Another bugfix update

The Android mouse support that was added in the last update worked fine on Android phones. But as it turned out, it did not work so well on Chromebooks. I coded it without a Chromebook to test it on, so this was only to be expected.

So yesterday I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a Chromebook. ASUS C434. Never had any of those before. Once I laid my hands on it and rebooted in developer mode, it took me entire 15 minutes to fix the mouse issues. If everything was so easy.

The new update is already on Google Play, the version number looks like that “2.4.xx.8”. Apart from the mouse, it fixes/tweaks the following things:

• Speeded up loading of game assets about 2x (only really perceptible on slow devices)
• Fixed missing fireworks particles texture
• Disabling terrain mipmaps on Android by default (they will cause terrain to go dark near the horizon due to lack of GL_TEXTURE_MAX_LOD support in OpenGL ES 2.0)
• Chromebook mouse support
• Slightly reduced fog duration in autumn/winter
• Compass shows proper direction when held in hand
• Fixed target block disappearing in the dark
• Look Sensitivity setting is correctly applied to mice and gamepads, not just to touch input

I should be releasing these fixes for other platforms soon. Some are already released.

Chromebooks

I know some people run Android version of Survivalcraft on their Chromebooks. Chromebooks emulate Android’s touch functionality using the mouse, but it’s not perfect.

The reason emulation is used is because the Android version of Survivalcraft has no native mouse support, like the Windows version has.

I decided to change that. I have just submitted a Play Store update to Day One version of Survivalcraft, which contains proper mouse support. As I don’t have a Chromebook at hand, I can’t test it properly, but it works when you connect a mouse to a plain Android device.

The version with mouse support is 2.4.11.6. It is currently in review, so not yet available in store. Once it releases, if you have a Chromebook and would like to test the mouse support, could you please download the (free) Survivalcraft 2 Day One and give it a try?

[EDIT] The submission was accepted nearly instantly. Google is really quick these days, like in the good old times! You can download the version with mouse support now from Play Store.

More bugfixes

Yesterday evening I discovered and fixed a rare but serious terrain corruption bug in 2.4. The loading would randomly fail, leaving certain chunks corrupted.

This was serious stuff, with a potential of breaking many existing worlds. Fortunately, the bug was rare, and only one person noticed its effects. I was then already working on the fix. Even better, the bug affected loading code only, so the data in the world files remained intact. It would be much worse if it affected saving.

Today I pushed out another round of releases for all the platforms. Here’s the list of changes:

• Fixed the terrain corruption bug
• No longer enable terrain mipmapping on Android/iOS by default (it causes far terrain to appear dark)
• Fixed corrupt water model z-fighting with the ground
• Slowed down winter crops growth a little bit more
• Fixed recipes that allowed production of infinite bricks
• Reduced probability of predators chasing other animals
• Increased resilience of some animals. This is to compensate for lower melee miss rate when attacking stationary targets
• Explosion ground shake tweaks
• Increased scale and duration of explosion particles
• Increased duration of powder keg fuses to make them safer to use
• Various other little tweaks

…and another update!

Updates for Google Play come fast and thick these days.

The previous quick update (version 2.4.10.3) was a test to see whether I can make the worlds not disappear on update. I now know the answer – it is negative. All the users of 2.3 on Google Play who update to 2.4 must have worlds wiped from the device, no way around it. Backup your worlds before update if you are still on 2.3.

On the other hand, those of you who already updated to 2.4 will have their worlds preserved. Silver linings :-)

There is another update coming to Google Play, number 2.4.10.4. It fixes the following issues:

• Player temperature calculation when submerged in water was incorrect (too high). It’s now easier to get hypothermia when swimming.
• Tweaked pickables duration for eggs. Due to pickables duration increase in 2.4, too many eggs were lying around after a while.
• By popular demand crops not growing in winter has been nerfed. The crops will still grow, but significantly slower. Personally, I would leave it not growing – you should stock up before winter.
• Fixed keyboard help mixup

Big thanks to the diligent players who spotted those!

For some reason I can release these updates on Google Play very quickly. Usually the review process by Google takes days, but we are being lucky, and each update is available within hours.

Update

I am releasing a new bugfix update to Google Play. I have been trying to nail down the reason of the worlds disappearing after updating. This upcoming update changes the application bundle format back to the old style, as used by 2.3 and earlier – maybe that will help.

If it works, the people who have not yet updated will not lose their worlds. On the other hand, those who have already updated might have their worlds wiped again.

I don’t know whether it will work or not.

Please backup any valuable worlds before doing updates on Google Play until this is sorted.

Subtle Change

2.4 contains an important improvement, which is not immediately obvious. The range at which animals de-spawn has been increased.

It means you will see animals going about their business further away than in 2.3. It might become harder to escape predators, because you need to move further for them to de-spawn and stop tracking you. You can also challenge yourself to hit a bird with a musket from that much larger distance (best use grapeshot).

This is the first time since 2011 I changed this value. It was set to 48 blocks ever since the first animal was added back in these ancient times. Btw. does anyone here still remember which was the first animal? Gosh, some of you may not have even been born back then… time flies.

The reason I kept this value low up to now is performance. The further away the animals are simulated, the more stress on your phone. As phones are now vastly faster than in 2011, we can let ourselves go a little.

2.4.10.2 bugfix release

I’ve just submitted 2.4.10.2 bugfix release to Google Play.

It fixes the following bugs:

• Sun and moon sometimes appearing out of shape and in wrong places
• Werewolves interacting with blocks when dead (as corpses)
• Fish embedded in ice still attacking player when near (vicious!)
• Poplar saplings recipe missing
• Creative inventory contains painted dirt slabs and stairs

I also did some further tweaking of creature spawning, sun glow and fog frequency.

Thank you to everyone who commented/emailed me with bug reports!

I will be shortly releasing Day One versions of Survivalcraft, and also releasing it to other platforms. So don’t worry if you are on iOS or Windows or Amazon – it’s coming.

In the meantime, here’s a poplar tree for you (new in 2.4):

2.4 bugs

WARNING: please back up your important worlds to Dropbox before updating to 2.4!

Thank you for all the bug reports. The odd-shaped and large sun bug is already fixed. How strange can be the celestial phenomena caused by one missing matrix multiplication:

The sun/moon bug manifests itself depending on where you are in the world, so in many cases the sun looks OK. Only when you get to large coordinates the above happens.

I should be soon releasing the bugfix update.

However, the issue with blank worlds list after update cannot be fixed – please backup your important worlds before updating to 2.4.

2.4 update is on Google Play

WARNING: please back up your important worlds to Dropbox before updating to 2.4!

2.4 update released on Google Play earlier today.

The update appears to be wiping the existing worlds – the list of worlds is blank after the update. This is totally unexpected, the game itself is not wiping the data (and remains fully compatible with old worlds all the way down to 1.0 alpha, from 2011).

It seems it is the installation process from Google Play that is wiping the data. Unfortunately, this is beyond my control. It’s Android and Google Play Store infrastructure which perform the installations/updates. For some reason at the moment unknown to me, they either uninstall the old version before installing the new one, or change the location of the data directory. The new version of the game sees a blank slate after the update.

Sadly, there is not much I can do about it right now. Again, please backup your worlds before updating.

The Cycle Of Seasons

Another video for you.