This update is accessible via the “Testing” release of Boundless on Steam.

Please report all issues discovered with the update to this support thread.

Please restart Steam to make sure you get the latest version of Boundless.

Overview:

This release is the result of a large amount of background work all coming together right now. There are a large amount of new features, which will give you lots of fun new things to play with. Because of the sheer quantity of new systems the balance of those systems will inevitably need work, and we’d like you to help us with this. When looking at these new features if you could try and separate the functionality that we have added (i.e. what you can do, and how you can do it) from the balance (i.e. the time things take, and how much effect things have) and feedback on them separately that would be really helpful to us. For example you may say: "I like the goal of the Energy mechanic to make timing and aiming my shots in combat more strategic (the functionality), but with high level weapons the Energy drains far too quickly / slowly to achieve that goal as it stands (the balance). Feeding back like that will allows us know where there are issues with the balance and where there are issues with the functionality.

Feature Introductions:

(Thanks @Jiivita : !)

Release Notes:

Art + Animation + Assets: Added assets for new crafting items including: bowls of food, pie, bread, beans, earthyams, creature armour, creature organs, creature eyeballs, trophy drops for wildstock, roadrunners, hoppers, cuttletrunks and spitters, bags, blood and ink, brews, butter, buckets, flints, flasks of oil, orbs, shards, bomb augments and various glass bottles used in the Forge. New globe map art asset and 1st and 3rd person animations. Spawn location of spitter projectiles lowered so now emitting from the snout. New weather effects added and current weather effects updated. The new effects are more efficient and with better visuals. They should reduce the performance issues effecting some players. More weather effects will be added when the new planet and biome driven weather system is complete.

Crafting + Resources + Equipment: Remove vertex distortion on the blocks when in inventories, plinths, etc. During the Tutorial it is always day time. Beacon View: Added beacon plot view mode (defaults to B). Added a contextual message to explain how to toggle the beacon view. Beacon view now remains on if the player equips a Beacon, Campfire or Plotter for more than two seconds. Beacon Fuel: A new type of fuel has been added for Beacons. Leaves and Timber will no longer be valid fuel for a Beacon. There are now 5 types of Beacon fuels which have different durations starting from 2 weeks and up to 16 weeks. The tutorial objectives has been updated work with the new fuel types and match the new recipes. Empty bucket can now be used on water to get a bucket of water. New Drops and Drop Balance: A host of new drop types as supplemental drops from blocks, plants and surface resources. Starberries, earthyams, beans, leaves, petals, bark, lamella from some plants, soil, wood and leaf blocks. Flint, rock salt, opal, fragments from boulders and rock blocks. Rare orbs from some high-end blocks and fungi. Number of drops increased, making luck more useful even on lower tier worlds. A new set of creature drops: Meat, blood, hide, glands, eyes, and trophies. A totally revamped crafting tree, with numerous new ingredients and finished items: Food ingredients such as sugar, rice, flour, oats, syrup and butter. Finished food such as bread, pies and casseroles, as well as reducing hunger (see below) they also apply one of numerous new buffs (see below). Buckets which can be filled with water from lakes and used for crafting. (Note: this isn’t the solution for placing fluid blocks.) Cloths, bonding agents, amalgams and oils as ingredients for other recipes. Decorative wood blocks. A larger selection of slingbow augments. Engines to upgrade the machines (see below). Brews, which when consumed apply one of numerous new buffs (see below). Bombs (see below). Beacon fuel (see below). Revive augment (see below). New Feature: ENGINES - video introduction here Engines are used in upgrade machines, increasing their Power. Engines are placed near to the machine it upgrades, but with an air gap, and when correctly placed links to the machine with a power beam. Some recipes require a certain amount of Power to craft them. Standard engines provide a small amount of power, advanced engines provide a larger amount of power. If your machine has more power than a recipe requires then that recipe completes faster. Like machines, Engines need to be repaired, but this must be done with the correct type of Engineering Spanner. New Feature: ATLASES - video introduction here The purpose of Atlases is to help players find the asymmetrically distributed resources on a planet and determine which planets are rich in a particular resource. An atlas will help focus your search in a particular area but you will still need to search and use knowledge of the resource’s particular spawning pattern. An atlas is a literal “planet in the hand” that acts as a world map, and obeys all the laws of normal world lighting, it is visible in the hand of people holding them, and in storage blocks and plinths. An atlas, when crafted is initially empty, and by actioning the atlas, it will attempt to register the current world with all regions of the world that you have visited. (If you haven’t visited any regions, then nothing can happen). The atlas renders such that if you are on that same world, then the middle of the atlas in the screen will be where you currently are stood, with “up” on the screen being the direction your camera is facing. Actioning the atlas by holding the action button will bring the atlas up to the centre of the screen and enlarge it so you can get a better view, with a small amount of durability lost each time this is done. When actioned into the centre of the screen, the reticle will pinpoint your current location. The atlas has a “fog-of-war” relating to the 50 regions on each world, so that only regions unlocked on the atlas are visible. Note that the regions are unlocked “on” the atlas, so you can sell an atlas that has all regions unlocked to another player to use. It is the action of using the atlas that adds any regions you have visited to its unlocked set. Regions are not automatically unlocked when the region is entered. Atlases can be “powered-up” by equipping a totem Warp crystal, or by equipping any item that is dropped by a resource in the world, resources being any seams of metal or gems, coal or fossils, or any of the recently added surface resource blocks. When a Warp crystal is equipped, the atlas will show a heat-map overlay of beacons on that world. When a resource drop is equipped, the atlas will show a heat-map overlay of where you can find that resource drop in the world. The atlas itself will be greyed-out during this, with the heat-map providing a gradient to show where you are most likely to find the resource, and the colour showing how plentiful that resource is on the world, on a gradient from green (not so plentiful) to reddish-pink (highly plentiful). Equipping a warp crystal to your totem will now also show the same heat-map overlay of beacons on the world that equipping a warp crystal to an Atlas does, so when picking new warp locations you can choose to warp next to a populated area, including during the tutorial at the start of the game. Rebalanced Spark Core Condition values so that they wear down more consistently with different fuel types.

