Astral Terra
Happy 420! New update 0.9.9 is live.
Patch Notes:
0.9.9
- Fixed a bug with Roger(henchman) and harvesting where player would get stuck in the harvest animation while Roger was close.
- Adjusted the attack range on various creatures to fix abnormal interactions with certain characters.
- Increased Rogers stopping distance and wandering range in an effort to get him out of players way.
- Removed Rogers health regeneration so that he can perish after time.
- Doubled inventory slots(from 18 to 36) and added a slider.
- Doubled chest slots(from 18 to 36) and added a slider.
- Changed the color of text in the store and sell windows from RED to WHITE to avoid players thinking they did not have enough gold.
- Decreased the spawn rate of the Arcane Merchant.
- Increased the tree density on the Forest biome.
- Changed the interaction sound for many windows to a simple click.
- Various back-end tweaks and optimizations.
Happy Friday! World Data Share is live with new update!
Greetings friends! We just pushed out an update which fixes a MAJOR bug and is a milestone for us. We have now re-enabled world data share when players connect to an existing world. We had discovered a bug some time ago which was causing crashes when the data was shared on initial connection. This has now been fixed! Patch notes below, as always thanks for the support!
Patch Notes:
0.9.8
- Fixed major bug with multiplayer world data share(previously disabled). Terrain edits were synced but world data share on connect had been disabled due to the crash causing bug. This has been fixed and world data is now shared to connecting players before generating the world.
- Added two new twisted trees to the Shadow biome. These are infected with elemental essence and will give the wood resource. A future content push will enable an additional arcane resource to be given when farmed.
- Back end bug fix for time sync for slight optimization.
Happy Friday! Shadow/Elemental biome live in today's update.
Patch Notes:
0.9.7
- Overhaul of the Barrens biome, now the Shadow/Elemental biome.
- New spawners added to spread up MOB population.
- MOB wander methods tweaked and ranges increased to achieve larger wander patterns.
- MOB density on each biome increased by 2.
- Replaced old Wizard Merchant tower with a simple design.
Happy Friday, new update with Rodger the bodyguard now live!
We just pushed out a small update today that enables players to now summon a bodyguard, Rodger, to protect them, as well as added a new mob. The Barrens are undergoing a cataclysmic change that will be reflected in the next update. The Shadow Plane and Elemental plane of Fire have converged on the Barrens and the result is a biome of Chaos. Expect new monsters and a new look that better resembles the shadow plane found in our early concept art. Lastly, Astral Terra also goes on discount for 10% off starting this weekend. As always thanks for playing and supporting the project and have a great weekend!
Patch Notes:
0.9.6
- Added the new spell Summon Creature 1. This summons Rodger, a tough Troglodyte with a bad attitude and a big heart. Creatures summoned will follow and protect the player from other mobs until they are defeated.
- Added the Belzab'rin MOB to the Barrens Biome.
- Moved the Barghest to the Forest Biome.
- Created a new tome for learning the Summon Creature 1 spell. This spell tome can be found on the Arcane merchant and the wandering merchant.
- Fixed a bug with tomes not being removed after being used to learn the spell.
Happy V Day! New update is out, game on sale on Thursday!
Patch Notes
0.9.5
- MOBS have now been tied to Biomes. Players will find 2-3 MOB types per Biome instead of all creatures on all Biomes. We also plan to still add a few more MOB types. MOBS will spawn in their Biome but can still wander across Biome boundaries.
- Added back to the game the Barghest MOB.
- Fixed bug with MOBS not showing up on the MiniMap and main Map/Help section.
- Added the new Merchant to the MiniMap and main Map/Help section.
- MOBS Names now show up on the Map/Help Section when clicked.
- Created a new Audio slider in Settings for EFFECTS. MOB sounds now tied to the Effect slider.
- Did an audio sound effect pass on the UI. Most UI elements will now play some sort of Audio feedback. These sounds have been tied to the Effects slider in Settings.
- Fixed bug with Normal data on Terrain Textures not displaying correctly when blending certain angles. Normal detail is now much more prominent.
We also lowered the price in anticipation of finally going Full Release in the following months(Beta). From there we will continue to support and push out occasional content updates and fixes as needed. Thanks again for all the support down the years(those of you who had the patience for an amateur new Indie studio on their first big project). We appreciate the kind words and positive motivation and encouragement, as well as the helpful feedback along the way. We have a few friends of the game that continue to surprise and delight us with their support, comments and friendship. Have a great holiday!
New AI with update 0.9.4 is live!
Patch Notes: 0.9.4
- New AI system! All mobs/animals have been reworked with a new AI system. This has reduced overhead and also given us the ability to create more complex AI, as well as mobs that are always in range of the Players. Expect to always see creatures in every biome now and combat feedback on all creatures. There are a couple bugs we are still working out and plan to fix in a future update. MOBS will also be contained to specific biomes in a future update.
- Replaced targeting system with new graphic for target selection indication.
- 3 new MOBS. Added the Fae Lizardman, replaced the Stag, and added the Doe.
- Addded a new wandering merchant. No more searching through the Barrens biome in hopes that one would spawn. Wandering merchant spawns in range of the Player and wanders about the area in a 100 unit radius.
- Replaced terrain shader system with new Texture Array system. This allows us to have 3 textures on the ground and walls, per biome giving a much better and varied look on the terrain.
- Added new terrain textures to fill in new shader system.
- Replaced Snow and Sand materials with new Snow and Sand materials. These are much better and do not have stone on the sides. They also have glitter in them. ;) Use the Change Type method in the Terraformer to place snow or sand all around your creations.
- Added a new Terraformer material Bronze Hexagon. Very shiney.
