Vox Update and General Announcement

Hey guys,About time for an update right? :PFirstly my apologizes for being so distant recently with regards to the discussion boards here, the official Vox forums and generally with sharing information about whats been happening lately... well now I am ready to share some info.Sorry that the latest patch has taken so long to release but I decided to really put my head down and get a couple of the biggest issues nailed before releasing this patch, something which I have not always done in the past and hence why certain things have been broken and remained broken for a while. Well not this time, I decided to finally tackle the big world and chunk loading issues that have been reported by a number of players. This is no small task and I have completely rewritten the world and chunk management of Vox, I originally started this task before the Christmas holidays and wanted to have it finished before I went away for xmas vacations, but it appears I vastly underestimated how long this would take and I was not finished in time before I left for vacation.But since returning I have been hard at work and slowly but surely rebuilding all the core elements of the terrain and world generation and chunk and voxel management. This new structure and management setup completely removes the world crashing issues that some people were having when roaming around the world and also optimizes performance so people should experience no lag when playing.I don't need to go into technical details (unless you want me to) but suffice to say the previous way that chunk management and loading/saving was handled was not really the best for a voxel engine and was prone to failings, even more so on older hardware and PC specifications.Anyway the new way that I am doing this now is far better at scaling and also has a number of nice benefits too, that greatly enhance gameplay (one example is underground caves are making a come back in the next patch!).Right now I have fully rewritten the chunk management code and I am just refactoring all of the other subsystems that interacted with the chunk code, i.e. pretty much everything. Previously I have been bad at giving estimates in the past and resorted to the cheap and easy 'soon' tactic, but not anymore. I'm gonna be strong here and give a firm answer of saying this patch is now aroundLooking to the future there is a lot of exciting things coming up on the horizon for Vox, right after this stability patch is released we are going to be implementing a lot of the cool new art and assets that you might have been seeing around the place recently from the new Voxel modeler. And also I am going to dive right into the new gameplay features that have been planned for a while and also add a ton of new content that has been building up on the backlog while I fixed the core chunk issues described above.Again I have been bad and should have introduced Zach sooner, since he is a great asset to have for Vox, but consider him fully introduced now! He also goes by the alias y2bcrazy and regularly streams fun stuff over on Twitch so you should check him out (See the other pinned topic).Thanks again for your patience with Vox, I know some people have voiced frustration about the issues and don't worry, I have read and taken on board everything that the Vox players have said. I really do value each and every one of you. It's time to put Vox back on top where it should be as the best and most customizable voxel adventure game, and really prove that this game has the potential to be amazing!If you want to discuss more stuff in detail with me and really see where I am most active, you should look to my twitter account, that is by far the best and easier way to get in contact with me - http://www.twitter.com/AlwaysGeeky Ciao for now.AlwaysGeeky