Creatures + Combat + Characters: Reducing the cooldown on cuttletrunk throw attacks from 50 seconds to 30 seconds. Clicking just before the Slingbow is ready to fire will now make the Slingbow fire once it is ready. This makes clicking in time with the Slingbow fire rate much easier! Hoppers now use different explosion sizes based on their tier. Hoppers can be stunned when they are hit with a hammer. Creature drops have been overhauled. Each creature now has unique drops which can be used in various recipes. The amount of drops and drop types varies by the creature tier. Dark Blood is no longer a drop from meteorites as the item no longer exists. New Feature: BUFFS and DEBUFFS Brew buffs provide short-term boosts. Food buffs provide longer-term effects. Only one food buff and one brew buff can be active at one time. Consuming a second brew will remove any existing brew buff. Consuming a second piece of food with remove any existing food buff. Some brews and some bombs can cleanse debuffs. The amount of debuff duration removed depends on the item used, and the level of the debuff. A collection of new character status effects triggered by the buffs: Well Fed (food) Invigorate (food) Energise (food) Shield(s) - physical and elemental (food) Light (food) Fast Learner (food) Critical Chance (food) Light Touch (food) Heal (brew) Recover (brew) Fast (brew) Strong (brew) Revival (brew) Innocuous (brew) Luminous (brew) Sick Full Up New Feature: BOMBS - video The new bag of bombs item can now be crafted. Click-and-hold with an equipped bag of bombs, will start the fuse of a held bomb. Bombs will always be automatically thrown before they explode. A short tap on the action button will drop the bomb just in front of you, anything longer will throw it further. Bombs will blow up on impact with their target or when the fuse runs out. Some bombs are weapons, and some will heal, recover energy or remove debuffs. New Feature: RAGE - video The Rage skill is now functional in the skill tree. Text for each skill has been updated to reflect what each skill does. Rage is accumulated based on the amount of damage received from creatures. Rage effects increase by the amount of stacks you have accumulated. Equip and consume a Rage Brew to convert the stacks into an ability. Rage cannot be earned if a Rage skill is already active. New Rage Skills - The different rage skills are listed below and the effects of the skills increase proportionally with the amount of rage accumulated: Rage - Unlocks the ability to gain up to 10 stacks of Rage when you take damage from creatures. Consuming a Rage Brew restores a portion of health. Rage Upgrade - Allows you to gain Rage faster and increases the amount of health restored when you consume a Rage Brew. Power Surge - Deal damage to all nearby creatures when you consume a Rage Brew with an area of effect attack. Power Surge Upgrade - Increases the range and damage of a Power Surge when you consume a Rage Brew. Adrenaline Rush - Restores health over time when you consume a Rage Brew for a period of time. Adrenaline Rush Upgrade - Increases the effects of Adrenaline Rush when you consume a Rage Brew. Thick Skin - Provides a temporary Shield when you consume a Rage Brew, increasing your Defence and Resistance against Kinetic and Impulse Attacks. Thick Skin Upgrade - Increases the effects of Thick Skin when you consume a Rage Brew. Contextual messages have been added to explain how rage works. New Feature: FOCUS The Focus skill is now functional in the skill tree. Text for each skill has been updated to reflect what each skill does. Focus is accumulated based on the amount of health recovered and amount of damage dealt to creatures. Focus effects increase by the amount of stacks you have accumulated. Equip and consume a Focus Brew to convert the stacks into an ability. Focus cannot be earned if a Rage skill is already active. New Focus Skills - The different focus skills are listed below and the effects of the skills increase proportionally with the amount of focus accumulated: Focus - Unlocks the ability to gain up to 10 Stacks of Focus when you deal Damage to Creatures. Consuming a Focus Brew restores a portion of Energy. Focus Upgrade - Allows you to gain Focus faster and increases the amount of Energy restored when you consume a Focus Brew. Precise Strikes - Increases the amount of damage dealt for a period of time when you consume a Focus Brew. Precise Strikes Upgrade - Increases the effects of precise strikes when you consume a Focus Brew. Quickening - Temporarily increases your Movement speed and action speed when you consume a Focus Brew. Quickening Upgrade - Increases the effects of quickening when you consume a Focus Brew. Petrify - An attack which slows nearby creatures when you consume a Focus Brew. Petrify Upgrade - Increases the effects of petrify when you consume a Focus Brew. Contextual messages have been added to explain how focus works. New Feature: HUNGER - video Players now gradually get hungry when they perform certain actions: use their held items, moving, jumping or sprinting. The hungrier a character is the less energy they have to use their held items. Players should eat food to increase their max energy. When full up a buff is applied which slowly replenishes health. Contextual messages have been added to explain how hunger works. New Feature: ENERGY Energy is consumed when the player uses a held item which has an energy drain cost. The Totem, Axes, Shovels, Grapples, Chisels, Hammers, Spanners, Slingbows and Bombs now cost energy cost to use. The amount of Energy per item can be seen in the item’s details panel in the inventory. Players cannot perform an action if the item’s energy cost is more than their current energy amount. Energy quickly recovers when the player has stopped performing an action for a brief period of time. The Energy attribute in the skill tree affects the amount of total Energy. The Energy Regeneration Skill affects the amount of Energy restored per second. The total energy is reduced by the character’s current hunger level. Added HUD indicator for actioning an item with no energy. Contextual messages have been added to explain how energy works. New Feature: REVIVE Defeated players who return to the Sanctum will be affected by a Death Sickness status effect. Certain attributes are reduced by 25% for 90 seconds. Players can now equip a Revive Augment in the Totem to restore defeated players. The Revive skill is required to use the Revive Augment in the Totem. Players can choose to return to the Sanctum or accept the Revive if another player has performed a Revive. Accepting the Revive will restore the player with a reduced death penalty and without the Death Sickness status effect. The Revive ability can be upgraded in the skill tree to increase its potency. The Revive ability has a cooldown once it has been used and can be reduced with a skill upgrade.

