Update 12 released! Free object placement, reworked animal behaviour and more!

[p]Hello Eco Citizens,[/p][p]after multiple playtests with the Eco community, we're happy to announce the release of Update 12!
Let's dive right in and take a look at what's new:[/p][p][/p]

Free Object Placement

[p]Nearly all objects in Eco can now be placed independent of the world grid and freely rotated, allowing for completely new designs in player homes. Of course you can also still place them aligned to the grid by holding shift, if you so wish.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]This also includes the ability to place a variety of decorations and food on different surfaces - and you can even place furniture on rugs now![/p][p][/p][p][/p]

New Decorations

[p]For you to be able to make the best use of the new free placement ability, we have added a variety of new decorations that you can use to beautify your world, check them out:[/p][p][/p]

Selling from Surfaces

[p]The ability to place things on surfaces also allows you to sell items directly from them, instead of having to put them into a store. Simply place what you want to sell on a table and set a price on the table UI - a price sign will appear next to the placed object and other players will be able to directly buy it from the table.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]

Dinner Parties

[p]With this update comes a new cultural feature - Dinner Parties! They can be started after preparing a variety of fresh out of the oven food and placing it on tables. After starting a dinner party, players have 30 minutes to participate and eat up to three courses on the deed it is hosted on.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The success of a dinner party is determined by the amount of players taking part and the individual taste of all meals consumed - you will want to prepare either a wide variety of food for your guests to choose from or be prepared and know exactly what the favourite foods of your guests are.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Successful dinner parties provide culture to the settlement they took place in as well as a multiplicative nutrition bonus for all participants, increasing the skill gain through nutrition notably. These bonuses decay after some time, so make sure to make your dinner parties a regularly occurring event![/p][p][/p]

Reworked Animal Behaviour

[p]For this update we have completely reworked the behaviour of animals in Eco. Most notably, the majority of calculations has been moved to the client, making them more reliable and hunting a better experience. They also got a variety of new animations for smoother movement, try to avoid high player activity areas and can become sick from pollution and hence unsuitable for processing.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Many animals will now appear in herds and exhibit individual behaviours instead of roaming around alone. Predators have a tendency for aggressive behaviour, seeking out prey and occasionally attacking the player. Other animals exhibit solely defensive behaviour where getting too near to or hunting them will make them defend themselves.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Players can scare aggressive animals away by holding a torch and in case of necessity defend themselves with tools as well. The aggressiveness of animals towards players can be limited to defensive behaviour or disabled completely per server if you prefer your game to be completely peaceful. And if you like peaceful things, you might also enjoy a first taste of Animal Husbandry - try to feed an elk:[/p][p][/p]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSI24LtM-Vk[p][/p]

Improved Atmosphere

[p]We also have completely replaced the systems for Lighting, Time of Day and Weather and unified them into a single system, allowing for a much improved atmosphere. Check out the different weathers:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]While doing so, we have also adjusted Eco's lighting - take a look at the vibrant daylight and how it lets your builds come to life:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Of course we also adjusted the nights and made them a bit darker, incentivizing the use of artificial lighting by players:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]On top of that, we have added and reworked a large amount of ambient sounds to make the world feel even more lively.[/p][p][/p]

New Achievements

[p]With Update 12 we have added a total of 45 new achievements with varying difficulties, coming in different levels for you to chase. Try to get them all![/p][p][/p][p][/p]

Release Notes

General Changes:

• [p]Added: Daisy, Tulip and Rose flowers.[/p]
• [p]Changed: Shelf life for all seeds increased significantly.[/p]
• [p]Changed: Shelf life for Flour, Rice Flour, Sugar, Tallow and Wheat increased.[/p]
• [p]Changed: Hanging signs now require to be mounted on a wall.[/p]
• [p]Changed: Windmills now require to be mounted on ground (e.g. on a block below them).[/p]
• [p]Changed: Minimum nutrition amount requirement for a food item to be potentially selected as "worst" taste decreased to 45.[/p]
• [p]Improved: Seats on all government tables can now be mounted.[/p]
• [p]Improved: Painted blocks now provide a bonus to housing experience, up to 20% when all blocks of a room are painted.[/p]

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Notable Bug Fixes:

• [p]Fixed: A number of issues that caused barges to sink.[/p]
• [p]Fixed: A number of issues that caused fishing with the fishing rod to be unreliable.[/p]
• [p]Fixed: An issue where loading of world objects took a very long time or stopped completely. [/p]
• [p]Fixed: An issue that prevented the maximum possible amount of items to be moved to an inventory when trying to move more items than possible, leading to no items being moved at all.[/p]
• [p]Fixed: Easel filters didn't apply correctly when creating a painting with it.[/p]
• [p]Fixed: Equipping a painting tool and sprinting could lead to inability to scroll through the hotbar.[/p]
• [p]Fixed: Store icons on the map didn't show their tooltip at the correct position.[/p]
• [p]Fixed: An issue that lead to an incorrect display of the time until meteor impact.[/p]

