Terra Firma 2 Disasters Update

major update

Terra Firma 2 · build 24747467 · published

On SteamNotes only · this build shipped before we watched the app

Greetings worldbuilders!  The first full update to Terra Firma 2 since release last year is now complete.  This update adds a variety of disasters, each providing a unique way to interact with and modify your creations.

Meteors

Choose the size and speed then fling your space rocks ranging from (relatively) tiny blips all the way up to dinosaur killers that will completely remake the surface of your world.

Volcanoes

Volcanoes erupt over time, building mountains and then ending with the caldera collapsing.  Customise the type of lava to produce mountains with gentle or steep slopes. Watch volcanic islands rise from the ocean and then erode back into atolls.

Floods

Trigger gigantic floods that wash away everything in their path.

Tsunamis

Move massive amounts of ocean water around and watch the resulting waves wash across the landscape.

Earthquakes

Warp and transform the landscape with earthquakes featuring customisable fault direction, horizontal and vertical slip amounts.

Water Physics

The water physics has been overhauled with more realistic flows for large bodies of water and ocean water now fully simulated.  Sea levels can now be raised or lowered to explore a variety of different terraforming scenarios.  A new configuration option makes water prefer to not run off the edge of the map.

Keep simulating when zoomed

You can now enable and disable the zoomed in detail view.  When disabled, the simulation will keep running at any zoom level allowing you to closely inspect the landscape as it evolves.  

Other improvements

  • Added a new erosion speed that can be set to any value you want

  • Added a visual display of current temperature

  • Significant rework to dirt, rock and lava makes properly conical landforms rather than the square ones seen previously

  • New groundwater simulation for better distribution of swamps and marshes, and plant growth in desert areas

  • Improved simulation of grass growth cycles

  • Lighting options are now saved when changed

  • Added hotkeys for different camera modes

  • Many performance improvements to the main simulation, which is both faster and uses less memory

  • Savefiles now remember whether the game was paused or running when loading

  • Water properly flows over the top of lava now

  • Map sides render land, ice, water and lava layers stacked properly

  • Configuration setting for whether sea level changes the temperature

  • Configuration setting for whether ocean water rises when editing land under it

  • Improvements to snow rendering 

  • Added Turkish translations

  • Vastly improved tree and plant billboard rendering

  • Improved zoomed out rendering of trees and plants

  • Changed ice so glaciers don't flow off the map edges and cause excessive erosion

  • Minecraft export supports exporting to different versions (1.20.1, 1.20.2, 1.21.1, 26.1+)

  • Minecraft export has ores and caves

  • Minecraft export uses fractional water levels for smoother water rendering

  • Minecraft exports now have water with fractional heights

  • Various bugs with UI scales other than 100% have been fixed

  • Fixed glitches on map boundaries in Minecraft exports

  • Fixed the issues that Linux/Proton users were having with the UI not working

  • Fixed major issue with rivers depositing too much sediment

  • Fixed bug with lava and volcanoes not properly working on larger maps

  • Fixed heightmap export when image dimensions are lower than world dimensions

  • Fixed behaviour on map edges where dirt would form a barrier

  • Fixed bug with symmetrical random editing

  • Fixed bug with checks on road building costs in campaign mode not reflecting actual costs

  • Fixed rendering issue with topographic and other data overlays at map edges

  • Fixed 50+ miscellaneous crashes

What's next

We'll be posting a separate update to announce the future roadmap, but work is already underway on

  • A complete overhaul of biomes following the Koppen climate classifications. 23 major biomes and hundreds of sub biomes, more than 50 brand new trees created and animals added back into the game

  • A tectonics uplift system allowing land to raise over time to counteract erosion

  • Lots more rock and material types

  • A modding interface bundled with and launchable from the game, to edit or make new custom biomes, plants, animals and rock types

  • An export API to allow building new exporters

  • Steam workshop support