Sanctum + Tutorial + Objectives + Progression: More skill points awarded, particularly for higher levels. (Note: The skill tree and skill system are still due an overhaul based on player feedback and extended game systems.) Reducing the rewards for Trader Feats due to them being used as an exploit to level up faster. (Note: All feats will be reviewed in the future to make them less cheesable.) Journal: Adding new feats for making items with powered machines. Connect a machine to an engine to provide it with power. Updated the layout and order of crafter feats. Updated descriptions for certain crafter feats and gatherer feats. Phytologist feat has been expanded to include other surface resources. Added a new objective to explain how the revive system works. Unlock the revive skill to unlock the objective.

GUI + HUD: Optimised GUI CPU load. Cleaned up portal info text GUI. Added number of connected players and ping to the portal info text. Polish pass on positioning of new recipe items in GUI, storage and on plinths, baskets etc. Pressing empty (default X in the GUI) on a bucket containing a liquid will empty it. Changed player to player interaction: Rather than going directly into the trading menu, there is a new menu that presents various details about the other player (e.g. Level, Attributes, Skills) and a set of interaction options: Friend, Trade, Track and Mute Friend and Trade are request-response sequences (the other player has to agree to your request) Track (available if you have sufficient skill) allows you to follow that player on your compass Mute is per play session (not saved between sessions) and stops you seeing chat messages from that player, and stops you getting newsflashes when they try and Friend or Trade with you. Changed quick move (shift click with default controls) to: Stack with existing item stacks in the destination inventory (doesn’t support adding to smart stacks yet). In the inventory screen always hold the item clicked on (even if it is already in the radial). In the inventory screen allow switching an item from one hand to the other. Chat update: Added chat modes: say, shout and private message (PM). Added icons and colours for chat modes and emotes. Added text for emotes, and updated chat item header text. Added background panels and input box. Added mute toggle command (limited to session, and characters on your current world). Chat lines now have a popup menu that allows reporting, muting and starting a PM. Chat lines now have a scrollbar and can be scrolled with the mouse wheel. Updated HUD feedback and presentation for dealt and received damage, and energy changes. Energy changes shown as numbers coming from the player status HUD. Damage taken and health regeneration shown as numbers coming from the player status HUD. The size of the damage dealt is dependent on the proportion of the target’s health taken. Damage which is resisted and repelled by Armour are reported separately. Machine repair reported in the HUD. When repairing and a machine is already fully repaired this is reported with each spanner turn.

Engine: Graphics options now have a auto, custom, low, medium and high options. With auto used on first play. New lower resolution textures option for lower end GPUs. Added a Hud interface scale option to the settings screen. Added more precision to the GUI and Hud interface scale on the settings screen. Added a mesh block limit per chunk, currently 512, to avoid creating areas that are too costly. Improve performance on multicore machines when CPU limited by 10-20%. Adjustments to latency compensation to maintain more stable play for unstable connections, and improvements to packet loss calculations and inclusion of packet loss on the latency graph as a bright red line (shown as a percentage scaled to the graph height).

Server: Re-worked settlements algorithm to help ignore beacons that are roads, or that contain roads that could cause settlements to be merged together badly, the settlements may change quite a lot at first, so there may be many new mayors or some smaller settlements that no longer exist.

