Astral Terra
Update 0.8.2 Live with Multiplayer Fix
Apologies for the recent round of bugs, things keep showing up that were unexpected due to the voxel terrain rewrite. We are methodically making things better, MP is now working again, new systems are on the way in the following weeks that will continue to squash the remaining game breaking bugs so that we can move on to adding new content.
Patch Notes:
0.8.2
- Created workaround for Multiplayer bug where host gets kicked when player connects. This bug was caused by the new transvoxel update to the terrain coupled with the old water, which created too much data, making file save size huge, therefore causing the network to boot the player. Water rewrite is in progress, once water LOD is in place the save file size will be much smaller. In the meantime players can now play together but some terrain data will not be synced correctly. Real time terrain edits and block placement over the network are still completely functional.
- Fixed bug with bad height saved and player position being permanently bad. When a position is saved under the terrain, upon next load in the saved player Y position will be reset.
- Tweaked the Tone Mapping to reduce blue and bring back some yellow.
- Reduced the cost of water on FPS by reducing water quality. This is still old default Unity water and will be replaced in an upcoming update. Currently getting 55-65 FPS on our mid range testing machine due to improvements.
KNOWN ISSUES
- When playing multiplayer, everyone else but YOURSELF will appear to have the incorrect hair and beard. We hope to have a hotfix for this early next week.
- Players joining an existing world with lots of custom edits, if they have not been to this world before, will get fresh world data instead of the saved world data. Once the new water is in place we will re-enable data transfer on player connect and this bug will go away.
- The saved height issue has been corrected, however, this does not fix spawning inside of a mountain, which is random because the terrain is random. We are looking at expanding the raycast and other methods to determine when we are in a mountain (this works for being slightly underground but not in the case of the mountain). The collider viewer will enable the player once it detects terrain. To force this to happen, go into Terraform mode. Now change it from Player to FREE mode. Next, simply fly your camera up to above the terrain and press the FETCH PLAYER button. This will teleport your character to the surface and should also enable them once you exit Terraform mode.
As always, gratitude for your patience and interest in the project and have a great weekend!
Hotfix 0.8.1 live - Tree bug fixed
We found 2 new bugs with the most recent update, one was fixed today. We had an issue on 5 of the forest trees that was preventing harvesting. The fix for this is now live and these trees can be harvested once again.
Currently data transfer on multiplayer is bugged. We have started trouble shooting it and hope to have a fix live in the next couple days. In the meantime know that multiplayer works for single instances, but connecting to an existing world with other people is currently NOT POSSIBLE. The advantage to playing in multiplayer mode still is that saving is done online. Please be patient and know that if you just purchased the game this is a current bug and we are working on it(a few folks inappropriately left negative reviews simply for the single bug recently). Apologies for the annoyance and we plan to have a fix live ASAP, thanks for your continued patience!
Big Friday Update - Rivers, Lakes and Caves!
We have a big update we just pushed out that's been in the works for a few weeks. Apologies to those that were experiencing crashing issues and problems with terrain generation. We have worked on a number of things that came up after the big framework update that caused some issues. There will be 1 more huge water rewrite that will take some time - in the meantime water has been optimized some more and we will continue to tweak how it flows until the new system is in place. We have done some major changes and improvements with this update, see patch notes below.
Patch Notes:
0.8
- Due to last big update on voxel framework, biome layout and generation has changed.
- Roads have been removed and the Town biome has been combined with the Canyon biome. Small clusters of houses will appear on low land flat areas or even higher up on plateaus.
- Winter biome removed and combined with Forest biome at upper heights.
- Rivers and lakes added. Rivers flow through the center of the Forest biome and will overlap into the Tropical biome and form lakes, as well as appear in small areas on the Canyon biome when blending between Forest and Tropical biomes.
- Optimizations to water generation and flow to improve terrain generation time.
- New Caves system with smooth caves and connected networks. Many of the Ores now spawn directly in caves and at higher altitudes.
- New optimized grass system with LOD and longer draw distance.
- Replaced biome materials with new high detail terrain textures that support PBR and POM effects.
- Replaced post effects with newer, higher quality and better optimized Amplify suite.