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Server & Configs:

• [p]Added: Validation for world dimension settings, the minimum selectable length and width are now 40, the maximum selectable length and width are now 400. The server will automatically use the maximum possible value and notify about that when values higher than the maximum were configured.[/p]
• [p]Added: Validation for maximum build height depending on world dimension settings. The server will automatically use the maximum possible value and notify about that when an impossible one was configured.[/p]
• [p]Improved: It is now possible to use a maximum build height of up to 320, depending on the world dimension settings. Worlds with dimensions of up to about 250x250 support a maximum build height of 320, beyond that the possible maximum build height decreases.[/p]

[p]Features.template.eco [/p]

• [p]Added: "AnimalAttackPattern" config variable, determining how animals attacks work - defaults to "AttackNormally". Also takes "DefensiveOnly" to replace aggressive behaviour of predators with the defensive behaviour of other animals and "None" to disable animals attacking.[/p]
• [p]Added: "AnimalUnprovokedAttackFrequencyMultiplier" config variable, determining how likely it is that predators will attack players unprovoked - defaults to 1.0. Lower values will reduce the individual attack chance per animal, while higher values will quickly make it go to its maximum.[/p]

[p]Rooms.template.eco [/p]

• [p]Changed: "RoomCategoryDiminishingReturnRate" config variable now defaults to 0.1, decreasing housing experience from additional rooms notably. [/p]

[p]Settlements.template.eco [/p]

• [p]Added: "DinnerPartyConfig" section, which all config variables below are part of.[/p]
• [p]Added: "FreshnessTimeMinutesPreparedFood" config variable, determining how long a food item is considered fresh for dinner parties after crafting - defaults to 60 minutes.[/p]
• [p]Added: "FreshnessTimeMinutesRawFood" config variable, determining how long a raw food item is considered fresh for dinner parties after harvesting - defaults to 720 minutes.[/p]
• [p]Added: "CulturePointsPerFoodItem" config variable, determining how many culture points each eaten meal in dinner parties provide - defaults to 1.[/p]
• [p]Added: "MultiplierForTastiness" config variable, determining the bonus multiplier for each taste level.[/p]
• [p]Added: "SettlementCountMultiplier" config variable, determining the bonus multiplier per amount of different settlements being represented by citizens participating in the dinner party.[/p]
• [p]Added: "DinnerPartyMaxDays" config variable, determining over which time the bonuses from a dinner party decay - defaults to 7 days.[/p]
• [p]Added: "DinnerPartyMinutesDuration" config variable, determining how long a dinner party can run - defaults to 30 minutes.[/p]
• [p]Added: "MaxCoursesPerPlayer" config variable, determining how many meals a player can eat per dinner party - defaults to 3.[/p]
• [p]Added: "DinnerPartiesAllowedPerDay" config variable, determining how many dinner parties a player can participate in per day - defaults to 1.[/p]
• [p]Added: "DinnerPartyCultureToFoodValue" config variable, determining how achieved culture points in dinner parties translate to the nutrition bonus granted.[/p]

[p]Weather.template.eco [/p]

• [p]Removed: "ChancePerMinute", "MaximumWeatherSystemsWeightedByWorldSize", "MinWeatherSystemSize" and "MaxWeatherSystemSize" config variables.[/p]
• [p]Added: "MinClearWeatherDuration" config variable, determining how long the weather must be clear between weather events at minimum - defaults to 10 minutes.[/p]
• [p]Added: "MaxClearWeatherDuration" config variable, determining how long the weather can be clear between weather events at maximum - defaults to 30 minutes.[/p]
• [p]Added: "WeatherWeights" config section, determining the weight of each weather to be selected.[/p]

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Outlook

[p]Our focus will now shift back towards some important changes to Eco's core systems, most notably a simplification of modules and an extensive rework for talents in conjunction with a system that will provide a continuous need for new stars that players can invest into different improvements. While we're not ready yet to go into detail for that, the next Update will provide some improvements to the loggers among you that we can already share:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]This is the model of our upcoming log harvester that will allow you to chop, cut and store trees away all in one go. Together with this vehicle we will implement some changes to the acquisition of resources, most notably an increase to resource density by changing trees to provide a larger amount of wood - but also being harder to fell. This will make the harvester especially efficient in its job, without increasing the difficulty for logging in the early game.[/p][p][/p][p]Thank you for reading and your support, we hope you will enjoy this new update! - Strange Loop Games[/p]