Making It Rain

This month brings one of the most significant atmospheric updates: a dynamic weather system featuring rain, snow, thunderstorms, and seasonal climates that breathe new life into the world. It also includes an upgraded Unity engine, bug fixes, and a number of minor updates.

Updates

• Added back a rock wall in Grizzled Peaks that somehow got disabled.

• Added a new wound texture for nameplates that is less pixelated and has brighter stripes. Hopefully things makes things a bit more legible.

• Added new Exile and Blighted camps to Highland Hills.

• Added an AFK detection script to the login scene which impacts login, selection, and creation. This script caps the framerate to 10fps if no input is detected (from keyboard or mouse) for 2 minutes OR the application is not focused. When either the application becomes focused or input is detected your framerate preferences are reinstated.

• Disabled Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO). It looked terrible on grass blades at certain times of the day and provided little visual benefit while chewing up cpu cycles.

• Guards now ignore event mobs; this should make future GM events a bit less chaotic.

• Context menu at Monoliths is now sorted roughly by progression rather than the order in which they are discovered.

• Updated the Unity engine to the latest subversion. This brings a host of fixes and minor improvements.

• Ibaxus:

  • Fixed spelling error on Ibaxian Pendants.

  • Fixed Central Ibaxus crossbows having incorrect colors.

  • Fixed an issue where armor values of Central Ibaxian Adornments changed depending on the input Shaped Adornment.

  • Fixed an issue where incorrect icon showed on Central Ibaxian Adornments and Relics.

  • Lower ibaxus recipes now accept higher tiers of Shards of Creation.

  • Ibaxian Artifact Assembly recipe can now be used at the portable crafting station.

Fixes

• Fixed target reticle from not projecting onto the terrain at certain angles.

• Fixed floating rocks in Grimstone Canyon.

• Fixed text in the Ridge Mystery quest in reference to Highlands Basin vs Highland Hills and the Highlands.

• Fixed name of Bat vanity pet.

• Fixed spelling on Cassiterite recipe.

Precipitation

This patch introduces dynamic precipitation in the form of rain and snow. Each region features a unique biome with monthly temperature ranges, humidity levels, and precipitation probabilities. Biomes also define wetness/snow accumulation rates, drying rates, snow melt rates, and wind characteristics.

The weather simulation is deterministically driven by the synchronized game world date time. Each frame, we interpolate biome parameters based on the current month and time of day (diurnal cycle). These values determine the precipitation threshold, which we compare against a sampled procedural noise. When the noise value exceeds this threshold, precipitation occurs. Temperature then determines whether precipitation falls as rain, snow, or a combination of both.

Both server and client perform these calculations identically to ensure consistency. The server additionally tracks ground wetness and snow coverage (the only new network synchronized data), and evaluates storm conditions to trigger lightning strike events.

Finally, clients independently simulate cloud cover and wind intensity using additional noise layers for atmospheric variety. The figures below illustrate clear, rainy+wet, and snowy+snow conditions.

To increase immersion, new footstep audio has been added for wet and snowy ground conditions.

A new toggle has also been added to the Gameplay Options tab for "Rain Collisions". Toggling this off can boost performance in heavy rain.

Please note: This feature required extensive material updates throughout the game, and some props may have been missed. You may occasionally encounter rain/snow indoors or wetness/snow on interior surfaces. We are evaluating the best solutions for these edge cases, though they are lower priority for now. Please use /report to flag any issues and we will address them in future patches.