- Added Color/Tone mapping to camera.
- Adjusted Terrain Alignment functionality when falling through terrain or being aligned the first time. This should remedy some terrain alignment issues.
- Improved terrain generation time.
- Removed Floating Islands. This system is being rewritten to reflect the optimizations to the core framework.
- New basic grass on all biomes, flowers, weeds and other plants remain the same.
- Sand and a few other Terrain materials used in the terraformer have been tweaked or changed.
- Removed random presents from the environment.
- Fixed bug with playing in window mode and mouse being confined to the incorrect area.
KNOWN ISSUES
- With the new Cave system comes a new bug. Sometimes if the character is spawned underground they will be incorrectly aligned to the bottom polygons of the cave system. To realign correctly, enter Terraform mode with the terraform button, select FREE mode, navigate the camera up to the terrain, hit FETCH PLAYER button to move your character to the new position and then exit terraform mode.
Holiday presents are live in the latest update!
We just pushed out a small update which fixed the new bug with build tools, as well as added presents to the game. Patch notes below. Please know that we are aware of the new river bug right now which is causing some water to form underground where there is no terrain. This can interrupt terrain generation. We have a solution that is being worked on right now and we hope to have it live by early next week. Thanks for your patience and apologies for the inconvenience!
Patch Notes:
0.7.4
- Added customize UI button to open up the new hair/beard customization window.
- Added new Holiday presents. Holiday elves have been accidentally losing presents on their trips between the planes and the gift workshop. These presents can be found in random spots throughout the environment (always outside). Presents work just like loot. Simply click on a present to open it and loot the contents. 1-2 random items can be found in these presents, ranging from basic cooked beef and Dwarven Battle Axes to the rare Mount Spell Tome. These presents will be around until Jan 3rd, 2017.
- Fixed critical new bug with build tools where there was lag/delay between placing a block/s and the blocks actually showing up. Blocks now reliably appear instantly when placed.
- Fixed bug with Spell Tome particle effect.
- Fixed issue with Mount Spell Tome staying in the players inventory after being used, as well as giving the incorrect spell.
Hot fix 0.7.3 is live.
We just pushed out a small update this week to address a few bugs. Patch notes below.
0.7.3
- Fixed issue with duplicate alternate UI with Build Tools.
- Fixed issue with Blocks not having correct PBR values.
- Fixed issue with shader height map effect on Forest and Tropical biome. Shader now represents correct POM values and height effect is working correctly.
- Increased threshold to Bloom to cull out unwanted Bloom on certain environment items. Increased Bloom effect for items that should have Bloom.
- Changed loading method for loading screen, should reduce wait times and occasional loading stuck screens.
KNOWN ISSUES
1. Water generation is very slow due to the voxel terrain generation being rewritten recently. The water system is currently being rewritten with LOD, which reduces generation time by 40%. We hope to have that update live late next week. If your land wont generate please try a new seed.
2. Block placing is laggy due to a new bug. When you place a block the terrain will be altered to let you know the action has occurred, then after some time the block will show up. We are trying to sort this issue now.
New Holiday items and Autumn Sale live!
We just pushed out another small update that fixes a few things and adds some Holiday items for players to enjoy. We will be adding some more items as we get into December as well(presents with random gifts inside), as well as doing bug fixes, a terrain update with faster water generation including water LOD, and another round of new content. There is currently an issue with water generation slowing down world load time. Please be patient, new worlds will eventually finish generating. The new water update reduces water generation by 40% and should be live by mid December. If you are having trouble loading an existing world please try a new seed.
Happy Holidays and enjoy the long weekend!
Patch Notes
0.7.2
- Added 3 new Holiday decorative items to place in your homes! These new items can be bought at the shop or crafted at a crafting cart.
- Added 2 of last years Holiday decorative items back to the main shop.
- Fixed a few shader errors that were causing a couple random items to turn pink(crafting cart).
- Fixed the Height Map on Forest biome so that it correctly reflects the ground texture without distortion.
- Changed the ground texture for Forest biome and did a terrain shader pass.
- Initial development on VR integration started.
- Added HDR to Bloom for camera, reduced bloom and tweaked tone mapping.
