Water Visuals

I didn't quite plan to work on a lot of what is in this release but here we are! Multiplayer is still coming along nicely but still has a ways to go.

Water

A few things about how water renders has never really sat well with me so I eventually took the time to give it another pass. It all started with me continuing work to improve performance and water being shorter than a full block meant that it would generate a lot of excess faces. So if you had water with stone above it, it would previously need to render. Now it doesn't because it fills the entire block. Anyway whilst working on this I spent enough time looking at water reflecting light in caves that it annoyed me enough to fix it and embark on a saga... I wont go into details because it really was a saga but the end result is that water rendering has changed significantly. Steam post image

Glass

Glass had some obscure rendering bugs and didn't always respond nicely/properly to light. The shader for it was one I bought online and its a great shader but feels like using a crane to pickup the couch. So I've rebuilt it to be far simpler which fixes the rendering issues and should be far more efficient to render. Steam post image

Glass is supposed to be pretty subtle so the changes are hard to spot which is why it felt like the previous shader was a bit overkill.

New Blocks

A few new blocks have been added as well. A cube for roof tiles and 2 sizes of window shutters that you can open/close as needed.

Bug Fixes and Changes

• Fixed the glass for windows very slightly not covering the top and bottom of its frame

• Fixed the replace block spell trying to play audio for Every block replaced, causing lag for a frame

• Fixed glass looking like snow once its broken

• Made it much more obvious what you are selecting with a controller for most menu screens, which also changes how buttons look once hovered

• Added controller support to the death screen

• Fixed issues with controller support and the creative mode screen

• Rebuilt water meshes to use far less memory (they didn't use much in the first place anyway)

• Water in caves now properly responds to light and no longer has a glow as though exposed to the sky

• Updated the moons lighting so it shows some light shafts at night

• Changed the settings for the glow effect for a slight performance gain

• Fixed water meshes not being generated as optimally as they should

• Fixed zips of exported worlds not importing at all

• Fixed a very small memory leak if you quit the game in the menu scene without entering a world (unlikely to have had Any impact but helps me with false positives for errors)

• Fixed an obscure memory leak that can sometimes happen when switching worlds (E.G going from menu into the game, from overworld to lost civ/dungeons etc)

• Fixed an issue with stray data not checking for overflows that could have resulted in a host of rare but unpredictable bugs (E.G not able to scroll inventory)

• Updated the perk details UI very slightly so its title is less cramped

• Updated the visuals of animal health bars very slightly

• Fixed the night scene not using the sky box and looking white

• Fixed dirt rendering strangely when in hand

• Removed some logs that had been left in for MP debugging

• Fixed an issue with animal spawns that might have explained why animals are sometimes in the very wrong biome

• Added a check for if a Lot has changed since you last played and only show you 1 update info message instead of all of them (could be 15 so far!)

• Fixed animals being hit at long range standing still instead of fleeing for a few seconds

• Added cactus saplings so you can grow/farm cactus

• Fixed the selection effects for wooden crates

• Deer now flinch less often

• Fixed the new stone and metal railings trying to flip

• Fixed the preview for placing half planks and tiles being in the wrong place (placed fine in the world)

• Fixed the preview for snapped blocks being slightly wrong when first selected until you move the mouse

• Fixed a scenario that would cause fish to gather in corners too often when fleeing the player

• Fish accelerate quicker whilst fleeing, making them a touch more challenging to chase

• Improved fish fleeing logic to be a touch smarter overall

• Fixed fish not handling chunk edges properly causing them to clump at edges sometimes

• Fixed some controller support issues with the main inventory

• Added controller support to the perks screens

• Fixed the sun not rendering properly behind clouds

• Fixed a scenario involving deleting and recreating characters/worlds with the same name not working as intended

• Fixed a characters last played date and time being 1970!

• Fixed grass regrowing over your tilled dirt if you harvest a crop but don't replant a new one

• Fixed elementals exploding when they despawn, which could result in you randomly getting achievement progress for killing animals

• Fixed a host of errors thrown when enemies launch projectiles at you but it passes through another collider first (possibly things like being able to see through the world)

• Updated a couple of minor wording changes