- Fixed a couple random bugs.
- Tweaked Holiday tree for easier placement. It's recommended that players either smooth the ground first before placing, or place on a block or in a house.
KNOWN ISSUES
- Terrain Shader loses some of its Normal details at certain angles under certain light. Fix is already found, patch coming in next weeks update.
- Occasionally the controls bug out and do not enable correctly on startup, preventing any camera rotation. Quit the game and start again to fix (I personally have seen this once on 100+ play tests).
Halloween update live, game on sale!
Just a small update this week. We delayed the push by a few days as we were trying to finish the new AI system. We realized yesterday it would be a couple more days before its ready so we decided to make the new holiday content live today.
0.9.3
- Added 3 new Halloween pumpkins. These are lit, can be placed and can be obtained either by crafting them or buying them from a merchant.
- Significantly reduced the cost of many placeable items.
In the following weeks we will be pushing out an update with the new AI and then also some new mobs, then on to other items on the roadmap.
Happy Friday, big update is live.
Patch Notes - 0.9.2
- Rewrote cave system. Minerals/ores spawn much more consistently now and this opens us up for specific creatures in different biome caves. This new cave system is also much larger with expanded underground networks and detail. Caves are fairly barren now but we will continue to add content that is appropriate to dress them up and give players more reason to explore.
- Fixed a bug related to old caves where player would be placed on the incorrect geometry below a cave.
- Fixed item placement bug.
- Tightened up block placement (still not perfect - looking to replace this system soon with a new solution that uses pieces instead of blocks).
- Reduced memory usage through terrain LOD update, grass, details and trees update and new cave creation system.
- New Tree system! Our new tree system uses GPU instancing to reduce the overhead, therefore creating much denser coverage than was possible before. River biome going into Forest is noticeably more dense.
- Increased draw distance on terrain with reduced overhead.
- New water system. This new water system has reduced terrain generation time and memory usage. However, it is not flowing water and therefore water creation has been removed from the terraformer. Water is throughout the world at a certain level - simply dig deep enough to find it. If you want a pond outside of a house simply build lower down on the terrain and dig a pond out where you like. Water is still interactive of course.
- New water shader. No more ugly default unity water. Reflections have been disabled to keep performance until we can custom roll our own solution.
- Biome algorithm changed to have smoother transitions from each biome and to reduce generation time and overhead.
- New Grass system.
- Added ambient occlusion.
- Various bug fixes and optimizations for big FPS gains.
October and November development roadmap:
- New AI system with increased mob coverage and improved performance.
- Multiplayer world data share at start of game.
- Halloween content update.
- New Mobs and animals.
- New building system.
- Bug fixes/tweaks.
Update 0.9 Live with new save system
In order for us to move forward with multiplayer world sharing after the initial voxel engine rewrite from late 2016, we discovered we would need to change how world data is saved to reduce the new larger save file sizes. This ended up taking much longer than originally planned as many systems needed some changes made to them. The new save system is done, there is one more big backend update coming in the following weeks that will reduce the save file size even more. We plan to re-enable world sharing with that update as well. We also have read the reports about some folks crashing for unknown reasons and this is something we continue to look into (crash reports help, ty). Hopefully the update that went live today will fix this as numerous back end bugs have been fixed and systems modified with this update. The new terrain alignment when in caves can sometimes get wonky and place the player in-between the cave ceiling and the terrain ground(the negative space). If this happens enter terraform mode, Free mode, move the camera to above ground, hit fetch player and your player will be in the correct position again. Next week we will put out a hotfix to address a few of these issues. Thanks again for playing, apologies for any outstanding issues as we continue to tweak things on the backend to provide a more stable experience.
Patch Notes:
0.9
- Faster Terrain generation due to optimizations.
- All systems now multi-threaded to improve performance.
- Terrain Align function changed and optimized. This bug occasionally puts players in between a cave surface and the bottom of the terrain. Enter Terraform mode to change position of the camera and then fetch player to the new position.
- All world object manager optimized through new management system.
- Fluid generation time improved.
- New cave system with more realistic caves and better networks.
- Various backend improvements that have improved FPS.
- Terrain data overhauled for new save system. New world saves are 1/5th of the old world save size. This is in preparation for complete world sharing.
- New world save system. It is HIGHLY recommended that players start with new worlds due to the major overhaul. Terrain type is still the same but saved data has mixed results.
KNOWN ISSUES:
Occasionally when loading into a world the player will get stuck at 0%. We haven't been able to faithfully reproduce the issue but have noticed it seems to bug the character so it does not spawn. The work around is select a different character or make a new character.
Hotfix 0.8.3 live
This is just a tiny little update to address the bug with hairs and beards. The new water system is almost complete and we have a new terrain saving system as well. These changes have once again improved terrain generation and load time, as well as improved FPS due to less overhead. When we push out the update in a couple weeks, worlds will still look the same and saved positions on seeds will be valid, however, terrain data will not be valid and will need to be regenerated. This will complete the voxel terrain development sprint and also mark the engine as complete in this project. From that point we will continue to work on refinement and new content. We have also been working on the new AI system which improves performance and increases MOB and animal density as well as behavior complexity. Look for this in a future update. Combat is already tied to a skill system that includes attributes, powers and positional targeting in regards to weapon based combat (melee hits are calculated through raycasts and spherecasts). Thanks for playing and for your patience, we look forward to the next couple months of patches which will shore up any remaining issues and beef up the game content. Enjoy!
Patch Notes:
0.8.3
- Fixed bug in multiplayer with incorrect hair and beard showing on connecting players.
- Fixed bug with hair color not changing correctly on remote players.
- Edited Long Hair 4 (braid) texture to better accept color changes.