World Builder: Layered 3d noise components can now accept a noise function to vary the y between the normal slider value, and the extra fun-max-y slider value. Every single node now has a “seed” value which will by default combine with the parent seed and propagate further down to the children. There is a checkbox to disable inheriting the parent seed first before combining, but will always combine with the world seed. Setting the seed to an empty string (the default in migrated configs) will allow for unadulterated sampling of child noise functions (if you are aiming to get the exact same noise pattern in two different parts of the config file for instance). Virtually every single slider can now be right-click modified to add “randomisation” options. The slider value can be randomised between a min/max value with a possible non-uniform distribution. The randomisation is based on the seed of that node, so will change with different worlds, but be constant for a single “instance” of the world. This is for enabling a single config to generate different “shaped” worlds (eg same config, but in 1 generated world the mountains are shorter rather than just “different”). A slider cannot both be randomised “and” exposed from a custom-node. But exposed sliders from custom-nodes can themselves be randomised in usage. There are now “random” type nodes for all node types, that have replaced what used to be the “join strata” node for instance. The random type nodes, allow multiple inputs, but present only a smaller number of them (possibly exactly 1 in cases like the noise functions where multiple inputs to the parent don’t make sense) and are randomised based on the seed of the node like with random sliders. Again, this is allowing us to define single config files that can generate more varied worlds, eg, by the world seed changing at the top level, one world will have a few different biomes compared to a different world seed due to that randomisation. The way biomes are selected in the world has changed internally. Previously you may have had to mess around with the “weight” values on biomes to get the distribution you were looking for in the world, but that weight value is now interpreted more directly as a target of how prevalent that biome is in the world, and the actual internal weight value used will be iterated automatically as a pre-generation step so that (within reason, the noise functions for altitude/vegetation/humidity/temperature have to be sufficiently “noisy” to allow enough variation) if you have 4 biomes with the same weight value, then in the final world, they will occupy exactly 25% of the final world. This makes it much much easier to change/add/remove biomes and decide how rare they are, without having to worry about a whole web of interactions resulting from the selection functions and positions of the biomes in the selection space etc. For purposes of visualisation, this iteration is run at a lower iteration count with less quality to keep it largely realtime, but in a full world generation we run at higher quality with many more iterations to improve the accuracy. This means that the “biome-selection” visualisation may not match the actual generated world any more, but it should be “good enough” for iteration purposes. There are now ceiling substrates, which will generate onto the “bottoms” (aka ceilings) of surface segments, so that a ceiling substrate on threed islands, will add material to the undersides of the 3d islands. The floor/surface substrates will take priority so that the ceiling substrates will not replace them. The way strata work has been modified so that they will simply overwrite one another, instead of trying to push/pull each other around for strict layerings. This makes blendings of biomes much nicer to look at and easier for the designers to iterate the strata. The strata now no longer have restrictions on what type of block they can replace, but will also no longer replace substrate materials (which was the main reason to have restrictions in the first place to prevent that happening). Biome-part nodes can now define (under the height-map data) what type of material the ground should be made from at its basic level, so that the “entire biome” can be made of sand, rather than being made of rock, and having to try and use substrate/strata to replace the entire ground with sand. For merging of biomes, a rough fixed pattern of 3d noise selects between the base types to get a smooth blending between the biomes that use different base materials. Grass will no longer be removed when not exposed to direct sunlight, so grass may be generated underneath floating islands and overhangs, or even in dark caves if you so desired. Grass will continue not to spawn in liquids. Dark-Glass block type is now made available for the generated worlds to use. Some improvements made to initialisation times when generating/visualising sections of the config, this helps balance out the increased initialisation time due to the biome-weight iteration stage.

