2.1.3 published to Google Play

Again, big thanks to everybody who submitted bug reports.

Here’s what’s changed in 2.1.3:

• Experimental support for gamepads with digital triggers (e.g. PS3 gamepad)
• Increased flu onset time (takes longer until you get it)
• Increased food drops from large animals
• Fixed horse control, horses would run back to herd even if rider was on
• Fixed donkey saddled texture
• Fixed and optimized broken water thawing/freezing and snow deposition
• Speeded up block scanning, should reduce sleep times further
• Fixed water bucket drawing
• Fixed summoning horses by whistle
• Reduced player food satiation (can eat the same food for longer before you get sick)

2.1.3 should be with you shortly.

Please keep testing.

2.1.2 going out

I’ve just published 2.1.2 bugfix release to Google Play.

I’ve decided to make experience orbs available in creative. No need for the chest hack to get them. They’re now in creative inventory.

Here’s what you’re getting in 2.1.2:

• Made experience orbs collection sound quieter
• D-Pad Down does not switch camera when GUI is active
• Vital Stats widget improvements (10 half bars instead of 8 blending bars)
• Gamepad cursor speed setting added
• Sensitivities screen merged with controls screen
• Animals will break off chase for longer than previously
• Gamepad B/Circle button goes back to previous screen on all screens
• Gamepad B/Circle button closes game menu
• Amount of dropped experience displayed in Recipaedia block description
• Gravel drops gravel blocks correctly
• Fixed masses of wolves spawning at full moon
• Explosions can now generate much bigger pressure if many barrels are put next to each other
• Increased explosion resistance of iron blocks, copper blocks and diamond blocks to withstand stronger explosives in 2.1
• Added furniture mirroring
• Added experience orbs to creative inventory
• Reduced wolves, coyotes and rhinos spawn rate
• Optimized sleeping to take less time

Quite a lot for a bugfix release :-)

Thank you for all the bug reports so far and please keep testing!

Long sleep time

I am aware of this problem, but there is no easy fix.

The problem is, the game is fully simulated in the background when the players are sleeping. This must be so. You want the animals to get to you when you forget to lock the door. You want your crops to grow. You want your food to rot. You want your electricity to work. And so on.

Of course, simulating entire night (8 minutes of real time) plus a usually a good part of the day, depending on when you went to sleep, is not going to take a few seconds.

What I am doing for 2.1.2:

• I optimized away certain things to take less time during sleep. For example texture animation was done unneccesarily.
• I speeded up the time even further. This means you might get really choppy framerate while sleeping. But I don’t think the Zzz… moving smoothly is the most important thing in the world.

What you can do:

• Reduce your visibility range. The larger the amount of terrain loaded, the more work the simulation has to do. For example, the game is constantly scanning the entire loaded terrain so that every block is polled at least once per game time minute. The more terrain there is, the more polling to do. Apart from animals physics/AI, this is the most time consuming thing.

Should be releasing 2.1.2 soon.

Furniture mirroring

Good idea from @spoon3er. Furniture mirroring. Always wanted to have it, but could not figure out where to put the extra button in the already overcrowded Build Furniture dialog.

Prompted by his comment, I revisited the problem and here’s the solution:

We don’t really need two rotate buttons! One will do just fine, three clicks of rotate right are equivalent to one click of rotate left anyway. So I replaced rotate left with mirror.

No need to build separate designs for left and right-handed variants of the same thing any more.

This will be coming as a part of 2.1.2 soon.

Masses of wolves at night

There is currently a bug that causes a lot of wolves to spawn at full moon nights. They then turn into werewolves. As the morning comes, they turn back into a huge herd of wolves. This is fixed in 2.1.2 which should be coming out soon.

Note: this only happens during full moon nights. You should not be getting 15+ wolves during normal nights.

2.1.1 submitted to Google Play

First quick fix update submitted.

2.1.0 has a bug which prevents you from loading certain old worlds. The error message is “Required database object not found”. This is fixed in 2.1.1, which should be with you in a couple of hours.

Please keep testing!

2.1 submitted to Google Play

Google Play should receive the update in a few hours. In the meantime, check the Updates History, all changes in 2.1 are already listed there.

As many of you are new here, I’ll outline the usual update process:

First, I release the update on Google Play. This is because it is by far the easiest platform to work with, with the quickest turnaround in case of problems.

Second, Google Play users act as testers. They play the game first, but also find the bugs I might have introduced. The bugs get fixed. This usually takes a few days.

Third, I release for the remaining platforms: Apple AppStore, Windows Phone, Windows Store, Amazon App Store.

Btw. did you know that in 2.1 you can cook pumpkins to get pumpkin soup?

Which after a few days will turn into a rotten pumpkin soup:

Looks delicious. Not :-)

I will upload 2.1 blocks texture and blocks data to Files/Technical page shortly.

You will also soon notice that I decided to change Surivalcraft 2 icon to a simpler version:

 

1-LED blocks and multicolored LEDs

There are some new electric blocks coming in 2.1 too, it’s not all about survival.

1-LED block:

This is a full-block sized LED that changes color depending on the voltage applied. Useful for making (huge) color screens. It complements the existing 4-LED block that has a fixed color, but lights up a combination of 4 constituent LEDs depending on voltage.

Multicolored LED block:

This is a small LED block that changes color depending on the voltage applied. Complements the existing fixed color LED blocks.

Thank you for all the replies on the Bestiary question I asked a couple posts back. Based on that, I have now decided to make the bestiary fully visible at all times. I don’t think spending extra day adding the animal discovery logic is worth it.

Rivers & Biome Size

The terrain generator had a large overhaul for 2.1. Have a look at the video:

Bestiary

There is a list of all animals with their properties coming in 2.1. It’s called Bestiary.

That’s how it looks like (I will probably add loot info as well):

Also have a look at the video:

At the end of the video I have a question for you: I can make it so that bestiary is initially filled with “undiscovered” entries. As the animals are discovered by the player, they will appear there. Discovering an animal means looking at it from close range (e.g.  less than 5 blocks) for a period of time, or killing it.

This way player has some incentive to wander off and find more animals.

Do you think I should do it for 2.1, or should the bestiary be complete from the start? Please let me know in the comments!

Now for something else.

Here the way the game calculates attack damage (to give some meaning to attack power/resilience figures in Bestiary):

Each animal has a life value that is between 0 and 1 (dead to full health). The life value of player is displayed as hearts. A successful attack reduces the life value of a creature by the following amount:

damage = attack power of attacker / resilience of target

A random factor of +/- 20% is added to every attack.

For example, a human male using bare hands has an attack power of 1. If attacking a brown bear (resilience 60), the resulting damage will be:

damage = 1 / 60 = 0.0167

Not much. You need about 60 bare hands hits to kill the bear. On the other hand if you’re wielding an iron machete (attack power 7), you just need 8-9 hits.

If the defender is wearing armor, the armor takes the damage instead, leaving body unharmed. After taking enough damage (indicated as Armor Durability in Recipaedia), the armor will disintegrate.

“Soft” types of armor (like leather or fur) only absorb a part of the damage, and the attack still partially damages the body. The percentage of damage armor absorbs is displayed as Armor Protection (0 to 100%) in Recipaeadia. Hard armors have it at 100%, leather at 50%, furs at 25%. For 2.1 I am also making cotton clothes have 10% instead of 0% (so that wearing clothes always helps a bit).

Anyway, please go to the comments and let me know what you think about the Bestiary idea.