update is Finally almost finished I'll try to get back to adding more content. Its crazy to think I started work on this as far back as May! Its been such huge changes though so I don't think its right to plan any serious updates yet so my general aim is to keep things as flexible as possible so I can drop a hotfix for any issues that are found. I may work on something small as a bit of a break. I also still need to look over controller support after a contractor that was going to handle it for me let me down so I suspect I will focus on that for a little bit before taking on any serious features. One bit of useful feedback I've had recently has been around combat so I'm tempted to explore how to make it feel better. I'm also really, truly trying to work towards multiplayer!

Bug Fixes & Changes

• Fixed trees popping in and out of view if you look directly towards the sky

• Fixed the health and level text placement for the bear and night bear

• Fixed a crash caused by shooting down insects with a homing Energy Blast

• Fixed feed trough screens not opening (again, different root cause)

• Fixed held torches affecting clouds

• Fixed a scenario that would cull chunks too aggressively

• Reworked controller support and got it mostly working again for the settings screen

• Added a hack/safety net that if you press escape during any tutorial it will show the cursor

• Fixed crafting benches light influencing clouds

• Fixed trees moving 0.5 into the ground as you damage them

• Fixed trees grown from saplings rendering twice, meaning they stuck around after destroying them

• Fixed palm trees jumping a little once damaged

• Fixed experience particle colours changing unpredictably

• Fixed seaweed not rebuilding the chunk when its destroyed

• Fixed seaweeds completely changing their texture whenever you break 1 of them

• Fixed the held light doing absolutely nothing and not turning on

• Fixed some old wording around how a seed of 0 will pick a random one for you

• Fixed an error that would sometimes cause world loading to be stuck and never enter a world

• Changed when the first loading screen shows so the transition into worlds is a little smoother

• Attempted to handle an error that would prevent the world from rendering more gracefully

• Fixed fish not resetting their data properly after teleporting that could have caused a crash

• Fixed some small memory leaks caused by chunks queued for rebuild and then teleporting before they could finish

• Fixed the Scythe spell feeling broken once it levels up and not affecting things infront of you

• Fixed spells like Night Vision casting for a split second if you press any of the number keys

• Fixed raw fish restoring Far too much hunger when eaten

  Release 0.4.0.1

  I've pushed a small hotfix with some issues found in this release.

• Fixed clouds not being visible whilst underwater

• Fixed a controller hint being visible all the time when viewing achievements

• Fixed crafting recipe heading icons sometimes showing as a Treant head

• Fixed not being able to press the craft button for recipes with lots of inputs (E.G compost bin) until you scrolled to the bottom

Release 0.4.0.2

Another hotfix, please excuse the formatting of this heading. Steam released a new visual editor for patch notes and its a little quirky.

• Fixed the axe handle in the crafting bench not being lit properly

• Updated the Tin Ore icon to stand apart better from the Silver Ore icon

• Fixed sometimes seeing a gem available for things like alchemy, even if you have never found one. Seen once you unlock the linked chests perk

• Fixed issues with spells casting when you are only intending to select them

• Fixed the spell tutorials not always appearing at the right time

• Fixed the cursor being hidden sometimes when viewing spell tutorials

• Fixed achievements like kill 1 of each animal not showing as complete once you reach the last milestone

• Fixed a huge performance drop when visiting the Lost Civ

• Updated the wording of the repair portal screen so it says Totem instead of the old wording of Beacon. Also added a line to explain needing to place a portal first

• Fixed sometimes being able to see through the world if you dig to the very bottom

  Release 0.4.0.3

• Fixed being able to craft more recipes than you should be able to

• Fixed spells always trying to cast whenever you right click

Release 0.4.0.4

• Fixed the abandon challenge message appearing behind the wave summary and not being clickable

• Fixed sometimes effectively losing all inventory and equipment when going to lost civ (it was wrongly being placed into a death urn you are very unlikely to ever find!)

• Fixed falling through the world if you attempt to travel to the lost civ whilst crouching

• Attempted to defensively prevent a crash during the world load as well as adding more logging

• Fixed sometimes being able to see through the world whilst digging a long thin stairway downwards

• Removed the UI setting for always showing the spells bar since there is no longer a spells bar!

• Fixed the help info for the gameplay section of the settings screen overlapping and not looking great

• Fixed a scenario where transforming grass could overwrite a tilled dirt block

• Fixed tree root blocks leaving behind blueprints you can't replace whenever trees are destroyed during a challenge

• Fixed invisible trees being generated after a challenge if one got destroyed during it

• Fixed pickups getting stuck inside a block if you place a new block over it

• Created new meshes to render Palm trees at a distance that fixes an obscure error of seeing some huge blob above your head at odd times

• Removed Willow tree imposters to prevent seeing that huge blob as well

• Fixed crafting recipes saying you need 0 of an item to craft

• Fixed seeing "Missing Materials" for cooking or crafting recipes before you select any ingredients

Release 0.4.0.5

• Created proper LOD meshes for willow trees so they render faster (this is to compensate for removing their imposters in the last patch)

• Fixed a flaw in how fish data is removed that could result in them not rendering in certain circumstances

• Optimised the Detect Fish spell

• Fixed TNT causing errors if you explode it at the very bottom or top of the world

• Fixed the Rock Volley spell influencing the light of clouds

• Fixed being able to see through the world sometimes whilst at the very bottom of it (again, slightly different cause from last time)

• Fixed pickups appearing to dance if they are stacked ontop of each other

• Updated to the latest Unity version to address a security vulnerability

• Fixed an issue with the Tulips emission texture that would have it render strangely

• Fixed the second hotbar tutorial being stuck on screen if you use Escape, Tab or other keys to close inventory instead of walking or pressing the X

• Fixed a crash caused by selecting a structure to build with

• Fixed structure previews for standard solid blocks not rendering

Release 0.4.0.6

• Fixed resuming a challenge on load not showing any UI and locking up

• Fixed the wave complete screen not showing after completing a challenge wave