Newest update live!
The big update we have been working on and mentioned recently is now live. There are a bunch of internal optimizations and improvements that should result in most players seeing an increase in their FPS. On our mid range testing machine we are getting an average of 16-20 more fps. There were major updates and code rewrites which introduced all sorts of bugs and delays in putting out the patch. We have also included some new content and functionality. The next couple updates will focus on minor bug fixes and adding new content, including new seasonal items! As always, the team thanks you for your patience with us and your interest in the game as well. Enjoy and have a great week!
Patch Notes:
0.7
- Huge performance improvement on Voxel Terrain due to rewriting some of the systems and optimizations.
- Much larger terrain draw distance and size due to Voxel Terrain changes and optimizations.
- Fixed some animation bugs with climbing and improved the control.
- Added climb down functionality for ladders.
- Added new keybinding rewiring system for character control and a few other functions. This makes it possible to completely reverse Strafe and Turn among other things.
- Added new hair and beards.
- Fixed an issue with the Canyons Biome shader where normals were getting overwritten with the perlin noise map. The ground now reflects the proper bump values where appropriate.
- Removed some old shaders and fixed a couple broken ones.
- Replaced existing Post effects with a new post effects stack that is more efficient and requires less overhead. Bloom and some others effects have been toned down but are still being tweaked, expect changes in the next update as well as new UI controls for disabling effects.
- Tweaked some Biome elements for better placement or to reduce overhead.
- Project updated to Unity game engine version 5.4 which includes a number of bug fixes and optimizations (better multi-threading support).
Town Update Live!
Patch Notes
0.6
- Added new town biome.
- Added new food cart to Town.
- Added new general Merchant to Town.
- Added climbing functionality in a limited capacity to ladders. Once more polished, climbing will be added to other items and more ladders introduced. Press F when touching a ladder to climb it. Press F or jump to get off of the ladder, or climb to the top and press up or hold up to climb up to the top.
- Added new Face Cam for the Character Customizer panel. Open up the customizer while playing with N key to see it in action.
- Added LOW quality back to the game. Low Quality disables shadows and can give a boost of 10+ fps to the game for those right on the edge of getting 30.
- Fixed Race descriptions in the create character scene.
- Fixed text on Terraformer panel for types and camera.
- Fixed shader on crafting cart potions.
- Fixed sell amount text on store sell panel by increasing size and changing the color.
- Increased gravity on players by 0.3 and reduced jump power slightly.
- Reduced Grottonoid and Bloodfiend spawn density.
20% off Sale, big update coming soon!
Astral Terra is now 20% off for a week. A few of us took a small break after the summer sale and last patch, then got right back to work for the last month or so on a nice big update that has new content as well as a number of simple fixes and optimizations.
We also have art assets ready for a few new items and are wrapping up development on them (town biome with lots of stuff and the new grapple gun is on the way). We're also working on a new input manager for the game that will allow players to rebind the movement keys, per multiple requests. :) Keybinding won't be with the next update but will come within the next couple updates.
Once we push this new update out with the new Town biome we will start development on some new quests, as this is an item that has been asked for but we needed a town first for NPC's to spawn in. ;) Once these items are completed the team will re-asses the development schedule and road map, then decide, based on feedback and needs, what the next development sprint will include.
Thanks again for your patience with our occasional shenanigans and n00bery, we sincerely appreciate everyones support, ideas and kind words.
Update 0.5 - MOUNTS and Character Customizer
We have been working on a number of items recently, not all of which are ready to go live. However, we have the basics for the Character Customization working now so we figured we would push that and a few other items out for everyone to start play testing. The mount needs some more animations and tightening up. As always thanks for playing and supporting Astral Terra!
Patch Notes:
0.5
- Added Mount functionality (still a little rough).
- Fixed issue with some text labels not displaying correctly based on UI scale.
- Added Character Customization with new Hair, Beard and Color options for males.
- Added new Hairs and Beards (more on the way).
- Added new Customize Appearance UI panel during play time. Hit the N key to open up the customizer when playing to change hair types/color in real time.
- Added the Grottonoid MOB to all Biomes.