Vonkelveld · published
v0.34.0 gave your world a face you could read. v0.35.0 is about the people living in it — where they are going, and how they get there.
They come home. A soul who sets out now has somewhere to arrive, stays a while when she gets there, and turns back for her own hearth. Before this, of a hundred and twelve people who ever left home in a long winter, not one ever came back, and not one had ever stood in a town centre. Now most of them return.
They walk instead of hopping. A person used to be drawn at one place per turn of the world, so even at a stroll she crossed the ground in jumps. Every body now moves continuously between the turns — a walk that is a walk, and it costs nothing.
The errand is legible. Travellers head for a market they can actually reach, rather than setting out toward one they were never going to make; they stride a full pace; and they stand at the far end long enough for you to see them get there. What the crowd is doing now looks like what the crowd is doing.
People pass behind things. A figure walking in front of a house is in front of it, and one walking behind is hidden by it. A great temple sharing a row with a cottage still reads as the temple. Nobody is a sticker pasted over the world any more.
The cursor points at what you are pointing at. Hovering and striking now test the shape actually drawn on screen. A wildflower could previously claim the cursor from two thirds of a cell away, and a single person held a target more than thirty times her own size — in a crowd there was nowhere left to point.
A wall that turns a corner. Ramparts were drawn facing one direction, which is right on a town's south side and a fence lying on its side everywhere else. A wall now follows the line it stands on, whichever way the town turns, and its towers are spaced along its length rather than dropped wherever the outline happened to jog.
A market you can find. The stalls were built too small to see — a booth's tallest part stood lower than a hut's roof. They are rebuilt around what a market actually looks like: a big bright striped awning. A booth is now half again taller than a house, and a grand market towers over one.
A shorter night. Night was half of every day. It is now closer to a third — the dark still comes, and still sweeps across the world as it always did, but it no longer takes up half your time in it.
And night is yours to set. Two new sliders under Visuals: Night length runs from a brief dusk to longer than the old night, and Night brightness from a dimming you can still see by to something near pitch black. Set them where you like them; the world keeps its own clock either way.
Continuing an older age: a world kept by v0.34.0 or earlier will be rebuilt from its own record when you load it, rather than resumed from its saved position — the first load takes a little longer and nothing is lost. Its people did not know how to come home, and we would rather rebuild your age honestly than resume it under rules it never lived. Finished ages and their scores are untouched.