Bug fixes: Fix for beacon plot default colour being random. Fix for machine blocks with the same wear values not stacking in the inventory. Fixed an issue where in very rare cases it was possible for a user to lose progress in their save. Fixed an issue where Wildstock were not dealing damage to blocks during their charge attack. Fixed an issue where a contextual message for repeatedly mining a block was being shown. Fixed an issue where rock surface resources were harder to break with a hammer than with an axe.



Testing 187.1:

Minor Beacon Fuel is now available when you unlock the Basic Recipes skill.

Re-added the Stone Chisel recipe which should also fix the issue where the Stone Chisel does not have the correct tint.

Adjust to beacon fuel unlock order.

Fixed a crash when you equip an Edible Lamella.

Fixed an issue where the full up status effect is always active within the full up threshold.

Fixed an issue where you can not get out of PM (private message) mode in chat.

Fixed atlases crashing the client if placed in a selling plinth.

Fixed client crash when shift clicking items from inventory.

Fixed crashes with chat window.

Fixed issue where the chat doesn’t show in HUD unless chat interface is open.

Fixed tracking of creature drop progression.

Resolved Known Issues:

Camera is sometimes stuck after exiting GUI menus.

Pressing Escape key during chat will close and send message instead of closing and cancelling message.

Testing 187.2:

Added permanent tool tip when the player is very hungry.

Added permanent tool tip when the build mode is enabled.

Can now switch back to /say chat mode using chatline popup menu.

Fix client crash in chat when there is no active world.

Fix so can still activate chat even when “Show Chat Log” option is off.

Increasing the drop rate of the Hopper’s volatile blood and adding it to all tiers instead of just the higher tiers.

Added an amount to the missing item text on the furnace.

Character selection can now be done in world (a return to Sanctum is still required).

Testing 187.3:

Crafting + Resources + Equipment: Power amounts reworked to be larger numbers. Copper tool durability increased.

Sanctum + Tutorial + Objectives + Progression: Removed the requirement to craft handcrafted items with the crafting table unless the item can only be made with the crafting table. Re-ordered the tutorial tasks so they make sense. You now get the task to craft tools before you get the task to make a crafting table. New Objective message will show up each time you unlock a new objective.

GUI + HUD: Added chat menu for setting chat mode (/say, /shout) or starting a PM with a (on-world) friend. Added chat menu for performing emotes

Engine: Changes to weather shaders so that particulates that collide with the ground and move horizontally at larger speeds will no longer produce grid patterns on the ground. Changes to the universe-structure moving towards a final solution. The universe is now much more free-form and can allow us to add more worlds automatically expanding the universe over time. For the existing universe things will “largely” be the same but warp distances have very much changed, as has the presentation of the worlds in the sky with a more free-form orbiting scheme that follows the rotations of the sky itself so planets visible during the day can be different than those during the night (gradually changing over time). NOTE: Warping and Portal costs still need updating for the new universe structure. As the topology of the universe has changed some costs will also change.

Bug fixes: Fixed a rare server crash related to auto-added Steam friend lists. Fixes for chunk-cache issues on windows. The chunk cache will be recreated on next run. Fix missing projectile impact audio on terrain.



Testing 187.4:

Fix chat not closing.

Fix universe structure on Testing including Warps failing to open.

Testing 187.5: