Stairs, Steam Cloud Upgrades & Critical Performance Fix!

On the Eve of Next Fest!

Steam Next Fest starts tomorrow, June 15th! I've been working around the clock to ensure the game is in the best possible shape for the wave of new players checking out the demo.

First off, building gets an important upgrade: wood and stone stairs are finally here to help you build much cleaner structures and pathways! To make your underwater excursions feel a bit more realistic, the camera FOV now decreases slightly when diving to simulate water pressure and depth. I've also cranked up the ambient audio volume when you climb to high altitudes so the wind feels properly intense.

On the UI and Steam side, the world menu in the full version now features a detailed hover showing your exact Steam Cloud space usage, accompanied by a clean warning if your cloud runs out of space. The vertical scrollbars received a slight visual facelift, and a UI bug where crafting slots gained focus via scrolling has been resolved.

Most importantly, I tracked down a critical bug in the terrain saving system. Previously, an issue with memory allocations and context recreation caused worlds to load slower and slower the more chunks were loaded from disk over time. This has been completely overhauled, the system now recycles its data structures cleanly, meaning loading is lightning-fast and stays perfectly consistent no matter how long your session lasts and how many worlds you load!

Complete list of all changes

(in no particular order)

Changes

• Added wood and stone stairs to expand your building options.

• Decreased camera FOV underwater to enhance diving immersion.

• Increased height sound volume for a more atmospheric experience on high peaks.

• [Full Version] Added a Steam Cloud space usage detail hover in the world menu.

• Added a Steam Cloud "no space" warning notification when your cloud storage is (almost) full.

• Improved the layout and styling of the vertical scrollbars across the UI.

• Improved collision box checks for more reliable movement and physics.

• Reduced the load during voxel icon generation.

• Improved the internal data structure for smelting to make backend calculations more efficient and future modding easier.

Fixes

• Fixed a critical bug in the terrain saving system that would cause worlds to load slower and slower the more chunks were loaded from disk.

• Fixed crafting slots getting selected when scrolling directly over them.

• Fixed the item category assignment for certain voxel items.

Next Fest starts tomorrow, so if you encounter any more bugs or have last-minute feedback, please use the ingame feedback form. If you like where the game is going, please consider wishlisting it here on Steam, it really helps an indie dev out a ton!

Cheers!