Version 80 - The Blooming Update

Hello, Version 80 is out of beta! This update has 3 new creatures for the forest moons (and a returning creature), the utility slot which is a spot dedicated to purchased tools, a few new rooms for the facility interior, a complete rework to March's exterior + foliage updates for Vow and Adamance, new graphics and accessibility settings, and numerous bugfixes, performance optimizations, and small improvements.

Version 85 should hopefully come soon and be much more "content-focused", whereas this update revamped many of the game's systems under the hood and fixed numerous small issues that had been bugging me since the game's release (or had been introduced in updates since), and a lot of time was spent on that. I am feeling somewhat relieved though after tackling all that stuff.

Patch log:

- Completely reworked March's exterior

- Added three new creatures native to the three forest moons (though two of them can be found elsewhere).

* Backwater Gunkfish

* Feiopars

* Cadaver Bloom

- Added a new Sigurd log: "Work"

- Switched to a version of the game's main shader that renders in a single rendering pass (more performant) and allows the usage of foliage and better terrain. (This could not have been done quite as well without help from members of the modding community, so thank you very much.)

- Readded the Kidnapper Fox

* The fox is now more afraid to leave its territory and more accurately determines the size of its territory.

* The fox cannot spawn at the very beginning of the day.

* Weeds will never begin growing nearby the ship, though they can spread to the ship from the place where they started.

* The Vain Shrouds are more rare than before. However, the weeds will always begin growing on the current moon if you repeatedly "savescum" by disconnecting while not in orbit.

- Added proper foliage to the forest moons.

- Reduced frequent, heavy memory allocations in many areas across the game to reduce lag spikes

- Optimized memory usage regarding all creature AI so that they share the same pool of memory when appropriate

- Added functionality to creature AI and settings for creature AI to prevent land creatures from walking deep underwater when outside.

- Fixed the paycheck UI not scrolling properly through all the sold scrap.

- Fixed the player's hand and fingers not quite matching the lever of the ship when pulling the lever to land.

- Added a proper, satisfying animation and sound for the player pushing the lever to leave the moon.

- Added a visual animation for the main entrance door to the interior of all moons and overhauled the sound effects for it. Animations can be seen from inside and outside when another player is entering or leaving.

- Fixed interactions where creatures could collide with and damage players from outside the mineshaft elevator while it was closed and the player was inside (or vice-versa)

* Also fixed some creatures not moving towards the player even when they could be seen in the closed elevator and were still technically in chase. This may also fix cases where creatures did not move towards players if they were standing on certain ledges.

- Fixed creatures setting their destination unnecessarily, which would cause them to stop and 'jitter' on very large maps (mostly just Titan).

- Optimized creature search algorithms to perform better and more quickly, making creatures slightly less dumb and slow on large maps (specifically Titan) where creatures have to calculate longer paths.

- Turned the head-mounted camera around and increased its draw distance.

* Fixed the head-mounted camera not displaying the sky and instead just a black void outdoors.

- Cameras on the monitors indoors now display at a lower framerate to save costs on performance.

- The interiors now have basic distance culling to save on performance especially in large interiors; only rooms near you are rendered.

- Old Birds can now break bridges when walking on them as well as Forest Keepers.

- Lights indoors now have basic "indirect" lighting. This can be toggled off in the settings.

- Added a setting to decrease the game's pixel resolution, which should save GPU performance significantly if needed. This is also fun.

- Added accessibility options:

* Disable head-bobbing when running and jumping

* Enable toggle-to-sprint.

- Fixed company advertisements displaying an inverted sale percentage for a shop item (that is on a sale) for clients vs host.

- Fixed desync between when the "collected ___" hologram would display for different players; now they only display when players drop their scrap in the ship, not all at once when entering.

- Increased time it takes to drown by about a second.

- Baboon hawks dropping scrap will now properly drop it on the cruiser

- Players dropping their items as a result of death, etc. will now properly drop it on the cruiser and mineshaft elevator (and other moving objects.)

- Old Birds can now be stood on while moving, and scrap can be placed on their heads.

- Added three new rooms/halls to the factory interior type.

- Mineshaft interior now has more pockets of caves along with the main cave network, which should make it easier to find scrap. It also limits the generation to a certain distance from the entrance, making the interior more bendy and interconnected.

- Scrap can now spawn at the end of normal hallways in the factory interior.

- When loading while landing the ship, the game loads the interior asynchronously, meaning that instead of a single lag spike, there is a longer but more pleasing loading sequence in which you can mostly use voice chat like normal.

* The visuals and audio of landing the ship and leaving in the ship have been improved and embellished.

- Fixed Hygrodere not properly morphing to accomodate the environment

- Fixed Hygrodere not changing size based on variables

- Fixed Hygrodere camping the main entrance when it would follow a player to the main entrance.

- Added the utility slot, which can only be used for (most) non-scrap, shop-purchased items.

* Shovels are excluded.

* While I liked the strategic tradeoff of having to use a scrap slot to hold tools, it meant that most players opted out of using items all-together.

- Running into your fellow employees will shove them aside; if both employees are running at each other, they will both collide. Crouching or carrying heavy scrap makes you harder to get around.

- Fixed cases where spray paint, etc. would not work when facing up while someone is watching you on the map monitor.

- Added a diversity meter to some moons which limits the amount of unique species that can spawn in a single day, to keep from overwhelming new players especially. This is to prepare for adding more creatures.

- Fixed the game's randomness so that creatures will always spawn in the same order on Challenge Moons.

* When creatures die, which would normally open up space for different creatures to spawn early, it now waits until the determined spawn order has been finished to begin spawning extra creatures.

* Also made it so the Old Birds cannot spawn from thin air.

- The game now detects if your client is running a mod loader and uses this to indicate to other players browsing the server list. This does not mean that mods are officially supported or recommended, but I understand the value they add to the game for many players.

- Fixed Tulip Snakes causing lag spikes for the host player when they would walk the interior.

- Indoor creature spawn curves, which are based on the time of day, now round up as well as down when determining the number of creatures to spawn, meaning that the creature spawn curve defined for each moon is represented more accurately. Spawn levels have all been adjusted down slightly by the same amount to compensate. (This might require rebalancing or I may revert it.)

- Slightly lowered night vision range to make the dark more dangerous without a light source

- Increased the distance at which Coilheads will not enable their collision if they stop while ontop of a player, to prevent Coilheads from pushing players through walls

- Fixed cases where Forest Keepers could be "charged up" by almost seeing one player and then use that charge on another player, causing it to immediately see the other player.

- Crouching or standing still or just walking is now more effective on Forest Keepers when at a distance, and past a certain, far distance they cannot see you at all.

- Starting a new file now sets a random seed initially, instead of always defaulting to zero, which means the furniture on sale will always be different on the first quota.

- Swapped Sigurd's log locations on many moons

- Fog on moons has been updated to fit better visually, and foggy weather is also varied by moon to fit.

- Fixed players not using the proper two-handed hold animation when switching from a two-handed item to an empty item and then to another two-handed item that uses a different animation

- And so many other fixes and changes that I'm not going to be able to get through them all.